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Money vs. Saving.

Albert — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:27 +0000

*This article is the first article in a series of articles under “Money vs.”. Stay tuned for more!

When you’re dealing with money, facts matter. But there are other things that can make them cloudy. For one thing, your personality matters a whole lot.

If you will become wealthy someday, you must live on less than you make at least some of the time. This is a fact. How you will live on less than you earn however, is a matter of opinion. Many people don’t recognize this, even so-called “professionals”. For example, people have “conventional” ideas about how to save money, but few consider that there are many ways to save. For some people, “saving” will not fit their personality — earning will be more effective.

How To Save Money

For my part, I don’t expend effort to “save”. Rarely will you see me cutting coupons or looking for a sale. I know I can only save as much as I earn, so for now I’m focused on earning more money. Once I become satisfied with my income and the career or business-model that brings me money, I expect that I’ll become more concerned about saving money. Maybe.

My process for saving cash is automatic. Every month there is money left over in my bank accounts. I have a lifestyle that falls within my income, that way I don’t have to look at where each dollar was spent. I am far too busy and earn too little for that to be a productive activity.

Some people prefer to look at their bank accounts and see their savings grow. It makes them feel good when there’s XYZ dollars in the bank. Personally, I don’t get that rush from cash. It doesn’t make me feel more secure – thanks to student loans, I have never had enough cash flow to save the kind of money that would mean something to me. When I have a large amount of money in the bank I either leave it alone or spend it on something meaningful. The last time, I paid off my last credit card, but I still call it “spending” because that money is gone – and will never come back.

The way I see it, money in my bank account isn’t working, and the purpose of my money is to do things. This is the way I see saving money.

I write about my practices sometimes on this blog, but make no mistake – what I do with my money is not for everyone. I could show you how to do it. But as a professional, it is more important that I tell you how to build wealth within your personality. People who get a kick out of looking at their bank accounts might benefit from coupon-clipping, but nobody gets rich from clipping coupons (fact). People get rich because they earned so much, that they could live on less than they earned. Some people who get rich never clip coupons, because if they money isn’t coming through the door, coupons won’t save you.

I prefer to spend my time and effort on earning money, and have my savings be systematic. But that’s just me. Whatever you do is fine, as long as it works. If it doesn’t, you’re probably doing it the way that fits someone else’s personality. And if something that used to work stops working, then perhaps your personality has changed. That’s how life is.

Entertainment & Mis-Information.

Albert — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:30:27 +0000

This is the second part of a series on why young people are broke. In the first part I covered culture or psychology; in this part I will point out how there is a lot of misinformation disguised as “entertainment”.

Most “resources” about personal finance are really “entertainment” and all of them are biased. If you don’t have the stamina to empirically review thousands of different world-views, and bravely engage their biases, you won’t know for sure what truths about money you can use. As I mentioned earlier, compound interest alone doesn’t explain how people accumulate wealth, but you’ll have a hard time finding a book with a robust “financial” perspective, which doesn’t completely skip that reality.

If you look on television, you’ll find a number of people in their fifties and sixties who are financial experts. They know a lot from experience, but any researcher will tell you that can be a problem. Everyday knowledge gets stale; perhaps thirty years ago they were in-tune with the average person, but are they still so today? I saw a perfect example of stale knowledge in the eBook “Secrets in Plain Sight: Business & Investing Secrets of Warren Buffett” by Jeff Matthews. According to the eBook, Warren Buffett made the astute observation that many Newspapers are on their way out of business, but within a few hours recommended to a young girl that a paper route would be a good way for her to make money. Even though the investor knows a lot about Newspapers, he is not in the business of knowing how young children today should make money. Most paper-routes today will require a car, but the girl was far too young to drive.

Certainly older experts are in-tune with someone, but who is it? Is that person anything like you? If you are in your twenties or thirties, the answer could be “no”, depending on whether you are among the best of us or the worst of us. If the experts are on television or radio, it wouldn’t surprise me to read that their work is tailored to the same group of people who made them famous decades ago (or their kids). Whether we like it or not, baby boomers wealth and their love for television will continue to disproportionately influence what is said in the media, and how it is said, as advertisers clamor for their attention…or did you completely miss Betty White’s Off Their Rockers?

