1. Start tracking your spend
How much did you spend on food last week? What do you
pay for housing (rent, repairs, utilities, tax, car tax and car insurance, etc.)
every year? Without knowing how you’re spending money, you can’t begin to make
any money. Start to tracking yours spent from now.
2. Start with little steps, like your bank.
You shouldn’t be paying any annual fees. You should
have a good credit card. And you should know the tricks to save yourself money
from the banks. You can start today by calling your bank, checking what annual
fees you’re paying, and asking them to switch you to a free account.
At the end of the year, if you didn’t work at all and
didn’t spend one penny, you should still have more money. Even when your money
is just sitting there, it earns you interest. What’s even better is that, if
you invest sensibly in good Stocks and LTF or RMF, you can see excellent and
relatively predictable returns over the long term.
4. Don’t let money run your life.
Certain things are worth spending a lot on if they
make you happy. I love to see movies, go to restaurant even if they don’t make
financial sense. The minute your rules start making you feel crazy, it’s time
to re-examine your rules.
5. Make bonus to life.
Don’t only make money and forgot your life. Income can
separately in many parts, such as, for saving, for living in everyday, for tax,
etc. But don’t forget to give you and your family bonus, some vacation and
travel can be refresh you.
6. Don’t be stupid.
Everything is centered on aggressive but sensible
investing. That means investing for a 10-year outlook (better: 30) and ignoring
the morons on Stock Chart every day. Buying and selling stocks every day also
sounds sexy, but it’s actually very dumb. It means having a goal and planning
for it, not cashing out the minute things go bad.
It means recognizing that if you’re in your twenties,
your tolerance for risk is enormous–you can make more aggressive investments,
use compounds interest to earn tons of money, and ignore many lower-yield investments your parents have to make out of
necessity. More about thinking aggressively.
Finally, Not Being Stupid means you can learn these
things yourself, not pay someone else to do them for you.
