This installment of my semi-weekly series is dedicated to aspiring weekend entrepreneurs and to those who are more established but may be considering strategies for growth or expansion of their current enterprises. Instead of the standard Q&A profile I have decided to share some inspirational thoughts related to the notion of wealth and wealth building.

At work I have recently begun working with materials by Jane Atkinson in her The Wealthy Speaker series. The series itself is for a fairly niche readership but some of her points are pertinent to the readership at Queercents.

The forward speaks about ‘wealth’ not as a quantity of money but as a quality of life. Okay, I admit it, I am a fan of pith! One logical, and not-as-pithy, deceptively simple extension of the quality over quantity sentiment is that wealth is a state of mind.

All the money saving tips, budgeting tricks, and investing techniques in the world — even executed to perfection — alone will not bring wealth into our lives. I remain a strong believer in the importance of savings, budgeting, and investing and I know Queercents is a great resource for creative ways to think about these topics. Here are two thoughts about the mental and emotional aspects associated with money and wealth.

First, building wealth is not a selfish act. Healthy and productive personal money management, the process of building wealth, is a socially redeemable cause. I define a socially redeemable cause as something that makes life better for others. I’ve dedicated my career to socially redeemable causes and to making life better for others; this dedication is part of what led me to write for Queercents.

It is important to work for the benefit of others but we cannot as easily help others until we have helped ourselves. Working to secure a sound financial position for ourselves will better enable us to help others achieve similar results. This will be true regardless of whether you are a financial professional or layperson.

Also building and sustaining wealth allows us to give something to future generations. Whether we have a family of our own to pass wealth to or we have built a life that doesn’t include children or a family we can pass our wealth to one of the very many deserving charitable organizations.

Second, we are creatures of habit. The process of building wealth and accepting it into our lives in order to help others can be pragmatically understood as a habit making process — a mentality.

Most of the wisdom I’ve read or listened to over the years suggests that the influences of our habits are ubiquitous even if they are not readily apparent. The not-so-good news is that habits can be constructive or destructive. The positive news is that constructive habits can be reinforced and destructive habits can be broken. Forming a new habit or changing old ones is tough work but once established a habit will remain with us unless we work to undo it.

Striving to build the habits of saving, budgeting, and investing is a powerful strategy for improving our level of personal success in this area of our lives. Helping others and building wealth are not mutually exclusive.

The weekend entrepreneurs I speak to in writing this series share with me many stories that exemplify some of the thoughts shared this week. Carla Bronson wrote “I valued being able to stay dedicated to spending time at home to support my family.” Kevin Waters noted that his business “is something [he] always wanted to do. This is the best thing [he has] ever done for myself.”

Any Queercents readers who want to share about their weekend entrepreneurial experiences? Any hobbyists turned capitalists? Regardless of your motivations or thoughts about wealth, I am interested in the different strategies career-minded folks use to earn extra spending cash on the side. Also, I am interested in hearing about stories of weekend hobbies turned to full-time enterprises.