If television is bad, blogs are horrible. They have plenty of ads, which cause me to question how much they can be trusted to educate. Should you take advice about credit cards from a site with a huge widget allowing you to shop for credit cards without leaving? Can you trust the site to ever write something negative about credit cards or banks? Can you trust a “professional blogger” to not encourage your consumerism by promoting online sales? I don’t think all websites are guilty of this, but if you look at the Financial Bloggers Conference Attendee List you can judge for yourself. It’s a jungle out there, and everyone just wants to sell you something other than professional financial advice.

Very few people who perform financial planning or tax work (and are legally/professionally liable for its quality) are in the personal finance media(*). Those who do are typically the ones with lots of experience, and old ideas that now make sense to everyone. Consider Warren Buffett as an example once more: he has so many perfect quotable’s in the media, but the world of writers and marketers take him out of context a lot. People without professional training in business are unlikely to figure out exactly how to apply what has worked for him – but boy do they write good articles!!! As they pay homage to him, they forget that what will make you a millionaire ten or twenty years from now is not likely to be so easily accessible on television or a popular blog written by journalists with no financial training.

As you can tell, I find empirical “bugs” in most personal finance media. Maybe it’s just me, but the fact remains that they are first and foremost entertainment business models with excellent writers, journalists, and marketers keeping you glued to their content. They entertain with the subject of money often by picking one or two perspectives and sticking to it – like a soap opera picks characters. The writers usually don’t tell you how to figure out if you should be reading everyday about frugality, nor can they help you figure out which approach to wealth building is best for your situation. With a quick look at their disclosures, you’ll find them admitting to “entertainment” purposes.

(*) I believe that I am the only “personal finance blogger” that is a Certified Public Accountant. The rest is very well written and marketed – but by people with little financial training. If you find out that I am wrong, please let me know!

Ultimately our awareness of culture/psychology and the availability of the right information will play a huge part in determining how much money we will have when it is time to make big purchases or retire. This has nothing to do with a boom or a recession because the more money we have, the more money we will use to make mistakes. I know this is not the typical financial answer that most people expect, but I believe these challenges are real. The question is….what will you do about it?

Do you have a financial plan? Think you’re too broke or in debt for one? Think again. I have developed an approach to financial planning for young ambitious adults just like you. It is based on two years of empirical research about what works in building wealth (only what works). Interested? REPLY HERE.

Did you slack off and miss the tax deadline? Maybe you have prior year returns that haven’t been filed – or you need to file an amendment, but your local tax franchise has shut down for the rest of the year? Hit REPLY; let’s talk.

Forever Young. Forever Broke?

Albert — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:00:59 +0000

Why are young people broke?

This is a question on everyone’s minds. Some blame the economy, the availability of jobs, and the cost of higher education, but are they right?

As a Certified Public Accountant, I know a thing or two about how wealth is created. And after researching it a bit, I have come up with a surprising conclusion: it has nothing to do with the availability of money. Sure jobs are gone, but there’s money everywhere. People suffer from issues relating to culture/psychology and mis-information (entertainment) in every economy, but it’s just more pronounced in bad times.

Culture/Psychology

As a college student, I studied finance through a financial lens. That perspective says mostly that to make a million dollars, you should invest various amounts annually such that compounding of gains (interest) over time will make you a millionaire. It is a popular way to look at things, but terribly incomplete because of the large number of assumptions built into it. When you look at millionaires and billionaires like Warren Buffet, Oprah, Bill Gates, Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), and Sean Combs (P. Diddy) something else sticks out. These people think a certain way, and have the culture around them that makes it possible(*).

(*) The idea that you can think your way to wealth is not new. Books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and The Secret abound. However, they often do not give enough attention to the cultural context. It has to be practical for you to think a certain way, or you won’t do it.

Let’s take Warren Buffet for example. The guy still lives in the same house he bought around the age of twenty six. It’s not a small house by any means – its value is at least $250,000 and it has over 6,000 square feet(*). Most people don’t live in a 6,000 square foot house, so why is it so impressive that he does? Perhaps it is because most people can’t manage to live in the same house for such a long time, while their wealth grows exponentially. It might be an individual psychological problem; they don’t know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or understand the purpose of a house. It could also be a cultural problem where people expect a house to mean more than “shelter”. “Keeping Up With The Joneses” comes to mind.

(*) Sources for this data include the Wikipedia article and Yahoo Finance.

