The Ten Commandments of Wealth

The House Always Wins. So.. Build the House.

You want to know how to get rich?

You and everyone else. They sell you a dream, the lottery ticket, the one big score. It’s a sucker’s game. They want you weak. They want you desperate. They want you buying into their fantasy so you can keep lining their pockets. You think you’re going to get rich quick? You’re a mark. And a mark is the last thing you want to be in this life.

Wealth isn’t about a lucky hand. It’s about building the damn casino. It’s about understanding the odds are rigged, and then, piece by piece, board by board, you build your own house. A house where you set the rules. Where the odds are in your favor. And the only way to do that is to have rules of your own. Not their rules. Your rules. The ones that cut through the noise, the sentiment, the garbage they feed you on the television.

So, you want the rules? The real ones? Not the feel-good nonsense they peddle in paperback. The kind of rules that have teeth. The kind that, if you follow them, might actually leave you with something to show for your time on this earth besides a cheap watch and a pile of regrets.

Here they are. The Ten Commandments of Not Dying Broke. Don’t just read them. Don’t just nod along. Burn them into your brain. Because out there, it’s a knife fight in a dark room.

And you better have a goddamn knife.

I. Know What You’re Spending

This is the baseline. The absolute rock bottom. If you don’t know where your money is going, you’re a child. A child who gets an allowance and wonders why it’s gone. You work. You bleed for that money. And then you just let it walk out the door? Have some respect for your own labor.

Get a piece of paper. A spreadsheet. I don’t care. Write down every single dime that leaves your pocket. The coffee. The subscription to that thing you don’t watch. The extra beer you didn’t need. Every last cent. You do this for a month, and you’ll see a map of your own stupidity. A detailed record of all the ways you’re setting your own future on fire.

This isn’t about "budgeting" like some clerk. This is about reconnaissance. You’re finding the enemy. And the enemy, my friend, is your own undisciplined nature. It’s the leaks in your own ship. You plug the leaks, or you drown. It’s that simple. Don’t tell me you "deserve" a treat. You deserve to not be a serf to your own impulses. So, track your money. All of it. Until it becomes second nature. Until you feel the pain of every wasted dollar. That’s the first step. The rest is commentary.

II. Pay Yourself First. The Rest of the World Can Wait.

You get a paycheck. And what’s the first thing you do? You pay the landlord. You pay the credit card company. You pay the government. You pay everyone but the most important person in the whole equation: you.

This is a mindset shift.

A fundamental reordering of your priorities.

Before anyone else gets a piece of you, you take your cut. I’m not talking about what’s left over at the end of the month. I’m talking about the first check you write. To yourself.

Decide on a percentage. Ten percent. Fifteen. Twenty if you’ve got the guts.

The moment that money hits your account, you move it. You move it to a place where you can’t easily touch it. A savings account. An investment account. I don’t care where. Just get it out of your hands.

The rest? That’s what you have to live on. You adjust. You learn to make do with what’s left. You’ll be surprised at what you can cut when you’re forced to. The world will scream for its share. Let it scream. You paid yourself first. You are building your house, not theirs.

Oh, is there not enough left over for your bills? Make more.

How? Let’s keep talking about how to keep the money you already make. Then we’ll talk about making more.

III. Debt is a Leash. Get the Knife.

Let’s be clear. There’s the debt you take on to buy an asset, and then there’s the debt of a fool. The credit card debt. The car loan for a depreciating piece of metal. This is a leash around your neck. And the one holding it is a banker who doesn’t know your name.

Every dollar you owe someone else is a dollar you’re not putting to work for yourself. It’s a cancer. It eats away at your future. The interest they charge you? That’s them getting rich off your lack of discipline. You’re paying for the privilege of owning things you can’t afford.

So you make a plan. A vicious, merciless plan. You list your debts, smallest to largest, highest interest rate to lowest. I don’t care about the method. Just pick one and attack it. Every spare dollar you have, you throw at it. You stop eating out. You cancel the vacations. You become a ghost to your friends if you have to. You pay it off.

