Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
No matter where you live, the financial world has rules. If you learn these financial rules, it will be much easier to keep the money you earn while having a lot of fun doing it! As the rich well know, it’s not how much money you earn that’s important, it’s how much money you keep!
The rules to personal finance are relatively few and simple to master. It only takes a little time and willingness on your part to master them and use them to make it possible to retire young and rich. Simply knowing the rules will not make you rich—you must apply your knowledge and learn other skills to reap the benefits that are your due.
Until very recently, there have been no courses in schools, colleges or universities on personal finance—what it is, how to control debt, what credit is and how to use it to your advantage, the pitfalls of too much debt and ruining your credit, what good debt is, and even what money is.
A few colleges and universities are starting to give courses on personal finance because of the vast numbers of young students getting into trouble with credit card and loan debt, but that is not the norm. For most people, they learn personal finance from four main sources:
· Family
· Peers
· Television and movies (the unreality from Hollywood)
· Advertisements
You have to admit, since most families in this country are not rich, family members may not be the best source for learning personal finance. Since only about 5% of the people in this country are considered rich, it’s a good bet that most of your peers are not rich, so they may not be the best resource for you, either.
Television and movies depict people with low to moderate income in loft apartments and large houses that in reality cannot be achieved or maintained with the level of income received from working in a coffee shop or any job that pays less than $150,000 a year. Unless you are in mid-level or upper management or own a successful business, few jobs today support that level of income. Common sense tells us this, yet people are still trying to live a Gates lifestyle on a worker income. People still insist on creating a lifestyle that they think they should have instead of working toward actually having that type of lifestyle.
An advertiser’s job is to touch your emotions to get you to buy things that you cannot afford and do not need and probably don’t really want. So reading print ads and listening to ads on the television and radio is the worst place to learn about personal finance. Do you know anyone who, once they see what a friend, neighbor or competitor has, must go out and immediately buy that item? I certainly do—both family members and friends. People give into impulse buying without considering what those purchases are doing to their financial lives. They could be investing for their future and actually have the money to spend $8,000 or $10,000 in an afternoon instead of needing to waste precious investment capital buying the newest electronic toy or pair of shoes or car or boat or house. Even if you are not into investing money, saving money to buy things you really want or need, such as a car or vacation to Mexico or house, is where your focus should be.
So, where do you learn about personal finance? You must take the initiative and learn it on your own. This book is designed to help you do that quickly and easily.
A carpenter has a toolbox with a set of tools and specialized knowledge that makes him successful. A surgeon has a set of tools and specialized knowledge that makes her successful. A systems engineer has a set of tools and specialized knowledge that makes her successful. You need a set of tools and specialized knowledge to make you successful in the world of personal finance. This book supplies you with the tools and specialized knowledge to help you start on your journey to becoming financially successful.