People like Warren Buffett have individual characteristics that make them great at making money, but it also seems that they are able to insulate those characteristics from the rest of the world. This why a professional investor in New York would move to Omaha in the quiet mid-west (read his biography for more on this). He says living there helps him keep perspective. My example here only deals with spending, but culture also affects what people think about earning money, saving money, and investing money. Buffett knew that in New York it was cool to own certain stocks, but he didn’t want “cool”…he wanted “profitable” (the two are not always the same).

For my part, I have concluded that that most cultural beliefs are out-of-sync with the “natural” progression that our finances want to take. For example, if you are of age and everyone expects or wants you to get married but you have no money, it makes sense that they would take the responsibility to help make marriage financially possible (without you living off them, of course). But if you read the comments on some of my articles(*) you would quickly realize that depending on a person’s culture, this could be an insult. It appears that some people might prefer an unsatisfactory wedding (whatever that means) to being asked to help pay for one. Imagine that!

Unfortunately, money has no culture or psychology. It only has rules like compound interest and inflation. But human complexity and volatility blinds us to money’s simplicity and predictability. If my summary of culture and psychology intrigues you, then you’ll likely want to do some research on this…but you might fail to find anything useful. I’ll tell you why in the next article.

(*) See my articles “Can You Afford To Let Your Family Pay For Your Wedding?” and How To Ask For Money For Your Wedding (both at The Good Men Project).

Get in the Game.

Albert — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:00:53 +0000

*This article was originally posted on the FB Investment Club mailing list. Don’t miss out! Join here.

The first time I invested in stock was in 2007 when I bought one share of Class B stock from Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett’s company). The share cost over $3,000 but still felt like a little because it was ONE share. This time I’m looking at Facebook but can’t afford $3,000. So I scraped together about $300 and bought ten shares for at total of $287.45 after the $9.95 trading fee. I still feel like 10 isn’t much, so why buy? Are ten shares worth all the reading and writing that I will do just to keep up with the stock? Let’s look at these questions one by one.

Why Buy Only Ten Shares?

As I write this today, Facebook is trading at $28.24 which means that if I bought those ten shares today I would pay $292.35 after fees. Basically, the price of the stock is going up fast and only those who get in now can benefit. Also, I intend to hold this stock for a very long time, so I will continue to buy it over time. In a way, when it goes up I will be even more comfortable buying it – as long as I am convinced that it is worth owning (i.e. it will not lose much value in the long-run).

That said, I will probably never buy less than ten shares at a time, because of the effect of trading fees on my “cost basis”. Cost basis is the total cost-per-share after fees are added. Based on the numbers I gave earlier, my cost basis on each share is almost one dollar higher than the current stock price, because my fee is $9.95. So I won’t make any profits on my investment unless I can sell the stock for at least $29.75 (one tenth of $287.45 plus one tenth of $9.95).

Are Ten Shares Worth It?

Ten shares of a company aren’t worth the effort of investing – reading financial statements, articles, listening to quarterly analyst calls, paying attention to industry information, etc. I can get a part-time job and earn money faster. However, if I like what I see, I can invest more at every step of the way. If a company is worth buying, it’s worth buying ALL of it – as long as a person can afford to do so. Since I can’t buy all of it, I will buy what I can and wait for opportunities to buy more. Further, I recognize that I don’t possibly have enough capital to justify this experience, but what I will learn from Facebook can be used effectively in the future when I have more money to invest – in FB or any other company.

If a stock is worth buying, it is worth buying immediately. It is also worth buying ALL of the company, as long as you can afford it. Consider what your cost-basis will be so that you don’t feel obligated to buy too many at once – but also add your trading fee to that number to determine how soon you can sell and get your capital back. You can always buy more, later.

At any point in time I may own shares of Facebook, or trade related options. However, this series represents my view of the business at the time of writing – not necessarily my view of the stock market. Please make sure that you are not more exposed to the risks of the stock market than you can afford or be comfortable with. To date I have not received any compensation from Facebook to recommend its stock. I doubt that will happen, but if it does, I’ll let you know.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Albert — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:00:21 +0000

This article was written for the FB Investment Club in March, 2013.

I was recently asked a question. *Name was altered for privacy.

Bill*: “How much should I invest?”

Albert (me): “Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.”

Bill*: “What’s that? How do I know what I can afford to lose?”

Today I’ll give you the same explanation I gave him. Investing is a gamble, and nothing matters more than the odds of winning. Because our approach is long-term, the meat of the business matters most (even though in the short term other things matter as well).

