I’d like to ask you a question: how wealthy are you?

Think…think…you have an answer yet?

Okay, the question might not be what you thought I meant. Let me explain.

According to Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, the question “how wealthy are you?” essentially means “how many days you can live by without working?”

That’s right, to rephrase it, the real question is: if you stop working right now, and by relying solely on your passive income to cover your expenses, how many days can you survive?

That’s a very powerful question. It totally changes the way people think about money. Most people think that being wealthy is about earning a fixed amount of dollar, such as “I want to earn 1 million dollars!”

From Robert’s point of view though, even if you have a million dollars it doesn’t mean you’re wealthy enough. Yes you could probably get by a lot of days without working (provided you don’t overspend), but eventually you might still run out of money.

To fix that problem, you should have passive income coming into your bank account continuously to cover your expenses. Examples of passive income are stock dividends, book sales, network marketing sales, and real estate rental payments. Income from these channels does not require you to do much other than the usual maintenance, although you might have to work quite a bit in the beginning.

How can you get started?

There are a few steps I would suggest you to take in order to be truly wealthy, at least from a very practical point of view:

1) Brainstorm for ideas – When you’re on the train or driving, brainstorm for a few ideas that could possibly help you generate passive income. Write them down on a notepad whenever something pops up, otherwise you might never find the idea again for a long, long time.

2) Come up with 3 ideas every month and learn more about them – Why so many? Because most of your ideas will be junks. Either they are not feasible at your current state, or they take too much time off your current job. You might or might not get a good idea. Just be realistic and be creative in this phase.

3) Work at the feasible ideas for at least 6 months – It could be part-time if you have a full-time job, or if you’re confident enough you could even go full-time to make millions with the ideas. Having at least a 6-month period to start a new venture is crucial because very often a good idea won’t take off until sometime later, especially when you have other commitments in life. Furthermore, it’s a great way to form a new habit and be persistent in the pursuit.

As usual, expect that things won’t always turn out to be the way you like it.

But, don’t give up.

Success only comes to those who continue to get back up after getting knocked down. And if you find yourself being knocked down far too many times, here’s an inspiring video I would like to share with you before you go away for holidays (here’s the link to YouTube in case you can’t see the video).

So, do you have a plan for 2010 to create passive income for yourself? What would it be?

Finally, safe travels during the holidays and let’s aim to be a wealthy person in 2010!

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