How to Achieve Financial Prosperity: Get the Winning Formula

What’s the Torah's promise for achieving genuine financial security? Discover the ancient, guaranteed formula for prosperity and understand the spiritual logic underpinning it.

The Universal Question: How Do We Achieve Financial Security?

Around the world, people ask one of life’s most pressing questions: How can we achieve true financial stability and security?

Everyone—from full-time scholars to tradespeople, business owners, managers, heads of families, and homemakers—pours time and energy into thinking about how to improve their financial situation.

It’s a question that occupies most people, everywhere.

The Business World’s Endless “Solutions”

This is why the business world is full of consultants, analysts, and investment advisors, all promising to help achieve that dream: upgrading your financial standing, making your business more profitable, and making you wealthier.

The tools change, the advice varies, and the strategies require effort and investment—but according to these experts, you can rely on their promise to make the dream come true.

But No Strategy Can Guarantee Wealth

Despite all the effort, investments, advice, and expert recommendations, there’s no sure way to guarantee wealth or permanent financial security.

Economic conditions depend on countless unpredictable factors. Forecasts don’t always come true. Expectations often crash into reality. Businesses that seemed promising fail. Investments that were supposed to deliver strong returns sometimes disappoint.

Only the Creator Can Guarantee Prosperity

Ultimately, only the King of the World—the One who owns everything—can truly guarantee wealth. Only God can ensure you’ll improve your financial state and actually receive more abundance.

In the Torah, God reveals the “secret” of prosperity with a simple phrase: “Aser te’aser—You shall surely tithe.”

The Sages of the Talmud explained this as: “Aser bishvil shetit’asher—Tithe so that you will become wealthy.”

This is the only reliable, time-tested formula—guaranteed by the One who truly controls who receives wealth and who doesn’t.

The Torah’s Clear Instruction to Tithe

God makes a clear, binding promise: separate ma’aser (a tenth).

Separate ma’aser from your produce. Deduct a tenth from your fruits. And as many poskim (halachic authorities) explain, set aside ten percent of your profits or your salary. This is what guarantees true prosperity.

Appointed as God’s Treasurer

God gives us all more money than we truly need. In doing so, He appoints us as His personal treasurers in this world. He trusts us to set aside a significant part of our income to help those in need and to support causes dear to God: the poor and needy, Torah scholars, and charitable organizations.

By giving ma’aser kesafim (a tithe of income), we fulfill this role faithfully.

We demonstrate that we are reliable and trustworthy treasurers who handle money responsibly. And because we can be trusted, we’re worthy of receiving even more.

Giving From What You Earn

To put it practically:

If you earned 100 dollars—wonderful. Naturally, you might want to spend the entire amount. But you don’t, and instead, you walk over to the nearest charity box and put in 10 dollars. True, now you have only 90. But pay attention: the next 100 dollars is already on its way to you.

If you earned 10,000 dollars—even better. The smartest move is to give 1,000 dollars to support Torah study, or to help a truly needy family.

Yes, 1,000 dollars is serious money, and you worked hard for it. But there’s nothing more rewarding: this is the surest way to earn double and triple the amount in the future.

The Ancient, Proven Promise

This is the oldest, most reliable, and most successful “formula” for wealth.

Although it’s generally forbidden to test God or demand proof that He keeps His promises, there is one exception. About ma’aser, God says explicitly in the Torah verse:

“U’bechanuni na vazot, amar Hashem, im lo eftach lachem et arubot hashamayim veharikoti lachem brachah ad bli dai—Test Me now with this, says God, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing beyond measure.”

God Himself promises the successful results of this approach.

A Small Prayer to Say When Giving

By giving ma’aser, we open the gates of blessing, wealth, and financial security.

When you give your tithe, it’s worth whispering a quiet prayer from the heart:

“May I merit to give this many more times.”

And so it will be—exactly as God promised.

Adapted with permission from Dirshu.org