For anyone who has ever tried to build wealth, the realisation is that it takes more than just earning money to make money. There are habits and decisions that either move you forward or quietly hold you back, and most people don't realise at first what impact their decisions are having until they notice their net worth isn't growing the way they expected.

Feel familiar? Let's take a look at some of the mistakes that hold wealth growth back.

Trying to Time the Market

Waiting for the “right moment” to invest or pulling money out the second the market dips can feel like the right decision at the moment. In reality, however, missing even a handful of the market's best days over a decade can significantly reduce overall returns, and those best days often follow the worst ones. This can happen within days, and if you're pulling out when things don't look good, you could be missing those times when you can improve returns.

The trick here is to stop trying to predict the market or reacting to trends; you need to be consistently investing on a schedule regardless of what the market is doing that week. Trends tend to outperform anyone trying to guess the perfect entry and exit points.

Ignoring High Interest Debt

Putting money into investments while you've got high interest debt isn't going to give you the gains you think you will get. The truth is you'll likely be paying more in interest on your high interest debt than you'll be gaining elsewhere.

High-interest debt should always be dealt with before extra money goes into investing since paying it off is effectively a guaranteed return no market can promise. Once debt is cleared, the same money that was disappearing into interest payments can go straight into building wealth instead.

Chasing Trends

A hot stock, a new coin or a market everyone suddenly seems to be piling into can make sitting on the sidelines feel like a mistake. But strong markets have a way of making every decision look correct while conditions are favourable. And that's exactly where fundamentals get overlooked.

Alex Kleyner, CEO of National Debt Relief, has pointed to Miami's fast-moving property market as proof that a boom isn't a strategy and that people who come through a correction intact are rarely the ones who got the timing right but the ones who built something that didn't depend on it.

No Emergency Fund

Building an emergency fund doesn't need to be complicated, but you do need to have one in some capacity. Ideally, an emergency fund should cover around three to six months' worth of expenses kept somewhere accessible, separate from investments.

This buffer needs to be used for covering essential expenses in the event of the unexpected happening, such as a job loss, a medical bill or a car repair, which then forces money you would otherwise be invested to be redirected to cover your outgoings.

If you're serious about investing, you need to make sure that you have an emergency fund in place to protect the money you usually invest so you're not interrupting wealth building.