Posted by Ryan on July 2nd, 2008 in Entrepreneurial Mindset

Maybe it is just my perception, but it seems that more and more young people are interested in personal finance and starting off on the right foot. There really is a lot of information to digest, many investment and personal finance products, and a great deal of advice. So who do you listen to and where do you start?

First off, congratulations. By ending up here you it means you probably have an interest in starting your financial life and are off to a great start. Digest as much information as you can by reading popular personal finance books, participating in personal finance forums and doing everything you can to increase your financial IQ.

Visit your library and just soak it all in by reading personal finance books. These will help you understand the terminology while preparing you to create a wealth accumulation plan. Reading personal finance books and listening to audio programs during your daily commute will help you develop the mindset of someone who creates wealth. Investing and becoming wealthy is really not difficult, but you must develop the habits of millionaires in order to help you achieve your goals.

I recommend downloading a copy of the The Millionaire Mindset, which will help you develop and bring out your innate millionaire habits.

Secondly, get in the habit of creating a saving attitude and create systems to help propel your financial life in the right direction. When you have extra money, it can serve two purposes:

• You are prepared for unexpected expenses that would otherwise drive you into debt.
• You can put money to work for you, and let your money make more money.

When you put your money to work for you, it’s astounding how The Power of Compound Interest can make you become rich without much effort on your part.

One misconception is that a saving attitude means to be a minimalist and only spend money on the necessities in life. I disagree with this belief. You work hard to earn money and deserve to treat yourself to the things in life that you enjoy, and it is important to reward yourself for your hard work.

However, this does not mean you should blow every paycheck. Set yourself short-term and long-term goals, and reward yourself for those goals. If you want to take a vacation to Tahiti, simply budget for your trip setting a little bit of money aside every week, or you could create additional income streams to help finance your trip (see 9 Ways to Make an Extra $100 a Month). You can do all of this while living within your means and having a saving attitude. The best vacation is the one that’s paid off before you even bored the plane.

Third, learn a bit about investing before you try to dive in and get rich. The last thing you want to do is try to chase a high-performing stock, try to time the market, or get lured in by acclaimed profits in the forex market. Those strategies are doomed to fail, and your goal is to win.

When someone who is just starting their financial life loses all of their money in an investment, they lose their confidence in the stock market as a vehicle to make money and will never invest again. That’s unfortunate. Spend the time to learn about compound interest, diversification and asset class, and avoid books on investment strategies, methods and techniques. As an individual investor you do not need to know advanced investing techniques - leave that to the professionals.

The better strategy is to invest in a diversified mutual fund that represents the S&P 500 stock market index, which will bring you average results that will help you accumulate wealth.

Millionaire Money Habit: Accumulating wealth starts with creating certain mindsets and developing a saving attitude. If you simply avoided bad debt, saved 20 - 30% of your income, and invested your savings in an index fund for the long term, you could not help but become wealthy.

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Posted by Ryan on June 30th, 2008 in Investment Strategy

We all learn from our mistakes, and unfortunately when it comes to personal finance and investing, those mistakes can be costly. While I continue to learn something new everyday, and like to believe I am perpetually becoming a better investor, there are many things I wish I had known sooner.

With experience comes smarter investing, but that doesn’t mean you have to always learn the hard way. Here are five investing tips that I wish I learned earlier on in my trial and errors:

Quit Being Obsessive: I have a bit of an obsessive personality, which does not always mix well with investing. As a result, I have to resist the urge to constantly check how my portfolio is doing throughout the day, and not let the day-to-day news affect my investing behavior. I have found many times that if I just ignored the noise rather than react to it, things would have worked out more favorably for me.

Stop Trying to Get Rich Quick: When I first started investing, 10 percent returns did not excite me. I thought, “How am I ever going to get rich by making only 10 percent on my little investment.” So, I chased high returns, took some gambles and lost big. Only after repeatedly losing money did I realize that creating wealth was a long-term strategy that required having the power of compound interest on your side.

Advice is Expensive: Rather than seeking the advice of successful, wealthy investors I took stock tips and investing advice from my non-experience and non-wealthy friends. Even worse, I took their advice without doing any research on my own. Those were costly mistakes. I think in most cases I was lucky to get out of situations by breaking even, but lost quite a bit of money at times.

Don’t Go “All-In”: I had a habit of doing a lot of research to build a “model portfolio.” Once I decided on the stocks I wanted to own, I would buy equal amounts all at once. Guess what happened? The stock prices would go down and I quickly owned a bunch of assets that had declined in value. Over the long run most of those positions worked out for me, but I would have made a lot more money if I purchased more shares as the price continued to fall rather than spending all of my money at once.

Have an Exit Strategy: Along with going “all-in” at once, I tended to simply buy stocks I liked and held on to them, regardless if the price went up or down. I didn’t have an exit strategy. I lost many opportunities to sell when the stock went way up, only to watch it tumble back down later. I also held on to stocks I should have sold and realized the loss, rather than hoping the stock price would rebound at some point. Now I have very specific purchase prices and selling criteria to minimize my losses and increase my gains.

Wealth Accumulation Action: You are going to make many mistakes throughout your investing career. Sure you will lose some money, but do not disregard mistakes as great learning experiences that will make you very wealthy over time. The sooner you learn sound investing habits, the better investing decisions you will be able to make and the greater your portfolio will become.

What investing tips do you have that you wish you had known sooner?

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Posted by Ryan on June 29th, 2008 in Recommended Readings

Spotlight: The Dough Roller put together a nice video post, which shares his mutual fund strategy  during sharp declines in the stock market. Read How to Invest in Mutual Funds You’ll Keep During a Falling Market.

Saving Money:
9 Ways to Save without Breaking a Sweat at brip blap
11 Fun and Frugal Summer Activities at My Dollar Plan
Sometimes it’s Just Better to Pay Someone at Gather Little by Little 

Other Great Articles:
Test Drive Your Homeownership Experience at Moolanomy
Study of the Wealthy Confirms Classic Joke at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
A Stock Market Reality Check: What Investment Risk Actually Looks Like  at the Digerati Life
State of the Economy at Lazy Man and Money
Poll: Is Limiting a CEO’s Pay Based on Net Worth Fair? at Generation X Finance

Money Carnivals:
Carnival of Financial Planning
Money Hacks Carnival
Festival of Frugality
Carnival of Personal Finance
Carnival of Debt Reduction

Millionaire Money Habit: To learn how to become a millionaire, you need to perpetually improve your financial literacy. Digest as much information as possible and stick to a plan that works for you. Be sure to subscribe to this site’s RSS feed or by email to be notified of new articles posted here.

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