First, never gamble more than you can afford to lose.

If you lost your investment would you still be able to pay your bills today? The answer should be yes. If you lost your investment would you still be able to save for retirement? The answer should be yes. Knowing this, how much can you afford? Is it $30 per month? Is it $100 per month? I understand it might not be much, but I would put that amount regularly in a brokerage account or an IRA and let it sit there for now. (Remember, I mentioned previously that I buy in lots of 10 or more at a time.)

Second, adjust your investment by your perceived odds of losing.

Let’s say you’ve decided to put $600 every year in a brokerage account. You want to invest these in Facebook. Okay, well, I want you to grade the company. The only score you should consider is the percentage odds of complete and total loss within the next 12 months. Ask yourself, what is the chance that Facebook will go out of business?

If you think the chances of loss are greater than 51%, don’t invest any money. I disagree with you obviously, but I encourage you to trust your gut. You HAVE to learn to trust your gut or you will never get rich.

If you think the chances of loss are less than 51%, you can invest, but you have to adjust the amount. For example, when there is a 40% chance of losing your money, you should only invest 60% of the money you have. Keep the rest of the cash in the same account though, and don’t invest it in anything else (I hope it earns interest). Don’t sell your shares when you think the odds of losing have gone up, unless they are well past 51% and you expect them to approach 90%. However, do buy more when the odds of failure go down further.

This approach works whether you invest monthly, quarterly, or annually. Will you be 100% right? Of course not. But you won’t learn to trust your gut unless you start trusting your gut. My articles feed you information; use them with other information and see what your gut tells you. Then after that, put some skin in the game.

What if we lose all our money? That is always a possibility right? That’s why we will not invest too much money. Most importantly, we will study the companies we invest in to get a better grasp of the odds of losing money._

I Sold my Facebook Shares.

Albert — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:00:29 +0000

This article was written in January 2013

I no longer have ten shares of Facebook. I sold nine of them. In fact, I bought more first (at lower prices), before I sold down to only one share. In this article I will tell you why I sold my shares, and what you should do about it.

Tax Season Is Upon Us

Initially I was excited about Facebook. I missed the opportunity to buy the shares when they were $17 each. I bought in at almost $30, and became committed to buying as much as possible within the next 12 months. Why? I was convinced that anything below the $38 IPO valuation was a bargain, as long as the company executed its strategy (as assumed in the IPO).

My mistake was investing money that I was supposed to save up for Tax Season. Every year around January I have to license software and buy other supplies to maintain my tax practice. Within a month or two of buying the shares I had to sell them to get my money back. I made some profits, but that was just because more and more people are thinking like me – I had not expected it to happen so quickly. In fact, I might have guessed that the price would come down until the company reported its earnings for all of 2012 – or an independent third-party like Nielsen released a report for the advertising industry. Either way, now you know I only have one share. Because I bought a lot of shares while the price was swinging down, my cost-basis for the stock I have left is only $26.78. The screenshot below is from my brokerage account at 1/30/2013.

Should You Sell Your Shares?

Is Facebook suddenly a worse company? Is Mark Zuckerberg quitting the company to travel the world? Is Sheryl Sandberg resigning from her position as COO? Are young people suddenly leaving Facebook to join Google+? The answer is no. Certainly some of these events might not mean that the company’s prospects have changed…but none of them has actually happened.

I sold my shares of Facebook based on my own personal situation, and it has nothing to do with the company’s value or its prospects. I want you to take note of this, because the stock market is the buying and selling of shares everyday by millions and millions of people, funds, companies, etc. There are many reasons people sell their shares in a company, and when there are more sellers than buyers the price will steadily climb down. If you already believe that a company is good, that is when you buy.

Liar, Liar.

The truth is that I manage my money well. I did not sell my shares in Facebook because I needed the money. I purposefully bought many shares at that time to make money from price increases I thought were likely to happen in a short period. I bought 155 shares of Facebook for $4,288.59 and sold 154 of them for $4,570.15 ($281.56 profit before taxes). I lied to you earlier to prove a point. Often times, people sell what is good because they have made their money, or now need the money for something else. Your job is to pick good companies, and buy when that happens.

