By Zach Whitchurch
President | Wealth Advisor
Certified Private Wealth Advisor®
CFP®
When a band finally breaks through, people love to say it came out of nowhere. But it usually didn’t. It came from years of playing dive bars to half-empty rooms, hundreds of nights nobody wrote about. The breakout was just the first time the rest of us took notice.
When a company finally gets to the point where others take notice, no one knows all of the sweat and tears that went into the years prior to build it.
I see the same pattern everywhere. When the professional athletes we work with talk about a championship, they rarely mention the 25 minutes of foam rolling they put in every day. That part is boring, but it’s where the real work happens. The peak is only the part we get to see.
Money follows the same pattern. If you want to know how to build wealth over time, look at the long, unremarkable stretches between the highlights. That’s where most of it gets built.
How to Build Wealth Over Time: Decide What You Save First
Not long ago, I sat down with a client who wanted to get serious about retirement. His biggest worry was that he spent too much money. My advice was the same I give many people: pick a savings number first and start saving it. Your spending typically adjusts around what’s left.
That idea comes from The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason’s book of money parables. It teaches that a portion of everything you earn belongs to you and should be set aside before you pay anything else. Spending tends to adjust to whatever is left, as long as you keep doing the work.
None of this is exciting. There’s no highlight reel for moving part of your paycheck into savings every month, or for leaving that money alone when something shiny comes along. Yet that steady discipline between the peaks is what drives growth over the long run.
Faucets and Buckets
At Solidarity Wealth, we organize long-term wealth using our 5-Bucket Strategy, the same framework we use for our own money:
- Bucket 1: Cash for emergencies and short-term needs
- Bucket 2: Fixed income, meaning bonds and similar investments that pay regular interest, for stability
- Bucket 3: Core equities, a diversified mix of publicly traded stocks, for long-term growth
- Bucket 4: Real estate for income and potential appreciation
- Bucket 5: Venture capital and private equity, meaning ownership stakes in private companies, which carry higher risk and can be hard to sell
For someone with a steady paycheck, filling these buckets looks like water from a faucet. It trickles into the first bucket, and when it fills, the overflow spills into the next. The process is slow and consistent.
For successful athletes and entertainers, it looks very different. Nobody turns on a faucet. Someone opens a fire hose, and it overflows fast. These careers are also often short. An athlete’s earning window might last a handful of seasons, while a founder may build a company over decades. Founders who sell feel a version of this too, but for a performer the spillover can come early and end early.
The process is the same either way; what changes is how quickly the overflow arrives. Our job is to decide ahead of time where it goes, so it doesn’t drain into whatever tap happens to be open now.
Being Ready When Opportunity Shows Up
Some of the most significant financial moments arrive as events. A chance to invest in a private company doesn’t come in monthly installments. It comes in a large chunk, often on a timeline you don’t control. Market downturns can work the same way.
Being ready for those moments comes down to three things. The first is cash. As a disciplined saver, you’ve built up cash sitting on the sidelines of your portfolio. That reserve puts you in a position to take a serious look at an opportunity when it appears, without being forced to sell something else at a bad time to fund it. For some families, that means holding more cash than emergencies alone would call for, to keep that option open.
The second is a process. When you’ve built up savings and have a track record of investing, opportunities tend to find you. Most of them won’t be good ones. A clear way to vet a deal, and how it fits your long-term goals, lets you say yes to the right ones and no to the rest without it becoming personal.
The third is staying in the game, even when it’s uncomfortable. Jeff Bezos has talked about this same lag. He’s said that when people congratulate him after a strong quarter, what he’s really thinking is that the quarter was baked three years ago. Investing works the same way. Continuing to invest when markets are volatile can feel pointless in the moment. But the investors who keep showing up when others step to the sidelines are often glad they did when they look back. Markets right now are unusually uneven, with a small handful of companies driving most of the gains while many others lag. That kind of stretch tests the same discipline that builds wealth in any other season: funding the plan you already decided on, not the headlines of the week.
Every opportunity carries risk, and private investments in particular can be hard to sell and may lose value. Having cash ready gives you room to decide on your own terms, and the decision still deserves careful study. People may call it lucky when the timing works out. I’d call it being ready.
What the Peaks Leave Behind
Every peak ends eventually, whether that’s a final season or the day you hand over the keys to a company you built. What carries forward are the habits you formed along the way; they shape what comes next for you, what your family learns by watching you, and the peak that comes after this one.
We’ll come back to both of those ideas in future articles: who you become after the career that defined you, and how to pass down the reasons behind what you built. In the meantime, ask yourself what unglamorous work you’re doing today that will have you ready for your next peak.
If you’d like help putting structure around the work between the peaks, we’d welcome the chance to talk. You can reach us at info@solidaritywealth.com or 385-374-1665.
Building Wealth Over Time: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you build wealth over time?
Typically long-term wealth comes from steady habits practiced between big financial moments. For many people, that includes:
- Setting a savings number before a spending budget
- Keeping cash on hand for emergencies and opportunities
- Investing across diversified asset types
- Staying disciplined when income jumps or markets swing
Our article on building habits that support long-term wealth offers ideas for making them stick.
What does “pay yourself first” mean?
Paying yourself first means setting aside a portion of every paycheck for saving and investing before you pay for anything else. The idea, made popular by the book The Richest Man in Babylon, works because spending often adjusts to whatever is left. That turns saving into a habit instead of an afterthought.
Why does my spending go up every time I get a raise?
This pattern is called lifestyle creep, and it’s very common. When income rises, spending often rises with it, one small upgrade at a time. One way to counter it is to decide what you’ll save from each raise before the money reaches your checking account, then live on what’s left.
How do you manage money when your income is irregular?
With irregular income, it helps to plan around a conservative estimate rather than your best month or season. Athletes, entertainers, and business owners often receive large amounts at once, so building cash reserves and deciding in advance where each payment goes can help carry you through the leaner stretches.
Should I keep cash on the sidelines for investment opportunities?
It depends on your situation. Holding cash reserves beyond emergency needs can give you the flexibility to evaluate an opportunity, like a private company investment, without selling other investments at a bad time. The tradeoff is that cash may earn less than other assets over the long run.
What is the bucket strategy for investing?
A bucket strategy divides your money into separate groups based on when you’ll need it and how much risk each group can take. Solidarity Wealth uses five buckets: cash, fixed income, core equities, real estate, and venture capital or private equity, with overflow from one moving into the next.
About Zach
Zach Whitchurch is the President and a wealth advisor at Solidarity Wealth, with a background in behavioral finance and a focus on helping clients build the financial and life habits that support lasting long-term wealth. He holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and Certified Private Wealth Advisor® designations and co-founded Solidarity.
Solidarity Wealth is a registered investment adviser. This material is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Solidarity Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Solidarity Wealth unless a client service agreement is in place.
