It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to figure out how to improve your financial well-being.  In fact, even becoming rich isn’t that complicated.  The process is downright simple.

Spend less than you make.  Invest the excess intelligently.  Maintain the pattern.

That’s right, becoming wealthy is a matter of three core principles.

The last component, which is really a matter of discipline, doesn’t get as much attention as it probably should.  That’s because it’s less about crunching numbers and explaining processes as it is about making a personal decision to manage your finances correctly.  It’s more a matter of psychology than one of finance.

The second component, smart investing, gets a lot of attention.  Everyone is looking for an edge and wants to find the best ways to put their money to work.  There is no shortage of investment advice.  We cover some of those issues here, and so do countless other analysts, advisers and finance-related resources.

The first component presents a very interesting case.  Spending less than you make actually involves two separate, but equally important, variables.  It’s a matter of expenses and income.

While the world at large is happy to offer up all sorts of advice about how to make more money (much of it little more than crazy schemes and pipe dreams that form the basis of bad late night infomercials), you don’t see that much of it in the realm of serious personal finance advice.

Instead, there’s a focus on economizing.  You’ll find much more wisdom (and craziness, for that matter) about cutting costs than you will about generating more income.  When you remove investment advice from consideration, there’s very little real discussion about how to make more money.

Why is that?  What’s the cause of that imbalance?

First, the highly individualized nature of earnings makes it difficult to offer solid “make more” advice.  What might work for someone who’s working in pharamaceutical sales is unlikely to have a great deal of transferability to someone who’s working the night shift in a retail environment.  You can’t really explain how doctors can make more money and hope it resonates with contractors.  Sure, there are some common principles, but individualization really reduces levels of applicability.

Economizing, on the other hand, is something everyone can do.  The CEO of a company can cut down on gasoline use by checking her tire pressure.  So can a plumber.  It doesn’t matter if you own a professional sports franchise or if you sell popcorn at the game, using the library is going to be cheaper than going to Barnes & Noble.  You get the idea.  Economization is universal, earnings are individual.

That’s a sound reason for those in the personal finance niche to focus more on cost-cutting measures.  However, I think we sometimes run the risk of neglecting earnings.  Even if universally applicable advice isn’t available, encouragement and reminders are.

You work on both sides of the equation in order to live within your means, which will then set you up to do what it takes to insure your financial well-being.  You can spend less.  You can also earn more.

That bears repeating.  You can earn more.  A commenter at Free Money Finance correclty observed:

So many people say “live within your means, don’t spend more than you earn” is that discounting you life or restricting you from feeling the fullfilment of dreams. I agree with the putting a bit of the $$$ away into forms of investment and continue growing future wealth. The problem I have, is with the thinking that people are restricted to how much they can earn. There are so many possibilities for motivated individuals to create opportunities for themselves.

So, while you’re spending time poring over your budget and researching investment opportunities, make some space for thinking about your earnings situation, too.  Making money is no more difficult than spending less of it.  Economizing is great.  If you do it well, you can be on your way to a fantastic financial future.  Imagine what you could do (and how much more quickly you could do it) if you were coupling those cost savings with an improved income?