Income

Element III: Family and Personal Finance

Income is the amount of money or something else of equal value which you receive in exchange for your labor or services, from the sale of some goods or property, or as profit from financial investments. For most of recorded history and even up to the early years of this century, the majority of humankind who have lived off the land, hardly needed money for day-to-day needs. Barter was, and still is recognized in many marketplaces "as good as gold."

Even so, money as a form of income has been an important part of our lives from the first use of silver to settle a payment in Mesopotamia around 2500 B.C., right up to the present day as money moves around the world through an electronic network changing money from silver to information in motion at the speed of light .

Generating income is one of the vital skills of LIFECRAFT. How much income you generate will depend by and large upon the type of income generating activities you engage in, how much those activities are valued or measured in money, and the combination and/or variety of different income generating activities that you develop to work together as an income generating system. A money machine.

There are as many formula's and combinations of activities which make up income generating systems as there are people and ideas. For example, some people "engineer wealth" by actively focusing on the trading of financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, and currency exchange. Others focus on developing the ability to consistently provide a product or a service for which they receive income in exchange. Still others, use various combinations of both approaches.

Which ever way or combination of ways you decide to use to legally and honorably generate income, it is important for you to understand early in your life how to manage this vital skill. Do not allow generating income to control your life by becoming the most important activity in your life. For many people it is the only thing they think about and it soon becomes a sickness called greed to which they become addicted like a drug until they are consumed by it.

Neither disregard the essential importance of generating income so you may feed and clothe yourself and your family and have all the good things of life in abundance. Also, do not unnecessarily limit your income. If you have the opportunity to generate more than you need, learn to skillfully invest it and contribute it for you do not know what the future will bring. As in all LIFECRAFT skills, pursue incremental excellence and you will master it.

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