My husband came home from work late one night and found me engrossed in a book. “Oh!” he said with surprise. “Did I already tell you about that book? I didn’t think I did yet.” He had a puzzled look on his face.

“You didn’t tell me about it,” I responded.

“Then why are you reading it?”

I laughed, “Because every time I turn around, someone I know is recommending it to me. This one too,” I added, holding up a second book.

“Wow! That makes two of us then, because I keep hearing about these books, too.”  He plopped down, and my husband, who rarely reads, began reading.

What were the books? Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, andThe One MInute Millionaire, by Robert Allen and Mark Victor Hansen. These books have many of the same principles and would be sufficient if read them by themselves. Read together however, it’s like a power package when it comes to financial savvy!

Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a much shorter read of the two books and is written in a personal way, based on the author’s own financial journey in life. Having two father figures as a boy, one who was rich and one who was poor, the author chose to be mentored by the rich dad, and later turned his lessons into book form.

Work for money or make money work for you.

If the book had to be summed up in one concept, it would be, “You can either spend your life working for money or you can make money work for you.” This concept is explained further with the use of simple charts, as the author delves into a discussion of assets and liabilities.

He uses house buying as an example. Most of us pay off our debt and get to a place where we feel that with our current salary, we can afford our first home. We then buy our home, and most of our income goes into mortgage and home upkeep. This is considered a liability.

“What if,” the author challenges, “we pay off our debt and then invest our money into something that will yield returns? Something that will bring us an additional income to our salary and won’t cost us in the meantime? Then, once we have those assets in place, whether they be stocks or real estate or any other money maker, then we buy our home? That way, we aren’t just using our salary to cover our costs, with very little left over, but we have additional income coming in as well.”

The short end of it is, your assets column needs to be bigger than your liabilities column. You need to have more money coming in at all times than you have going out. This is how one stays out of the “rat race” in which they always feel pressured to work, and work some more, in order to meet all their bills on time.

The One Minute Millionaire writes about the same thing but then digs in a little bit deeper. This book is a much thicker volume and is written in a unique way. On the right hand pages, all the one-minute concepts that make up a Millionaire’s way of life are written into novel form. This, the authors explain, are for those that are more artistic and creative — people who soak in knowledge through more creative ways than through simple explanations and charts.

The left pages are broken into page to page-and-a-half sections, with concepts that build on each other in very logical fashion. This is for the people reading who think in 1s and 0s.

I read the novel first and was pleasantly surprised to find it well written. Not only was it entertaining to read, it showed an application of the One Minute Millionaire principles in a way that I could understand. I then went back and read the logical portion of the book. I probably would not have understood this part of the book if I had not read it in novel form first. For me, it was like getting two books for the price of one.

There are too many concepts in The One Minute Millionaire to list here, but some of the ones that really grabbed my attention are as follows:

Pay yourself first.

We often pay our bills first and never have anything left over for savings and future investments. Although it is imperative we keep up with our bills, the authors encourage the reader to get in the automatic habit of putting 10% into a savings account with each paycheck that comes in. Until a person starts doing this, there will never be anything to invest into future multiple streams of income.

Find a millionaire.

Find a self-made millionaire, ideally one per month, and interview them. Ask them questions such as:

“How did you make your first million?”

“How long did it take?”

“What system did you use?”

“How long would it take to mentor someone to your same level of success?” and

“What is your most important habit?”

Givers, get.

The authors also strongly encourage their readers to invest 10% of all the income into charities of some sort. They cite several examples of well-known millionaires who practice this concept and stand firm in the opinion that money given is money returned in increased form.

Four main sources of multiple income…

There are four main ways that a person can generate streams of multiple income for themselves: the Internet, real estate, investments, and business. The ideal is to have something coming in from all four sources, but each individual is going to have at least one source that is their primary source of income.

Tap into your genius.

To determine what should be your main source of additional income, look at your passions, talents, values, and destiny. Ask yourself, What do I love to do? What am I good at? What is important to me? and What do I feel I was born to do in this life? When you have thoughtfully answered these questions you will find one of the four main investment pathways more clear to you than the others. That is the pathway to pursue first. Once you have established that, then it is time to consider the other three pathways.

Everybody wants something.

Everybody wants something. What do you have that they want?

“Your diamonds are not in far away mountains or distant seas; they are in your own backyard if you will but dig for them.” Russel Conwell

In addition to taking a look at your passions, talents, values, and destiny, throw this concept into the mix and chances are you will find even more clarity into what it is that will help create you assets column.

Obviously becoming a millionaire isn’t going to happen overnight, but there are choices we can begin making today to help each of us get out of the exhausting and, sometimes, downright scary, way of life that consists of working hard to barely keep our head above water.

Although my husband and I don’t have the dream of being millionaires just for the sake of being rich, we do hope to have more financial freedom in the future. We also hope to give our children a better financial life than we’ve struggled with for all of our twenties and most of thirties. We aim to do that, one minute at a time.