A double month, a strong quarter, a jump you did not expect. This is the moment it is easiest to feel safe, and according to the booklet it is also the riskiest. Act on the feeling of such a month, and you can turn it into an Emergency within two quarters.
What counts as Affluence
The source defines Affluence simply: a line going steeply up on a graph. Whether the jump lasts a single week or the line keeps climbing steeply week after week, it is Affluence.
Suppose a consultant's main number jumps from 4 to 11 in one week. By the table in the booklet, that is Affluence, even if the next week goes back to where it was. So even a short jump is a condition with a formula of its own. That matters, because the formula is the opposite of what most people do in a good month.
On the scale of seven conditions, Affluence sits above Normal and below Power. An excellent month is a stop on the way, and the summit is still ahead.
Suppose an owner comes out of a record month and treats it as her new level. Three months later she understands it was Affluence, and that Affluence has a formula she never ran.
The trap: a future commitment
What most people do in a good month is commit. Suppose an installer has a double month and takes out a lease on a new van. The next month is ordinary, and the commitment stays. Or suppose an owner hires two people after a strong quarter. The two quarters that follow are ordinary, and the payroll is not.
A future commitment, in the source's terms, is something you buy or hire that binds you in the months ahead. It looks reasonable when there is money in the account, which is why it is dangerous precisely in the good month.
The booklet names the feeling behind it: “I earned it, I deserve it”. That feeling turns Affluence into Emergency inside two quarters. The expense arrives in the good month, and stays through all the ordinary months after it.
There are other ways to waste a good month. According to the source, if you run the Normal formula while you are in Affluence, you drop to Emergency. And a contractor who uses the momentum to add two new services is running a Non-Existence formula inside Affluence. Within two months he is in Emergency.
A formula that inverts the instinct
The Affluence formula is one of the most surprising in the booklet, because its steps run opposite to the instinct. It asks you to economize precisely when there is money, and to take on nothing precisely when you feel safe.
The finding from the chapter on trends returns here: a steep rise is a change that has to be found. Suppose a consultant asks what caused her strong quarter, and finds it was one webinar. From then on she puts a webinar in the diary every quarter.
If you do not know why you had a good month, you do not know how to repeat it.
Why not every rise is the summit
The source separates Affluence from Power, the condition above it. Of Power it says that it cannot be a one-week event, because it is a trend.
Power takes more than a steep rise that lasts a long time, and more than one very high peak. According to the source, it is a number that jumped into a far higher range, stayed in it, and now rises slowly there, as in Normal. So a jump turns into a new level once it stops climbing and holds. Until then it is an event, and the condition has not arrived yet.
Suppose an owner doubles his income in three months and treats that as his new level. In the fourth quarter his income goes back to the old level, and his spending does not. The next time he waits two quarters before raising his spending, and the new level holds.
What the booklet has on this
In It Was a Slow Month, this chapter gives the four steps of the Affluence formula in the source's wording, in order, and two exercises: review, and decide. The chapter before it covers Normal, the condition below Affluence, where the rule is to leave things alone.
At your next strong month, before you sign anything that continues into the months after, check whether it is a new level or one good month.