It’s very easy sometimes to believe that the hand we got dealt in life is all we have to play with. Or to say, ‘Ah well, I should have started a pension in my early twenties – it’s too late now’. But we can change anything we want – it’s never too late to start being wealthy.

Look at Rule 1 again – anyone can make money. And it’s not limited by your age or any other time factor. All it requires is that you shift your focus to becoming wealthy and already things will happen without you having to do anything more. Obviously if you want more than the basic that the universe is going to give you, you will have to do more. But by shifting your focus you will set wheels in motion and prosperity will come to you. And no, this isn’t mumbo jumbo. It’s a universal fact. The fact you do something – shift your focus – is enough.

No matter how long you have been going along a particular path – poverty, lack of success, whatever – it doesn’t need much of a shift to alter course. And altering course can happen no matter how long you’ve left it. There is no such thing as too late. It’s a bit like being an ocean-going liner. You may need a lot of space to stop but it doesn’t take much to get you to change direction. A couple of degrees on the wheel and you’ll be on a completely different course within a few miles.

In gaining prosperity, as in most things, there is a tipping point. Once you’ve added on those couple of degrees to port or starboard the resulting change in trajectory gets bigger and bigger in a sort of compound way.

It is also never too late to start investing – in stocks, in shares, in a pension, in style, in quality, in yourself, in life. By staying alert and alive we resist that decline into inactivity and apathy which is such an ageing attitude. My father-in-law (always such an inspiration) started another business when he was 75, and not just any old business either – it was in a new technology which most 50-year-olds were having trouble getting their head round.

However, if you think it is too late, it probably is. The secret is never to think that. If you think that you can give up easily then you probably will. Don’t think it. Look, we came into this book together to make money – some for you and some for me. I’m going to do my bit, my damnedest, to help you increase your prosperity. If you think there are any barriers – age, sex, race, ability – then you are already batting on a losing wicket. Dump the preconceptions and trust me. It is never too late to begin. Start now.