Due to the timing of these articles I cannot tell you exactly when I buy or when I sell, but I will certainly buy more shares of Facebook later, and might sell them along the way too. If this sounds like “trading” as opposed to “investing” to you, then maybe it is. But the only difference between the person who buys a Toyota Camry because it’s a good car and the person who sells it because it is a good car is that one person is interested in “ownership”, while the other is interested in making money by selling something people want to buy. The second person has a lot of comfort that people will buy the product, because he has researched it and knows it is a good product. I will own and study Facebook, but I will also trade its stock from time to time – as long as it is worth “investing” in.

There are many reasons people sell their stocks, but only one reason for buying. Buying when everybody is buying can be good, but it’s better to buy something good when many people are selling it. In the short-term of course, it is even better to be the one selling something good when people are paying top dollar for it. Whether you are “trading” or “investing” you must buy low and sell high.

Do you need your tax returns done fairly, honestly and most important correctly? You needn’t look further! If you would like me to prepare your returns, please contact me via email by March 31, 2013. If I’ve missed you this year, please remember that it is never too early to get on my client list. I look forward to serving you.

Why Facebook Will Not Fail.

Albert — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:00:05 +0000

This article was written in late 2012 and shared with the FB Investment Club in March 2013.

You asked “What If Facebook Doesn’t Make It?” and I answered. But I didn’t say why I think Facebook will make it. I’m so confident about this, that I am willing to bet my hard-earned money on it. Further, I am willing to write this series of articles, knowing that when it’s all said and done I could look stupid. Why would I do all this?

To explain I will get you to consider the difference between success and failure (generally).

The difference between success and failure?

Most start-up companies fail. Only 29% of businesses started in 1992 were still around in 2002(*). Somewhere between day zero and day 3,650 71% of businesses will fail for one reason or another. This statistic is discouraging – but only if that’s all it takes for you to decide whether to start a business or invest in a new one. The question we should ask is why certain businesses succeed even though most of them fail. Why did Microsoft succeed? Why did Yahoo beat AltaVista and Lycos? If we could go back to the very beginning of the competition, what might you use to predict the outcome?

(*) See Figure 6.2 (p.99) from Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By.

There are many things that indicate which companies will make it into the 29%. If you read books like Good To Great or Built To Last by Jim Collins you might agree with me that people make all the difference. You might agree that the right vision, an emphasis on taking care of customers, vendors, and employees before shareholders is what makes a great company (over the long-term). Facebook has these characteristics.

Do you remember when I mentioned that one of the company’s risks is that Mark Zuckerberg might spend too much time making Facebook “cool” rather than making it “profitable”? This is appropriately disclosed on the company’s prospectus as a source of “investment risk”, but for someone who wants to own a piece of the company it presents tremendous opportunity. It means that Mark Zuckerberg is serious about making sure that people don’t stop using Facebook. He’s the captain of this ship and his #1 goal is to keep it afloat no matter what!

Does this mean that Facebook will succeed? I don’t know. I just feel convinced that the odds are in their favor and am willing to bet money on it. In my view, the rewards of being right far outweigh the penalty for being wrong.

Business. Growth and People.

Albert — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:00:06 +0000

This article was shared with FB Investment Club members in February of 2013.

There are other reasons to invest in Facebook, and they lie inside the company. This time I’ll share my observations about Facebook’s business & growth, and the people behind it.

Facebook is a classic example of a growing company. Its revenues have grown from $157 million five or so years ago to $3.7 Billion in 2011. I’ve read of projections that it will go over the $5B mark in 2012, and double in another five years. The growth in revenues comes from how they have been monetizing their platform over time, but is driven by user engagement. Soon after the company became publicly traded, it reached one Billion Monthly Active Users (known as MAUs). The more users on Facebook actively each month, the more advertising revenue the company can generate.

When Facebook went public this year, the stock price crashed from the initial $38 offering price. The markets did not yet believe that Facebook would continue to grow as more and more of its users connected via cell phones and other small devices. Investors knew that there were no advertisements on mobile Facebook apps, but they ignored the company’s people and their ability to make a difference. For such a young company as Facebook, there are many obstacles and risks. However, I believe what really matters is whether the an investor believes that the company will win. How can an investor be convinced about this? I’ll tell you why I am convinced.

My belief in the company is based on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the other top talent that the company has quickly accumulated from companies like Google. Books like Good to Great also shows that the employees are happy there. Facebook’s spot in the top 10 best places to work (Glassdoor.com survey) also shows that the employees are happy there.How many companies you know can say that?