The feeling of cutting that leash? Of being a free man? There’s no trinket you can buy that comes close. Get out of debt. It’s a cage. And you’re the only one with the key.

Leverage to make extra money is a rich mans game. Get to $100K free and clear net worth liquid before you start thinking of using debt “strategically”.

IV. The Money Works. You Don’t.

You think you’re going to get rich by trading your time for a wage?

You’re on a hamster wheel.

A well-paid hamster, maybe. But a hamster nonetheless. The only way to get off the wheel is to have your money making money. That’s it. That’s the whole game.

This is what they don’t teach you in school. They teach you to be a good employee. A cog in their machine. They don’t teach you to own the machine.

Investing. That’s the word. It sounds complicated. They want it to sound complicated. So you’ll pay them to do it for you. But the essence is simple. You buy a piece of a business. A good business. And you let it grow. You buy a piece of the whole damn market and you shut up for thirty years.

Don’t try to time it. Don’t try to pick the one hot stock. You’re not that smart. Nobody is. You buy consistently. Every month. Whether the market is up or down. It’s called dollar-cost averaging. Look it up. It means you’re not a gambler. You’re a proprietor. You’re buying assets. Things that generate value while you sleep. Your money is your employee. And it should be working harder than you are.

V. Compound Interest. It’s a Miracle. Or a Curse.

Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world. He was right. It’s the most powerful force in the universe. And it can either make you a king or a slave.

Here’s how it works. Your money earns interest. Then that interest earns interest. And the interest on the interest earns interest. It’s a snowball rolling downhill. It starts small. You barely notice it. And then, over time, it becomes an avalanche.

The key? Time. You start early, even with a little. A twenty-year-old who invests a hundred bucks a month is going to be richer than a forty-year-old who invests a thousand. The math is brutal. And it doesn’t care about your excuses.

This is why you start now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now. Every day you wait, you are robbing your future self. You’re giving up the one advantage you have. The power of time. You let it work for you, or you let it work against you as you pay interest on your debts. The choice is yours. Don’t be a fool.

VI. Don’t Bet on One Horse.

You find a stock you love. You think it’s the next big thing. You put all your money in it. You’re a genius. Until you’re not. Until the CEO runs off with the company funds or a competitor eats their lunch. Then you’re broke.

Diversification. It’s a five-dollar word for not being an idiot. It means you spread your bets. You own a little bit of everything. Different companies. Different industries. Different countries.

You do this through index funds. Exchange-traded funds. They’re cheap. They’re simple. And they let you own a slice of the whole market. One company goes bankrupt? It doesn’t matter. You’ve got thousands of others.

Your wealth system has multiple engines.

The get-rich-quick artist will tell you to concentrate your bets. To go all in. They’re selling you a story. A lottery ticket. A real builder of wealth? He builds a portfolio as sturdy as a brick house.

Not a house of cards.

VII. There’s Always Another Angle.

Your job is one stream of income. One. What happens if that stream dries up? You get fired. The company goes under. You’re left with nothing.

You need more lines in the water. Always. This isn’t about working yourself to death. It’s about being smart. It’s about building redundancies.

What are you good at?

What do you know?

Can you write?

Can you code?

Can you build something?

Can you sell something?

Find a way to monetize it. A small business. A freelance gig. Something that’s yours. That you control.

Even if it only brings in a few hundred bucks a month to start. That’s a few hundred bucks you can throw at your debt. At your investments. It’s another layer of insulation between you and the cold, hard world. Don’t rely on one source. That’s for amateurs and people who inherit wealth. You are a builder.

So build!

VIII. Protect Your Downside. Insurance is Not a Dirty Word.

You build a fortune. You work for decades. And then you get sick. Or you get sued. And it’s all gone. Wiped out in an instant because you were too cheap to buy protection.

Insurance. It’s not sexy. It’s not exciting. It’s a cost. But it’s a necessary one. Health insurance. Term life insurance, especially if you have a family. Disability insurance. Umbrella liability insurance.

