The stages consist of:

1 Beginning your endeavour
2 Correction of any teething problems
3 Establishing a strong foundation to build upon
4 Reviewing and revising your performance to date
5 Exercising restraint during your first boost of expansion
6 Managing your long-term success

Converted into Personal Finance terms, this includes:

Stage 1 - Planning and establishing goals, budgets, and 'knowing your finances'.
Stage 2 - Identifying your problem areas (for example, spending patterns) and making corrections to your behavioural patterns.
Stage 3 - Start a savings and investments and debt-free program
Stage 4 - Reviewing your performance to date, but still keep economising.
Stage 5 - Reinvest all surplus money back into your investments to create assets that will eventually create your financial freedom.
Stage 6 - Ensuring that you don't go back into any unnecessary debt, and not fall back into bad patterns. Success is now yours to have and to hold!

This is not a new idea - it's been around for centuries, and even more recently, researchers have found other ways to apply these techniques. For example, Dr John Gray said when studying the behavioural patterns of couples, he noticed the same stages of developing a successful relationship, which he later wrote about in his book, "Mars and Venus on a Date".

It has also been proven that if you rush through or skip a stage, you are doomed to failure or at least have to return back to the start again. If your finances never get off the ground, so to speak, then you have to go back to the first 3 stages to lay the right foundations to ensure lasting wealth and financial freedom.

There are different strategies for the different stages. If we apply the right strategies at the right time, creating wealth is effortless. If we are not aware of the stages and break the rules, we can experience financial problems and possibly severe hardship.

What often prevents us from successfully managing money is the ignorance of these important stages. If we apply the right strategies at the right time, creating wealth is effortless.

Understanding these six natural stages provides us with a systematic tool that, firstly, corrects any existing problems and, secondly, accelerates our path to financial freedom.