To the young adult as well as to the early career professional, the fundamental question that lurks at the background is finding an answer to wealth and career questions. How do you go about having a brilliant career that you love, as well as generate extraordinary wealth while doing so? It sounds superhuman almost to achieve those, and the lives of the great achievers seem distant and remote, almost unreachable. And yet the steps that lead you towards your own acres of diamonds are well within your grasp, if you would only be so willing to reach out and grab them.

Wealth enhancement and Career Development go hand-in-hand, though this is sometimes forgotten by those who live an opulent lifestyle with a high-income - but have no net-worth to show for their efforts. To build serious wealth, it is important to have an objective - how much wealth do you really want? As indicated in our financial freedom manual, generating enough wealth so that you are independent of the need to have a job is achievable in less than ten years. However, becoming seriously rich will either require more time, or performance at a higher plane.

Career is a tougher game, simply because this is what you will be doing during the most active part of your day for most of the active days of your life. Great care must be taken when picking your career - for you won't get too many chances at getting it right. You will probably make two or three fundamental career switches in your life, but not many more. It takes a significant amount of time to become good at anything that you do, and it is only then that you will really know whether you love what you are doing or not.

There is an alternate path to choosing your career - and that is to listen closely to your Inner Self. As children, we possess this ability, but we lose our connection as we get older, and we try to use only our heads to make every single decision. Unfortunately, while the mind is terrific at solving specific, well-defined problems, it is not so great at handling matters that do not have clear yes/no answers. We rely on our intuition or our inner connectedness a lot more than we realize - but a breakdown in that connectedness (truly, only a masking of it, for it can never really break) causes us to lose the use of the one tool that can help make these life decisions for us. For example, in certain jobs, in certain locales, with certain people - we are strangely energized, have all kinds of new ideas, and develop a positive attitude about life and begin looking forward to living. In other instances, we feel de-motivated, dragging ourselves to work, and disliking every moment that we are there. All these are examples of your inner-self giving you clear signs of where you should go, and where you are "meant to be". Many times, the logical answer may be quite the opposite of what your inner-self is telling you - for example, the job that you don't love may pay you twice as much, or seems to have the type of executive focus you need to really do well in your career and so on. But you have to learn to trust your inner-self - for that is Life Itself - trying to guide you to a place where you will be at ease -without and within. Do you have the courage to follow through? Or are you so caught up in what is defined as "success" in this world that you are unwilling to let go - even though it makes your everyday life miserable?

Following your heart brings you to a career path (this could be an own business, or working for a corporation, or a non-profit and so on) where you are working with energy and passion towards something that you love. You are a success already - as you are allowing Life to unfold with graceful ease and completeness. You are a success because everything now seems natural and in its place. In due course of time, you will also be provided for with enough and more to sustain yourself and family - and based on how good a steward of that income you become, your net-worth will grow suitably.

Building wealth, even with a small income is very likely, if you follow these simple steps:

1. Pay yourself first - put away a percentage of your gross income (15% or more) into your retirement/investment account.
2. Pay off your debts next - try to live debt free.
3. Understand the basics of the stock & bond markets, as well as mutual funds.
4. Subscribe to an investment newsletter and begin investing 50% of your money according to its style.
5. Asset-allocate the remaining 50% into mutual funds to provide coverage for those areas that the investment newsletter does not.
6. Increase your savings rate

Soon enough, your net-worth will rise sufficiently to a point where you can even afford to quit your job - though you won't want to - because you will be doing exactly what you were meant to do, want to do and are by now, excellent at doing!

Following these simple (but not easy) steps can answer all your questions about wealth and career!

Best of lucks!