This is the second of the guest posts by John Logsdon from readysteadygowebsites.com.

Imagine the scene. You go to your bank because you want to paint your house which will cost £1000. The bank manager looks in the books, sees that you are a ‘good risk’ and checks the authorised lending level, which requires the bank to have 10% of its lending (it used to be 3%). The manager alters some numbers on the computer and hey presto, you have £1000 to spend.

You have the work done, pay the painter who puts his money in his bank and decides he needs a new van. He goes to the bank which also considers him a good risk, and bingo! he has £10,000 to spend on a new car. This he buys from the chap next door who is already quite rich, pays in the money and suggests he needs £100,000 for a new Porsche. The bank now has £10,000 so it can lend him the money and off he goes in his new wheels. And so on.

Anyone who is reading this article thinking that I am going to teach you how to be rich – forget it! That is the domain of Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich.  I hate treading on other peoples’ toes. Really! Apart from that I am likely to be teaching you how to be wealthy rather than how to be rich. What is this about then?

I am in America; in Atlanta to be precise! Attending a large conference organised by Georgia Tech which is very interesting on its own.

Whenever I think about control, or simply put, about who holds the strings one of the following happens:

1)      Like many people, I immediately conjure up an image of a politician; usually one of the politicians who rule over countries considered powerful, like the President of the United States or the British Prime Minister.

2)      Like very few people I have this image of Satchmo sitting on a rainbow and hear his voice singing ‘…I have the World on a string…’

Lately a bit of discontent has been building up inside me. You see, when I started my financial transformation – and a bit later this blog to help me cope with obsession and keep me focused – I felt really excited. Every new book on personal finance, every new blog sparked connections, generated ideas and generally made me feel like ‘the cat that’s got the cream’. I was LEARNING!

Now, things have got into a bit of a routine. I find that more and more often I will read a book or a blog article and think: ‘Competent; well written (not always); but I have read this stuff many times before’. And a bit of boredom starts setting in. Because, I don’t feel I am learning.

A couple of days ago I, for my shame, realised that my knowledge about the wealth situation in the UK still leaves much to be desired. Acting on this is rather important for the Money Principle since it builds on the realisation that there is not much personal in ‘personal finance’.

So today I set out to educate myself. This is what I found.

According to a report of the Office for National Statistics, Wealth in Great Britain: main results from the wealth and assets survey 2006/2008 the average wealth picture by age group looked approximately like this: