Those with aspirations of unfettered wealth look for clues everywhere. From top schools to unique talents, they build profiles of what it takes to become absurdly wealthy ... as though the process can be blueprinted. Well, if you're looking for answers, the Forbes 400 list is a great place to start. If anyone has mastered the art of making money, it's this collection of billionaires. They have the answers, and you are ready to learn.

A look at the lives of the Forbes 400 implies that the most important attribute is the ability to sift through ambiguity. Contradictions abound, meaning that shades of gray hold the answer to your burning desire for riches. Should you go to a great school? Well, yes ... but only if you're going for an MBA and plan to work for a major financial firm. But, you can still go to an Ivy League school if you're not studying finance but join Skull and Bones. Of course, dropping out of Harvard can be a great way to launch a career in the technology field.

It's tricky. There are no easy answers. But, the road to billions is littered with the corpses of aspiring magnates who thought it wouldn't be difficult. So, don't just read the seven attributes after the jump. Understand them. Read them twice. Then, your future financial situation will be assured.

Or, you can just do one of those chain e-mails and wish for wealth.

[Thanks, Forbes and MSNBC]

Forbes -- which was formerly known as The Capitalist Tool -- is reportedly on the verge of being sold to a Russian Oligarch by the name of Mikhail Prokhorov. It turns out that the Russian idea of capitalism is a bit different than the Western one. But that doesn't stop Forbes from taking Russia's cash.

As I posted, Russia is happy to accept Western money. But once Russia has the Western money, it gets rid of the Westerners who brought in the loot. In the U.S., we have our own special brand of capitalism which rewards the richest of the rich with eight figure bonuses by borrowing $30 for every $1 of capital to close huge deals, while the taxpayers cover the deals' losses.

The Forbes sale -- if it goes through for an estimated $625 million to $750 million -- would be tinged with a sad irony. That's because its former Russian bureau chief, Paul Klebnikov, was gunned down in July 2004 after his investigative reporting into oligarchs like Prokhorov made them nervous. The biggest beneficiary of this sale will be Elevation Partners -- which includes U2's Bono -- based on the 40% stake it bought in Forbes for $250 million.

It's a beautiful day for Bono, but a strange one for Forbes and Capitalism.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Forbes has cornered the market on list-building, and one of their most interesting (and controversial) ratings is the top cities for singles.

Using a wide range of data from sources such as Harris Interactive and the AOL CityGuide, Forbes ranked candidate cities on seven criteria: coolness, cost of solo living, culture, job growth, online dating, nightlife, and the proportion of singles. Subjective data reflects the opinions of those surveyed. For culture, Forbes compiled the number of high (art museums, for example) and low-brow (roller derby?) entertainments available.

The top ten cities (the italics are my reactions):

Forbes magazine needs a good map or two.

The business magazine's article "America's Wildest Weather Cities" lists two places that don't exist. Blue Hill, Mass, dubbed the windiest city, is incorrectly described as a Boston suburb. Actually, there is a place called Blue Hill, The Blue Hill Reservation, a 7,000-acre state park that seems lovely. The Web site lists its address in Milton, Mass. There is no town named Blue Hill in the Boston area, according to the Greater Boston Convention and Vistors Bureau.

More embarrassing is the description of Springfield, Mississippi. I could find no town by that name in Mississippi although there is a Springfield Plantation near Natchez which reviewers on Yahoo Travel seemed to like. Even odder, though, was that Forbes describes Springfield as "a slightly elevated city in the Ozarks at 1,266 feet." As this helpful map on Wikipedia shows, the Ozarks don't go into Mississippi. Interestingly, there is a city in Missouri named Springfield that happens to be located at an elevation of 1,266 feet and is known as Queen of the Ozarks. Perhaps, Forbes was thinking of that Springfield or the one where the Simpsons reside.

Though I hate to spoil today's company holiday at Forbes, there is a bigger issue at stake here. In today's age of instant communication, readers need to be more skeptical now than they ever have been. Wrong information can be spread with an alarming speed.

Should Forbes have caught these errors before the story was published? Of course. But the news gathering and writing process isn't fool proof. Mistakes, though unfortunate, are unavoidable. No one is perfect.

But what separates journalists from people who just post stuff is how they deal with errors when they are pointed out. I've contacted the reporter who wrote the story and will let you know if I get a response.

Update: Forbes has corrected the errors.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. You can vote for Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to lose all his money, or see the other nominees in this category.

Called by Time magazine the "Warren Buffett of Saudi Arabia," Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal is a member of the Saudi royal family, as well as a Lebanese citizen through his mother. Though he is the nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, he is not in line to rule Saudi Arabia and has largely stayed out of politics. He is an entrepreneur and international investor with a net worth estimated in 2006 at $20 billion, and he is ranked as the eighth richest person in the world by Forbes.

He has made large investments, through his Kingdom Holding Company, in Citicorp (NYSE:C), AOL (NYSE:TWX), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Motorola (NYSE:MOT), Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), and other technology and media companies. His real estate holdings have included stakes in the Four Seasons hotel chain, the Plaza Hotel in New York, the Monte Carlo Grand Hotel in Monaco, and Euro Disney. In 2005 he purchased the Savoy Hotel in London for £250 million.

In 2001 Prince Al-Waleed's donation of $10 million dollars to New York City in the wake of the September 11 World Trade Center attack was rebuffed by Mayor Giuliani. In 2005 he donated $20 million to the Louvre for the construction of a wing to house the museum's vast collection of Islamic art, and another $20 million to Harvard and Georgetown Universities for Islamic studies programs. He has also donated to centers for American studies at universities in the Middle East, such as the American University in Cairo. He is believed to donate more than $100 million annually to charities throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst 2006. If you wouldn't mind seeing the Waltons lose all their money, be sure to cast your vote.

The patriarch of the Walton family, the wealthiest family in the world, is Sam Walton, founder of retail giants Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Sam's Club. Forbes called him the richest man in the world from 1985 to 1988, and Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people of the twentieth century. Papa Walton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 from President George H.W. Bush. When Sam died in April of 1992, his eldest son, Rob, succeeded him as chairman of the board. Sam's widow and other children, John, Jim, and Alice, all own shares in the company, and members of the family held five spots in the top ten richest people in the United States until 2005. It has been suggested that if Sam were still alive today, his wealth would be nearly double that of Bill Gates, fellow nominee in this category.

John Walton, a Green Beret, saw action in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Silver Star. He sat on the Wal-Mart board until he died in a plane crash in 2005, at which time he was worth an estimated $18 billion, tied with his brother Jim as the eleventh richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Helen Walton, Sam's widow, and her daughter Alice each have an estimated net worth of around $18 billion. Jim Walton's estimated net worth is around $15 billion. The daughters of Sam's partner and brother, Bud Walton, also hold shares in the company and are billionaires as well.