Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Become Your Version of Rich · Glossary
Become Your Version of Rich Glossary: 38 Key Terms Defined
Driver. Earned power. Withdrawal rate. These words get tossed around as if everyone already knows them. Here are 38 of them in plain English, each with one line on why it matters to your money and a link to the guide that puts it to work.
Last Updated: 10/28/2026 · Written by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
The Terms
Money, Drive, and Power Terms in Plain English
Every term below comes from Become Your Version of Rich by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA. Each one is defined, then tied to what it does for your money. Click the link under any entry to see the guide that puts it to work, or start with the main guide to your version of rich.
- Abundant Line
- The third of the three lines. It covers the extras beyond the life you need: more travel, giving, family support, and optional luxuries.
- Why it matters to your money: Putting it on paper lets you enjoy the extras without sliding back onto the more treadmill.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Aligned Power
- Position power and earned power, directed by clear values toward one defined vision and held inside clear limits.
- Why it matters to your money: A title with nothing underneath it is the weakest kind of power. Aligned power is what moves employees, customers, and vendors toward what you are building.
- Read the guide: What Is Power in Business? →
- Annual Gap
- What is left after you subtract the income you can count on from the yearly after-tax cost of your life. Your invested assets only have to cover this part.
- Why it matters to your money: Owners overshoot their number all the time by forgetting the income they will still have. You fund the gap, not the whole lifestyle.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Authority vs. Trust
- Authority comes with a title. Trust has to be earned by how you act when nobody is checking. The gap between the two is where most owners get stuck.
- Why it matters to your money: People give their best work to someone they trust, not just someone who signs the checks. Without trust, you pay for it in turnover and rework.
- Read the guide: Can Your Business Run Without You? →
- Coalition
- A group of people who back your goal because it serves their interests as well as yours.
- Why it matters to your money: Support built on mutual benefit lasts. Support built on pressure disappears the moment you leave the room.
- Read the guide: How to Build Influence Without Authority →
- Comfortable Line
- The middle of the three lines: the lifestyle and time freedom you actually want.
- Why it matters to your money: This is the line most people mean when they say they want to be set. Name it and you can plan and price it.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Conscious Habit
- A habit you chose on purpose and aimed at a specific result.
- Why it matters to your money: A habit can be aimed at a retirement account, a business that delivers when you are not watching, or a stronger body. You will have habits either way. The only choice is who designs them.
- Read the guide: Discipline vs. Habit →
- Cue
- The fixed trigger that tells a habit to start, tied to something you already do, like pouring coffee or sitting down at your desk.
- Why it matters to your money: A habit anchored to a cue needs no debate and no willpower to begin. That is how saving, workouts, and weekly reviews survive busy weeks.
- Read the guide: How to Build a Habit That Sticks →
- Daily Actions
- The short list that closes each chapter of the book: concrete things you can start doing tomorrow.
- Why it matters to your money: Reading about success is like studying a map. It only matters once you start walking, and Daily Actions are the first steps.
- See it on the main guide →
- Dependence and Alternatives
- The idea under all power. Your power rises when someone needs what you control and has few good alternatives to you. Theirs rises when the reverse is true.
- Why it matters to your money: Before any pitch, negotiation, or ask, check who needs whom and who has better options. It tells you more about your real power than your title ever will.
- Read the guide: What Is Power in Business? →
- Differentiation
- What makes you stand apart from the other options a customer has. In business, creativity produces it.
- Why it matters to your money: A business that looks like every other one can only compete on price. A different one can compete on value.
- Read the guide: What Is Creativity in Business? →
- Discipline
- The effort that gets a new behavior started and carries it through the first weeks.
- Why it matters to your money: Discipline starts it. Habit keeps it going on far less effort, which is how small actions turn into ten years of results.
- Read the guide: Discipline vs. Habit →
- Drive
- What motivation becomes once you sustain it through repeated action, day after day, until moving forward is simply what you do.
- Why it matters to your money: Drive is what is still running after the excitement fades and the work gets hard.
- Read the guide: What Is Motivation? →
- Driver
- The personal reason underneath the work. Providing for a family, proving something to yourself, protecting your health, and leaving something behind are all common ones.
