MKS: So You Want to Be Rich…

If you want to become rich, you have to be willing to take some risk. “Studies have shown that the affluent more frequently take above-average — but not senseless — investment risk, generally report understanding risk, and have an understanding of the risk and return characteristics of investments. 

To get rich really fast with no money:

• 1. Develop “that” mindset. Develop the habit of “getting rich slow” than “getting rich quick.”. Wealthy people have two rules with regard to money.
• 2. Surround yourself with the right people.
• 3. Develop the habits.
• 4. Find mentors.
• 3. Make savings consistent.

7 steps to becoming a millionaire:

Develop a written financial plan. Save, save, save. Live below your means. Lay off the credit. Invest in ways that work for you. Start your own business. Get professional advice.

18 Resolutions To Get Rich in 2021

I Will Be More Aware of My Financial Situation

If you want to be rich, it seems obvious that you should know where you stand financially. People often sense that they aren’t in a good financial place but don’t want to be aware of how potentially bad their situation is.

Being aware of your financial situation and keeping it in mind all the time is the key to improving your finances and growing your wealth. Your resolution should be to understand what you have, know where you want to be in the future and decide how you plan to get there.

I Will Create a Realistic Budget

This resolution goes hand-in-hand with being more aware of your financial situation. To increase your wealth, you have to know where your money is going. But many people often don’t.

I Will Treat My Finances Like a Business

To grow your money, vow to treat your personal finances like a business. Businesses must adhere to this set of rules, otherwise they would cease to exist. To treat your finances like a business, you must develop a budget, review your income and expenses on a monthly basis, create a net worth statement and make sure you’re profitable. That doesn’t necessarily mean putting your money into the stock market; look to invest in yourself through education or start a side business.

I Will Get and Remain Debt-Free

Rather than throw away your money on interest payments, you can make it work for you by stashing it in an account or investments that earn interest. Not relying on credit cards, lines of credit and borrowing to live your lifestyle is a proven way to become wealthy. Create a plan to pay off your debt as fast as possible. Then you’ll free up more cash to invest and grow your wealth.

I Will Be Frugal With My Money

An easy way to get rich is to keep more of your money. Being frugal will enable you to increase the amount of money you can save. Examine your bank and credit card statements to see how much of your money is going toward things you need versus things you want. Cut back on unnecessary purchases and look for ways to spend the least possible on things you need by shopping around for the lowest price.

I Will Cut My Biggest Expense: Housing

Take frugality a step further by slashing your biggest expense to free up more money for saving and investing. When most people make financial resolutions, they think small. Housing is the biggest expenditure for U.S. consumers — with one-third of total household spending going toward this cost, on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can score big savings if you’re willing to move. This might mean moving to a smaller house, to a different neighborhood or to another city where the cost of living is lower.

I Will Find a Mentor

A mentor can help you get on the path toward riches by offering you advice, opportunities to advance your career or guidance for launching or improving your own business. Mentors can teach you success habits, change your beliefs, how to think, how to achieve goals, specific processes that lead to success and shortcuts to success.

I Will Boost My Retirement Account Contributions

If you want to be rich, you likely will need to commit to saving more.

I Will Save Half of My Income

More people are able to do this than they realize. For example, if you’re married and both you and your spouse work, consider living on one income and saving the other.

I Will Save My Money in Smart Places

Chances are you’re missing a great opportunity to grow your money by getting a tax refund each year. That’s right — if you get a big check each spring, that means you’re letting Uncle Sam hang onto your money interest-free during the year. People are happy when they get their own money back at zero interest. If they had stashed the income tax refund in their 401(k), they’d have kept the money, saved the taxes and hopefully made some market gains.

I Will Learn To Understand and Manage Risk

If you want to become rich, you have to be willing to take some risk. Studies have shown that the affluent more frequently take above-average — but not senseless investment risk, generally report understanding risk, and have an understanding of the risk and return characteristics of investments.

That doesn’t mean you should put all of your money in the stock market. But if you avoid risk by sticking only to safe investments such as money market accounts, your money won’t grow much because of the low rates on these accounts

I Will Get Paid What I’m Worth

To get rich, vow to leverage your job better financially. “This means making sure you are paid what you are worth. To find out the average pay for people in your position, check websites such as Payscale, Salary.com or Glassdoor. If you think your pay or benefits fall short, make the case for a raise. If you can’t get ahead financially at your current job, have a plan to get another position that will provide these financial benefits.