This is about managing risk. You’re building a fortress. And a fortress has walls. It has defenses. You don’t leave the main gate wide open. You hope you never need it. But hope is not a strategy. You protect what you’ve built.

Otherwise, you’re just a custodian for someone else’s lawsuit.

IX. Shut Out the Noise. The World is Trying to Make You Poor.

The news. The financial gurus on television. Your brother-in-law with the hot stock tip. That new crypto thingy. It’s all noise. And the purpose of that noise is to make you do something stupid. To make you panic and sell when the market is down. To make you get greedy and buy when it’s at a peak.

Your plan is THE plan.

You made it when you were rational. You stick to it when you’re emotional. The market will crash. It’s what it does. That’s when you buy, not when you sell. You’re a long-term owner, not a tourist. If anything, crashes are buying opportunities not panic points.

Turn off the television. Unsubscribe from the newsletters. Develop a discipline of inaction. The most successful investors are the ones who do the least. They buy right, and then they sit tight. For decades. Let the others panic. Let them trade themselves into poverty.

You have a plan. You stick to the plan.

X. Define "Enough."

This is the one they never talk about. The goal isn't just to have more. More is a bottomless pit. The point of building wealth is to buy your freedom. The freedom to do the work you want to do. To live the life you want to live.

So, you need a number. A real number. How much do you need to have invested for the returns to cover your living expenses? That’s your finish line. That's "enough."

When you know your number, you have a target. You’re not just accumulating for the sake of it. You’re working towards a specific goal. And when you hit it, you have a choice.

A choice most people will never have.

Build the Machine. Then Let it Run.

So you have the rules.

The ten commandments of wealth are in your hands. Good for you. But rules on a page are worthless. They’re philosophy. They’re hot air.

You think a blueprint builds a house? You think a recipe cooks a meal? You have to do the work. You have to build the damn thing.

What you need is a system. A machine. A machine that runs on its own, that operates on these rules without your daily interference. Because you will fail. Your discipline will crack. You’ll get tired, you’ll get sentimental, you’ll get weak. The machine doesn’t.

Here’s what the machine looks like. It starts with your paycheck. Your paycheck doesn’t hit your main checking account, the one you spend from. No. It goes into a holding account. A weigh station. And from there, the machine takes over.

On the first of the month, automatically, the transfers happen. The machine splits the money. The percentage you decided on—the cut you take for yourself—that goes straight to your investment account. Straight into the low-cost index funds we talked about. You don’t see it. You don’t touch it. The machine does the work. The money works.

The next transfer: Your rent. Your mortgage. Your utilities. The fixed costs of living. The machine pays them. Automatically. What’s left? That gets sent to a separate account for your variable spending. Your groceries, your gas, the cup of coffee. That’s what you live on. When it’s gone, it’s gone. The machine has no sympathy. It doesn’t respond to your whining.

You got debt?

The machine attacks it.

You set up the automatic payments. Not the minimum payment. An extra hundred. An extra five hundred. Whatever you can bleed out of your budget. The machine sends it. Mercilessly. Every single month. It doesn’t get tired of the fight. It just executes the plan.

This is how you honor the rules. You take your flawed, emotional, weak-willed self out of the equation. You build a wealth system that is stronger than you are. A system that doesn't care if the market is scary this week. A system that doesn't care if you "deserve" a new toy. It has one job: to move and make money according to the plan. Your plan.

This machine is your fortress. Every automatic transfer is another brick in the wall. Every dollar diverted from dumb spending to an asset is another soldier on the rampart. You build it once. You check on it. You make sure it’s running. Then you let it do its job. The job of building your house, while you go on with the business of living. Let everyone else ride the emotional rollercoaster. Let them make decisions in moments of panic and greed. You’re not them. You’re a professional. You built a machine. And the machine works.

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I started Wealth Systems in 2023 to share the systems, technology, and mindsets that I encountered on Wall Street. I am a Wall St banker became ₿itcoin nerd, ML engineer & family office investor.

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