- Why it matters to your money: A weak driver makes everything built on top of it lean. Find yours before you set a single money goal.
- Read the guide: How to Find Your Why →
- Driver Statement
- A one-sentence version of your driver for one area of your life, such as health, work, or finances, paired with one concrete action.
- Why it matters to your money: A sentence you only recite changes nothing. The action attached to it is what moves your money.
- Read the guide: How to Find Your Why →
- Earned Power
- Influence you build from expertise, reputation, relationships, information, and a record of results. It is built, not granted.
- Why it matters to your money: A title can disappear. Earned power goes with you to the next job, deal, or business.
- Read the guide: What Is Power in Business? →
- Enough Line
- The whole picture of what is enough: money, debt, work, time, relationships, security, and purpose together.
- Why it matters to your money: Rich was never one number. A lot of unhappiness comes from treating it as one.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Financial-Independence Target
- The assets or reliable income needed to support the lifestyle you want. It sits inside your enough line as the financial part of the answer.
- Why it matters to your money: It is a crucial part of the answer, not the whole answer. Calculate it, but do not mistake it for the destination.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Hedonic Treadmill
- The tendency to adapt to better circumstances, so the new house or new car quietly becomes the normal you measure the next want against.
- Why it matters to your money: If your definition of rich is always relative to what you have now, the target moves every time you do. A defined enough is the way off.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Leadership
- The ability to set a clear direction, earn trust, develop capability in other people, and move them toward a result worth reaching. Doing only some of those is something narrower than leading.
- Why it matters to your money: Leadership is what lets an operation perform without your constant presence. For the working side of management, see the delegation entry in the management glossary.
- Management glossary: Delegation →
- Minimum Security Line
- The first of the three lines: core expenses covered, an emergency reserve funded, and the dangerous debt gone.
- Why it matters to your money: It marks the difference between safe, comfortable, and free, so you know which one you are actually building toward.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Minimum Version
- The smallest form of a habit you can do on your worst day. Five minutes of exercise, not an hour.
- Why it matters to your money: Most people fail by installing the full-size habit on day one. Start small, make it consistent, and add size second.
- Read the guide: How to Build a Habit That Sticks →
- Motivation
- The force that gets you moving and keeps you pointed in the right direction.
- Why it matters to your money: Real motivation is quiet and steady. It keeps you going after the excitement fades and nobody is cheering.
- Read the guide: What Is Motivation? →
- Passion
- A strong feeling about something. It flares, and it fades.
- Why it matters to your money: A feeling can start you. It cannot be the foundation you build your finances on.
- Read the guide: What Is Motivation? →
- Persuasion vs. Manipulation
- Persuasion uses truthful information and leaves the other person a real choice. Manipulation hides facts or exploits weaknesses to steer them. Coercion uses threats to force them.
- Why it matters to your money: All three can move people. Only persuasion builds the kind of power that lasts.
- Read the guide: How to Build Influence Without Authority →
- Position Power
- Power granted by a role: formal authority, the ability to reward, and the ability to impose consequences.
- Why it matters to your money: It is real, but on its own it is the weakest ingredient. Poor conduct quietly drains the trust and honest information that make a position work.
- Read the guide: What Is Power in Business? →
- Power
- Your capacity to influence decisions, behavior, resources, and outcomes within a particular relationship or situation.
- Why it matters to your money: It is a capacity, not an act. It lives in a relationship and is limited to a situation. Warren Buffett had huge power in the 2008 Goldman Sachs deal and very little in a field he knows nothing about.
- Read the guide: What Is Power in Business? →
- Pressure Test
- Checking your number against an ordinary bad stretch: markets down twenty percent, a quarter of lost revenue, high inflation, a big repair or health bill, a longer retirement than planned.
- Why it matters to your money: A version of rich that collapses under one ordinary setback is not security yet. Test it before you trust it.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Reserves
- Cash set aside for surprises. Personal and business reserves are kept separate because they cover different risks.