I Will Create an Additional Stream of Income

Consider getting a side hustle or second job. If you’re like most people, you’ve got one stream of income — your job. And if you’re like most people, you are either poor or stuck in the middle class. If you want to break out of poverty or the middle class, you need to begin creating multiple streams of income.

Use your extra cash to quickly get out of debt, invest in assets such as stocks or set aside in savings. You can use it to start your own business or buy a rental property for more streams of income.

I Will Pursue a Passion That Will Make Me More Money

It is the catalyst that transforms ordinary individuals into self-made millionaires. When you pursue something you are truly passionate about, you are somehow able to find the time to devote to it. So resolve to figure out what you’re passionate about this year and spend time cultivating that passion. It might mean reading books on the subject, taking courses to improve skills related to your passion or creating a business plan and pursuing funding. You must take action and invest in yourself today in order to create the future life you desire,

I Will Increase My Bandwidth

You can increase your wealth by increasing your bandwidth. Bandwidth is about what you do. For everything we do, we have opted to not do something else.

I Will Make Sure I Have Adequate, Affordable Insurance

Commit to checking your insurance policies to make sure they’re up to date and that you have ample coverage. Nothing puts a damper on growing wealth than a big, uninsured loss. Also, make sure you’re not paying more than you have to for insurance. Regularly shopping auto, home or umbrella coverage can result in real savings that can be added to investments

I Will Be Accountable

It’s one thing to vow to take steps to become rich. It’s another to stick to your resolutions. You can increase your chances of success by letting others know about your goals. One of the key factors to improving your finances is to have accountability. If you can’t hold yourself accountable, then share your goal with a trusted person.Most likely you know someone who also is trying to get ahead financially and also needs an accountability partner. Once you share your financial goals, you can help motivate each other to stay on track.

I Will Ask For Help When Needed

The rich often have help growing their wealth. So don’t assume that asking for assistance is a sign of weakness. Instead, resolve to reach out to those who can help you reach your goals. Most people who grow financially rich do so by soliciting the help of others.

Sticking to these resolutions can help you build serious wealth.

Warren Buffett’s Recommended Books to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders

Here is what you find when you read all his shareholder letters. These 33 books Buffett discusses or recommends to shareholders in the letters, dating back to the 1970s. Some are wide-ranging; others illustrate specific points. There are also a few that Buffett recommends because of who the authors are, or simply because of his unusual sense of humor.

Below you will find quick descriptions of all 33 books. We cannot promise that they will make you a billionaire, but at least you can know that you read like one.

1. The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham

Any list of Buffett books that does not start with this one has a lot of explaining to do. Buffett first read The Intelligent Investor, by his then-future professor, Graham, in 1949. “By far the best book on investing ever written,” Buffett calls it in one letter; years later he was still singing its praises: “My financial life changed with [the book’s] purchase.”

2. Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd 

Less well-known, but nearly as important. This book, published in 1934 (so fairly soon after the 1929 market crash), was basically The Intelligent Investor‘s precursor — also written by Graham, but with his fellow Columbia Business School professor, Dodd. 

3. The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams

Buffett mentions this book only once, in 1977, but he derives a good lesson from it. He quotes Williams, the 20th century Red Sox baseball slugger, saying that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells — each the size of a baseball — and tried only to swing at balls in his “best” cell. That, Buffett said, was sort of a metaphor for a smart but unattainable investment strategy.

4. The Warren Buffett CEO by Robert P. Miles

A 2003 examination of what makes Berkshire Hathaway’s subordinate CEOs successful. Buffett recommended it. 

5. Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch

“[T]eriffic book,” by the former CEO of GE, according to Buffett. “Get a copy!”

6. Take on the Street by Arthur Levitt Jr.

This book, by a former SEC chairman, is not quite recommended by Buffett so much as he references it for having the “sordid details” of a dispute between the accounting firm Arthur Anderson and the SEC.

