Would You Rather Be Sexy or Rich?
Money and Food are Similar
| When it comes to food, we… | When it comes to personal finance, we… |
|---|---|
| do NOT track calorie intake | do NOT track spending |
| eat more than we know | spend more than we realize - or admit |
| debate minutiae about calories, diets, and workouts | debate minutiae about interest rates and hot stocks |
| value anecdotal advice over research | listen to friends, our parents, and TV talking heads instead of reading a few good personal-finance books |
One of the main reasons we fail is that we love to debate minutiae - Focusing on these details is the easiest way to get nothing done.
You don’t have to know everything about personal finance to be rich. You don’t have to be an expert to get rich.
Why Is Managing Money So Hard?
- Info glut
- The media is partially to blame
Too many of us are paralyzed by the thought that we have to get every single part of our personal finances in order before truly getting started managing our money! The single most important factor to getting rich is getting started, not being the smartest person in the room.
Put the Excuses Aside
Instead of blaming “the economy” and corporate America for your financial situation, you need to focus on what you can change yourself.
The Key Messages of I Will Teach You to Be Rich
It’s more important to get started than to spend an exhaustive amount of time researching the best fund in the universe.
This book is about taking the first step
- understanding the barriers that keep us from managing our money
- tearing them down and putting our money in the right places so we can achieve our goals.
Your goal should be to live your life and let money serve you, instead of to becoming a financial expert.
Essential messages
The 85 Percent Solution: Getting started is more important than becoming an expert.
The easiest way to manage your money is to take it one step at a time—and not worry about being perfect
It’s okay to make mistakes.
It’s better to make them together now, with a little bit of money, so that when you have more, you’ll know what to avoid.
Ordinary actions get ordinary results.
To be extraordinary, you don’t have to be a genius, but you do need to take some different steps than your folks did (like starting to manage your money and investing early).
There’s a difference between being sexy and being rich.
Investment isn’t about being sexy—it’s about making money, and when you look at investment literature, buy-and-hold investing wins over the long term, every time.
Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.
It’s about being able to actually spend more on the things you love by not spending money on all the knucklehead things you don’t care about.
There aren’t any secrets to getting rich—it just takes small steps and some discipline, and you can do it with just a little bit of work.