- Why it matters to your money: A personal emergency fund does not cover a business's slow season or tax bill, and the reverse is true too.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Safeguards
- The checks that keep power honest: transparency, people who are allowed to challenge you, and real consequences.
- Why it matters to your money: Power with no values and no checks is how strong people and strong companies undo themselves.
- Read the guide: What Went Wrong at Uber Under Travis Kalanick? →
- Stakeholder Map
- A list of everyone who can support, block, fund, approve, supply, buy, or carry out what you want to do.
- Why it matters to your money: A plan that ignores one of these people can stall on a single no. Map them before you pitch anyone.
- Read the guide: How to Build Influence Without Authority →
- Standards vs. Values
- Values are the principles you hold, like honesty or service. Standards are the behavior that shows them, like returning every customer call by end of day.
- Why it matters to your money: People cannot follow a principle they cannot see. Standards make your values visible and checkable.
- Read the guide: Can Your Business Run Without You? →
- Stop Line
- The measurable benchmarks, written in advance, that tell you that you have arrived.
- Why it matters to your money: In the thick of the chase you cannot see the finish line clearly. Write it down while you are still climbing, or you will run straight past it.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
- Successor or Backup
- A second person who can do a critical task or make a critical decision, so nothing important is trapped in one head.
- Why it matters to your money: If the business needs you for everything, you own a job with a ceiling, not an asset. See key-person risk in the management glossary.
- Management glossary: Key-Person Risk →
- Target Momentum
- The steadiness that builds when you hold one direction for a stretch of time instead of changing the target.
- Why it matters to your money: Early on, steadiness is the real result to look for, long before the big payoff shows up.
- Read the guide: How to Find Your Why →
- Treadmill, the
- Chasing more with no finish line. Whatever you reach, there is always more just past it, so you never arrive.
- Why it matters to your money: You can run on it for life and never arrive. Drawing a line is how you step off.
- See it on the main guide →
- Unconscious Habit
- A habit that formed by accident. It drifts, like a jellyfish, wherever the current takes it.
- Why it matters to your money: Most of your habits started this way. Until you look at them, they run your time and your money for you.
- Read the guide: Discipline vs. Habit →
- Withdrawal Rate
- The share of your invested assets you plan to draw each year. Some planners start near four percent, a rough and much-debated rule of thumb.
- Why it matters to your money: Dividing the annual gap by it turns a yearly shortfall into an asset target. A 40,000 dollar gap at 4 percent points to about 1 million dollars. Change the rate and the target moves a lot, so treat it as an estimate to refine with a professional.
- Read the guide: How to Calculate Your Financial Independence Number (Step by Step) →
A definition does not stick. A person does.
In the book, every term arrives with a real person who lived it, a step-by-step method, and a cautionary tale. Six chapters, five traits, and the destination that makes them worth building. Read it in order or jump to the trait you need.
Put the Terms to Work
Start With the Guide You Need
A term is only useful when you can use it. These are the guides readers open first.
FAQ
Common Questions About These Terms
What does your version of rich mean?
Your version of rich is the specific mix of money, work, time, relationships, freedom, and purpose that you personally decide is enough. It is a defined standard, not a promise that life will be perfect. It makes money serve your life instead of becoming the whole point of it.
What is the difference between position power and earned power?
Position power is granted by a role, such as a title that gives you formal authority, the ability to reward, and the ability to impose consequences. Earned power is built from expertise, reputation, relationships, and a record of results, so it travels with you when the title is gone. On its own, position is the weakest ingredient.
What is a stop line?
A stop line is the set of measurable benchmarks you write down in advance that tell you that you have arrived. It matters because in the middle of the chase you rarely see the finish line clearly. Write it while you are still climbing, and test it with a pressure test before you trust it.
Written by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA, business consultant, author, and educator with 14+ years and 1,000+ clients served. Want help turning your version of rich into a plan with numbers? Dr. Paul works with owners one-on-one.
This page is for general educational purposes only. It is not investment, tax, legal, financial, or retirement advice, and it does not guarantee any particular financial result. The examples, figures, and calculations are illustrative planning tools, not recommendations. Before making significant financial decisions, consult a qualified professional.