“Many are called, but few are chosen.“ Everyone starts off in life with dreams, hopes and fantasies of somehow becoming wealthy. Today we live in the most affluent country at perhaps the very best time in all of human history. It has never been more possible for more people to achieve their financial goals than it is today. Nonetheless, the fact is that success is rare.

Only one person in one hundred becomes wealthy in the course of a lifetime. Only five percent achieve financial independence, in that they have enough money to support their lifestyles without ever having to work again. This means that the odds against you ending your financial life successfully are nineteen to one.

The fact is that the only way that you are going to achieve your financial goals is when you quit fooling around and get really serious. This cannot be something you are going to do someday, when everything is just right. The situation will never be —just right.“ There will always be reasons to procrastinate, but the stakes are too high. You must get serious, and you must get serious today. Remember, everything counts.

Each time I meet someone who had drifted financially for many years, and who had then become successful and made a lot of money, I ask them —What was the turning point for you?“ They almost invariable give me a funny look and say, —Well, I finally decided to get serious.“

Sometimes they became angry, either at themselves, or at seeing someone else who they felt was less talented than they were who was doing better than they were. Sometimes they saw an opportunity and decided to —go for it!“ In every case, to break out of their comfort zones, they had to commit themselves, to take a risk, to —go boldly where no man had ever gone before.“ To break out of the pack, you will have to do the same.

As you can see, market returns are not like returns from CDs. Although bank yields are usually much lower than stocks, they are more predictable— that is, less variable. The market, because it is uncertain, can be said to be risky. Here risk is not the same as the risk of losing all your money or seeing sizable market correction. It means something far subtler: the unpredictability of year-to-year returns. Often people approach retirement investing with the narrow perception of the recent past. But bias will often hamper investment judgments. You want an unbiased advisor, someone who does not get fooled by past performance.

When you look from afar at Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, you see the tree-covered slope gradually rising to the top.

But just try to walk the trail. The high boulders and deep crevices make for a long and arduous hike that is not linear. So it is with the market, and so it is with life. You may see several recessions during your golden years. You may go in and out of different careers or jobs after your primary job is terminated. You may not work at all. Many people have completed the twenty or thirty years required by an employer to qualify for a pension check, while others have been through ten different employers, accumulating several 401(k)s or TSAs. You may have the vigor after sixty to have a more active life than while you were working, or you may be disabled. In either case, the meaning of retirement is changing for most of us.

It is not clear how these changes will affect the social order, but government and academia are studying these matters. Will long-lived people put stress on our Social Security system? Will people need career counseling at age eighty-three? For those who welcome challenges, life will be more exciting—for example, acquiring new skills and jobs. We must be aware of the forthcoming challenges. If a happy and successful retirement is important to you, read on. Whether you are transitioning to retirement or have just retired, you need to be mindful of important factors and issues that will help you to discern the most dependable plan for your lifestyle.

Here is the key to the law of accumulation. Everything counts! Everything that you do or fail to do counts in some way. Once you have set a goal for yourself, everything you do helps or hurts. Nothing is neutral. The biggest mistake that people make is they think that something only counts if they decide that it counts, or that they are going to count it. But the rule is that, if it doesn‘t help, it hurts. If it is not adding up, it is probably taking away.

When you set a goal to become wealthy, you place yourself under a new set of rules, and everything from that day forward counts in some way. When you read a book, listen to an audio program, take an additional seminar or course to upgrade your money-making abilities, go to bed early and get up early, it all counts. When you plan each day in advance, and work on your most important tasks before you do anything else, it all counts. Every positive, helpful action is going on the plus side of your ledger.

But if you spend your evenings watching television, socializing with your friends, killing time on low-value, no-value activities, it all counts as well, and it is going on the negative side of the ledger. Just as a successful company has a positive balance sheet, you have a balance sheet as well. You create a great life for yourself when you accumulate far more points on the credit side than debits on the debit side. And just as in financial accounting, everything counts.

Here is an important point. If what you are doing is not moving you toward your goals, then it is probably moving you away from your goals. Nothing is neutral. Almost everything you do is either moving you toward the things that you want to accomplish in life, the person you want to be, the wealth you want to accumulate, or it is moving you away. Everything counts. This is one of the most important applications of the law of accumulation in your life.

The law of belief has an inordinate impact on your life. You do not believe what you see; instead, you see what you already believe. Your beliefs predispose you to see yourself and your world in a certain way. This law says that, whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your reality. If you intensely believe something to be true, you will think, feel and act in a certain way, and your behaviors will determine your results. Your beliefs will become your reality.

Your mind is so designed that you have a tendency to ignore or block out any information coming to you that is inconsistent with what you already believe to be true, whether or not your beliefs are based on fact or fiction.

The area where the law of accumulation is vital to success is in the area of experience. Successful people in any field are almost invariably those who have far more experience in that field then the average person. And there is nothing that replaces experience. Whether it is in business, or entrepreneurship, or management, or selling, or investing, speaking or writing, or anything else, experience is what make the critical difference.

There are many studies and opinions on the subject of —mastery.“ The consensus opinion is that the foundation of mastery in any field is —pattern recognition.“ This is the ability of the individual to —connect the dots“ when he sees a situation that bears a resemblance to a previous situation. The more different situations that a person has experienced, the more patterns he has recorded and the faster he can make an informed decision when something new or different occurs.

This quality of pattern recognition applies to every field, from law and medicine to negotiating, selling and entrepreneurship. Experts agree that you require five to seven years and 10,000 hours of experience to master your craft, whatever it is. And the only way to achieve this experience is to be willing to fail, to use the trial and error method, and then learn from every experience.

The great enemy of mastery, and the big rewards that go along with being the best in your field, is the —comfort zone.“ Most people are so comfortable at a lower level of performance and accomplishment that the very thought of trying something new and different causes them extreme anxiety. Many people do not take the risks that are necessary to move out of their comfort zone because they are afraid that they will fail.

But the fact is that until you move out of your comfort zone and make the mistakes that give you the experience you need to succeed, it is not possible for you to grow and become capable of earning the kind of money that you desire. To put it another way, you only learn how to succeed by failing. You only become successful by taking risks where there is no guarantee of success. If you do not fail regularly, you can never succeed greatly.

When I was growing up, my family had very little money. My father was not always employed and my mother‘s work as a nurse was often the only thing that put food on the table for myself and my three brothers. We were raised on macaroni and cheese, and wore clothes from the Goodwill and the Salvation Army. From the age of ten, I made my own money and paid my own bills working at gardening and odd jobs around the neighborhood.

When I was fifteen, I began searching for the so-called secrets of financial success. Like many young people, my goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was thirty. However, when I turned thirty, I was just as broke as when I was twenty. I had not even graduated from high school, and aside from being able to sell, I had no real skills at all.

It was about that time that I started to worry about my situation, and how little progress I had made in the last ten years. Many of my friends were already doing quite well, married with children, living in nice homes, and making good money. But I was going nowhere financially.

My worry drove me into getting really serious about money for the first time, and after trying a variety of different ways to get rich, I finally settled down and created a real plan for becoming wealthy. And the plan worked. I had numerous temporary failures, and I learned a lot of hard lessons over the next seven years, but I came out the other end with a net worth of more than one million dollars. And what I have done, within reason, you can do as well.