On 12/10/2012 I purchased 10 shares at about $28.75 (after trading fees). That same day I received my copy of the company’s prospectus (for the Initial Public Offering), and the two Quarterly financial statements filed so far (from Investor Relations). (See Image Below.)

As Suze Orman says, people come first, then money, then things. I would adapt that to say that companies don’t make money – their management and employees make money. If you will buy the stock of a growing company, make sure you believe in the people running it.

Would you like to receive FB Investment Club information in a more timely manner? Sign up for the FB Investment Club! When you sign up, you will receive weekly investment information and more. Sign up here.

What if Facebook doesn’t make it?

Albert — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:00:31 +0000

This article was prepared in late 2012 and shared with FB Investment Club members in early March, 2013.

You’ve been thinking of this question all along haven’t you? During the 90’s Dot Com era we saw how fast internet companies come and go. I think Facebook is a bit different, but first, I’ll answer your question.

If Facebook goes the way of MySpace, I will lose money – plain and simple. That possibility is real, but within it lies the possibility of making a significant amount of investment profits if it does not happen.

There are many signs that Facebook might not make it. The company has a lot of competitors, and many of them are big companies with much more money. The most significant ones are Google and Microsoft but there are also regional competitors in different parts of the world.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg controls about 55% of shareholder votes through shares he owns and other agreements with shareholders. He controls the board of directors as well. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in his dorm room and might spend too much time making it “cool” and not enough time making it “profitable”. Besides, he is already a Billionaire – if the stock price goes down to $15 he’ll still have more money than anybody under 30 could wish for.

[There are other risks cited in Facebook’s prospectus.]

The only way that I account for the chance of Facebook failing is by not investing my “nest-egg” in the company. I am an “investor” or “shareholder”, so my purchases will continue over time as the stock price goes up as long as I believe in the business. I think of a stock investment like a car: I know it won’t last forever but I also know how to tell when the end is near. In the meantime, I will take good care of it and get the benefits of owning it.

Don’t just buy a stock because of its opportunities. Also account for the risks. Remember that companies don’t make money because of what they plan to do – they make money because what they plan to do is difficult or appears impossible. You have to be at peace with this before you invest, because your investment is a bet that the management can execute – and beat all competition.

Money Is Not Real.

Albert — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:00:44 +0000

Have you ever thought about the world’s financial system? I mean, really thought about it? Who created it? How can you get rich within its rules?

These are serious questions, but you don’t have to be able to answer them now. However, you should know why they are answerable. Money is not real; that means we created it, and therefore all the knowledge about it is “known” and finite.

Take a look at a dollar bill. What does it say? It says “this note is legal tender for all debts public and private”. It also says “Federal Reserve Note”. What do these mean?

The first sentence says that it can be used as “currency” as opposed to a car, or a donut.

The second sentence points out clearly that the bill is just that – a bill. It is a statement that the Federal Reserve Bank owes YOU that much money. It is a promissory note, signed by representatives of the US Treasury.

Imagine that? It doesn’t end here. Since money is not “real” and we made it ourselves, then it is known.

Money Is Known

Someone (or certain groups) knows exactly how money works, and make as much of it as they want. Some of these are the Billionaires we read about on Forbes & Fortune Magazines – and their advisors.

To show you exactly how easy money is, I’ll compare it to medicine – veterinary medicine. Last time I checked, we didn’t invent the human body, or any animal. What’s harder to do? Figuring out whether a dog has a stomach problem (he can’t tell you) or figuring out how to invest money to beat inflation? One answer is known for sure – the other is speculative.

What’s my point? Although a financial planner or financial advisor or CPA cannot know everything, they have access to very specific answers. If you want to be a millionaire, know that the way is in a book somewhere. Nobody can guarantee you’ll get rich, but there are very specific things people do to get rich and things they absolutely do not do. But are you prepared to accept this as a fact?

The bottom line is that me giving you financial advice is less of a gamble than a doctor curing you from cancer. Why? Because humans invented money. The challenge for you is to realize that all your financial goals can be achieved. Money is not a problem that cannot be solved – actually, it has many right answers.

Most people who don’t have money are the ones that didn’t consult with Certified Public Accountants or Financial Planners during their careers. If they did, they would have more of those right answers and be more financially secure. So I ask you: do you want to have some answers for your money problems? Or will you continue to go it alone like most people do?