Today, I would like to share with you what I have discovered about personal finance through my journey, and how it can apply directly to your plans to become financially secured.
In personal finance there is school of Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, and other personal finance advocates, all of them have their books and programs, and they talk about creating a better financial picture for yourself.
They all have almost same advice: Set a budget.
That is, you need to plan your spending.
Ideally you spend less than you earn, you don’t spend as much money as you earn, so you save money.
At one point a question raises: What do you do with that savings?
You would set up a retirement account and try to max it. After that you would invest in mutual funds and other sorts of investments.
Living on budget and being able to save is wonderful. At the end, “If you cannot save, the seeds of success are not in you.” Saving money is powerful.
On the other school we have, Robert Kiyosaki.
Robert Kiyosaki came along and wrote a book called, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, that book has sold over 30 million. It’s the most successful personal finance book ever written.
He said that saving is the slow way to wealth. His attitude was “buy assets not liabilities, start a business, invest and make mistakes.”
His thoughts really resonated with a lot of people. What was so interesting about what he had done, he becomes enemy number 1 for mutual funds. He was teaching people not to invest in mutual funds but to go invest in their own businesses, for example, to buy real estate and have complete control over your investments.
If you are going to invest in the stock market you better know what you’re doing and buy individual stocks or play the game the way the other successful stock investors do, like Warren Buffet.
He came from a completely different approach and thereby, he inspired a lot of people.
Now What I have discovered is that it’s not that this guy is right and these people are wrong, or these people are right and this guy is wrong. It’s both. Both have incredible pieces of wisdom that you can learn from.
What I believe is the best model is a combination of the two.
Have a budget, save and invest, have some debt, start a business, use your debt and income wisely to buy asset, do mistakes along the way and learn how to become successful investors and business owner.
The more money you save, the more money can go into business, buy assets, start investing.
What I have discovered from my own life and my own experience is that, so often, too many people are too scared to spend any money on assets, starting business or investing, and what ends up happening is that they stay in the safe zone, and they never make the big returns.
Again, it is great to save and have a budget, great to live below your means, but you know what? In the real world you can only save specific amount of money, and the cost of live is pretty high.
At one point you need to start some business, all millionaires were their own business owners.
Starting a business is a great way to improve your income, but attention “it doesn’t improve right away.” Usually, it takes a while to get the business up and going. It can take a year or two, just to even get it up and going so it’s making enough money.
The wisdom of personal finance that I’m sharing here is that it’s not Dave Ramsey versus Kiyosaki, it’s really doing both.
My attitude, if you have a job and there’s a way where you can continue to earn well in your job and then save the rest and throw it in some assets.
In other word, we go back to this, it’s both. It’s both these people’s attitude and their teaching.
Kiyosaki got a lot of controversy and many people disagree with him but the overall framework of what he shares is incredibly valuable, about buying assets, not liabilities and starting business, investing, making those mistakes, getting out there and getting it done.
I hope that this was helpful in providing you with a level of understanding on personal finance that maybe you’ve never had before. I really wish somebody taught me these lessons 20 years ago.