#479 The 7 pillars of wealth and why 95% of people will never become financially independent. (Personal development wisdom snippets)

Did you know that 95% of people in the UK and US will never achieve financial independence? The reason isn’t lack of opportunity—it’s the way they approach wealth-building.

Snippet of wisdom 68.

In this series, I select my favourite, most insightful moments from previous episodes of the podcast.

My guest, the economist Kevin Whelan, reveals the Seven Pillars of Wealth—proven strategies that can help you take control of your financial future, reduce risk, and build lasting wealth.

1. Discover how to turn your home into an income-generating asset without selling it.
2. Learn why traditional pensions and investments often underperform—and what you can do instead.
3. Uncover powerful alternative wealth-building strategies, from property portfolios to joint ventures.

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Listen to the full conversation with Kevin Whelan in episode #278:

https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/278

Mastery Seekers Tribe: https://masteryseekerstribe.com

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Want to be a guest on Personal Development Mastery?

Send Agi Keramidas a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development inspiration, insights, and actions to implement for living with purpose.

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Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome to Personal Developmentmastery podcast, and this is
another snippet of wisdom whereI select my favorite, most
insightful moments from previousepisodes. Today's snippet is
from my conversation with KevinWhelan, who is an economist and
author, it is about the sevenkey pillars of wealth and why

(00:27):
95% of people will never becomefinancially independent. Let's
dive right in!

Kevin Whelan (00:40):
95% of the population in the UK and the US
will never become financiallyindependent. And that's a
staggering statistic, and one ofthe main reasons is the
simplicity of the approach thatis taken. And so if you can
imagine, and perhaps becausethis isn't a YouTube channel, so

(01:03):
you can't see the seven pillarsand how they're represented. But
if you just imagine a square ora circle on the right hand side,
what most people do, and on theleft hand side, the ways that
you can massively turbo chargeyour wealth, building
activities. So for the mostpart, like three legs of a
spider. Most people have threethings in their life. They have

(01:24):
a home that they live in, theyhave some form of pension or
retirement planning, and theyhave some form of money in cash
or investments. And those wouldbe the first three pillars. So
pillar number one, I call ithome capacity. There's a
capacity in everyone's home togenerate income, whether we

(01:45):
choose to exercise or not, is isjust a matter of our own
personal decision about how wedo that, but if, for the most
part, people live in houses,they don't generate an income
from them. But increasingly,though that's changing, we're
seeing a change towards Airbnbwith we're seeing people with

(02:06):
rent to room schemes with sevenand a half 1000 a year. You can
earn tax free. We've seen thatwith refugees. We've seen people
tapping into building extensionson their home or building
capacity around the space, theyhave to turn that into a source
of money. And increasingly, nowwe're seeing that so you can

(02:29):
turn your home into a source ofrevenue. And ultimately, people
do anyway, because if you getthe maths run and you determine
that your financial independenceis just not coming, and you
realize it too late. What domost people do? They downsize.
So they do it then. And I'm justsuggesting that, well, why don't
you imagine you could do thatnow? And many people tap into

(02:52):
the equity of their propertythrough mortgaging, buying other
assets, and then making moneyfrom that to pay themselves
back, so they're just movingmoney internally with newfound
knowledge and newfoundapplication to be able to just
borrow from themselves. Sothey're using their own internal
arbitrage, as opposed toallowing the banks or the

(03:15):
institutions to do it on theirbehalf and remove them from the
profit. So home capacity ispillar number one. Pillar number
two is the most underutilized,undervalued, poorly performing
asset of all, and its people'sretirement plans and my blood

(03:37):
boils at the poor value that isdelivered by most institutional
pensions, and that's why I liketo suggest to people ways that
they can dramatically cut thecost of having their money
managed, but they have to havestewardship. They have to be
willing to learn what needs tobe done, and it is not complex.

(04:00):
Agi, on a different day, I couldshare with you what is done is
not complicated at all. It'sactually so simple. But What's
better is to learn other ways togrow your money, rather than
rely on the stock market. Andthen, before I get too much on
my soapbox, pillar number three,which is investing outside of

(04:22):
the pension in markets, is thesame asset. It's the same
problem. So there's an overconcentration of people with
property that doesn't work,stock markets that don't work,
fees that are overcharged, andan over concentration the stock
market in both retirementplanning and investing, because
ISIS are in the same place asthe pensions, and there's no way

(04:46):
to prevent that unless you'rewilling to invest some time in
your own education. And I thinkso few people are willing to do
that, but we, fortunately, wefind enough, and we act as a
catalyst. Then we set aboutproviding the right education
and support and community andconnection to help people

(05:07):
discover that it is possible tomove that paradigm to cross the
Rubicon from pillars 123, to4567, and on that side we have
number four, which is building aportfolio of property. So not
the property you live in, but aportfolio of property that you

(05:27):
can rent out and generate anincome from a third party,
whether that's to a institution,whether that's to a company,
whether that's to an individual,whether that's to a family. You
know, there's dozens and dozensof different ways to serve a
tenant type to get a recurring,not passive, but recurring
income flowing into your life.
Number five is a business thatworks without you, so a

(05:49):
recurring income business alongthe lines that I described
earlier in our conversation.
Pillar six is intellectualproperty. How do you make money?
How do you generate a recurringincome from what you know, from
what you do, from what you'reoutstanding at, and how can you

(06:09):
turn that into a rich source ofrevenue for the future? And then
number seven, really importantjoint ventures and
collaborations. How do you bringyour knowledge skill time,
combine it with other people'sknowledge skill time, and create
more value where you share, notjust in the values with others,

(06:32):
but you share in the value. Soyou don't have to be simply a
product buyer. You can become acollaborator. So you could
become a bank, you could lendyour own money, you could invest
with other people. There's justa myriad, a whole kaleidoscope
of different ways that peoplefind in our community to work

(06:55):
together to create more valuethan the value they can create
on their own, because they'recombining their mind, the
distinctions they make and theand the principles that we
share, and when you do all that,then you can achieve significant
returns without the risk,without the fees, and without

(07:15):
that over dependence on thestock market. So that's the
nutshell whistle stop tour ofthe Seven Pillars of Wealth, you
know. And I'm always fascinatedif somebody can help me come up
with number eight, because youknow that, you know, eight's a
great symbol, and it's likeinfinity and but I haven't found
it yet, and I've been searchingfor 30 years, and I'm found it.

Agi Keramidas (07:42):
Thank you for listening. You will find the
full conversation in episode278, the link is in the episode
description. If you enjoylistening and appreciate what
we're doing here, the quick,simple favor I'm asking of you
is to click the subscribe buttonuntil next time stand out. Don't
fit in.