7. First a Dream by James L. Clayton, Sr.

This one has a good story. In Buffett’s telling, he read this book after he spoke to a group of students from the University of Tennessee, who gave him a copy as a gift. It is the autobiography of the founder of Clayton Homes, a manufactured home company. Buffett says he found the story so compelling that he wound up buying the firm.

8 – 10. Bull! A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004 by Maggie Mahar

Buffett recommended this book, together with The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (about Enron), and In an Uncertain World, the memoir of Clinton-era treasury secretary Bob Rubin. I am reading Bull! right now, so check this space in the future.

11. Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe by Graham Allison

Buffett guides shareholders to The Bookworm bookstore in Omaha each year, encouraging them to purchase specific books. In 2005, this was his recommendation. 

12 – 13. Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Peter Kaufman

Buffett recommends this book, which is based on Charlie Munger’s speeches and writings, almost every year. It went on to become quite a success, selling 50,000 copies despite no marketing according to Buffett — well, other than being hawked in one of the most-read shareholder’s letters on the planet each year. Later, Buffett also recommends From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin.

14. Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? by Fred Schwed.

This one is a throwback, first published in 1940. Buffett mentions it a few times over the years, calling it “the funniest book ever written about investing,” and one that “lightly delivers many truly important messages on the subject.”

15 – 17. Giving It All Away: The Doris Buffett Story by Doris Buffett.

In 2010, Buffett recommended two books by his sons and one by his sister, respectively: Fragile, Life Is What You Make It, and Giving It All Away: The Doris Buffett Story.

18. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Phil Fischer

Buffett says this book, first published in 1958, “ranks behind only The Intelligent Investor and the 1940 edition of Security Analysis in the all-time-best list for the serious investor.”

19. Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything by Carol Loomis

Compiled by Buffett’s longtime writing collaborator (including on the shareholder letters). 

20 to 24. The Outsiders by William Thorndike, Jr.

We begin here with “an outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation,” including Buffett’s friend and mentor Tom Murphy. Also recommended at the same time: The Clash of the Cultures by Jack Bogle, Laura Rittenhouse’s Investing Between the Lines — and a somewhat more narrowly targeted title: Unbeatable, which “tells the story of Nebraska football during 1993-97, a golden era in which Tom Osborne’s teams went 60-3.”

25. The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by Jack Bogle

Buffett suggested that investors who are being pitched by sales-y investment managers read this instead.

26 – 27. Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders edited by Max Olson.

As it sounds, Letters to Shareholders is a compendium of all of Buffett’s letters over the years. Buffett also recommended Andrew Kilpatrick’s book Of Permanent Value, which he delighted in describing as being 1,304 pages and weighing 9.8 pounds, as “all-encompassing coverage of Berkshire.”

28 – 29. Limping on Water by Phil Beuth

Written by a former Capital Cities Communications veteran, this book “tells you a lot about its leaders, Tom Murphy and Dan Burke,” whom Buffett describes as “the best managerial duo…that Charlie and I ever witnessed.” In the same letter, Buffett also recommended, Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules by Jeremy Miller.

30. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight

The story of Nike, by its founder; Buffett called it “the best book I read last year” (meaning 2016).

31. Common Stocks as Long-Term Investments by Edgar Lawrence Smith

This 1924 book was obscure and destined to stay that way until John Maynard Keynes reviewed it positively (specifically its points about retained earnings), and it became “a slim book that changed the investment world.” Many of its points were accepted by later works, but if you wanted to look back at the beginning, this might be a good place to start.

32. Margin of Trust by Larry Cunningham and Stephanie Cuba 

Buffett recommended this only last year, as an exploration of the culture at Berkshire.

33. One Thousand Ways to Make $1000 by Frances Minaker

Buffett mentions only very briefly in the letters. But to balance those out, let us add the 1936 book that Buffett says inspired his entire career when he read it as a 7-year-old.

HELPFUL TOOLS:

[1]: Napoleon Hill’s Audiobook Outwitting the Devil

(1) Napoleon Hill’s Audiobook Outwitting the Devil – YouTube

Contact us if you need help discovering or applying ways to get rich in 2021 and beyond.

Michael Kissinger

Phone 415-678-9965

Email: mjkkissinger@yahoo.com