I clicked on that right quick! Heck, I'd settle for having an extra $50, surely one of these tips would be enough for that.
1. Be patient.
Well, okay. I've waited 35 years. Can't get more patient than that.
2. Pay yourself first. Before paying any bills, you need to set money aside every month to build your wealth. It's simple math, but you'd be surprised how many people ignore it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! If I set aside money to "build my wealth", I wouldn't be able to pay my bills. So apparently, we need a tip that comes before #2, Have More Money.
3. Don't be afraid to look into foreign investments.
Well, #3 is a bust. I don't think anyone's going to invest my 25¢, foreign or otherwise. Perhaps #4 will be more useful.
4. Don't count on winning the lottery in the stock market, either.
I certainly wasn't doing that! Huh, that's odd, I'm still not a millionaire.
5. The more money you can save while you're young, the better. You want to save any way you can, even if it might mean living with mom and dad for awhile. Staying at home and doing laundry at home in your early 20s to negate the cost of rent and transportation is not bad advice as long as you have a plan how you're going to move out.
Seriously, #5 is "sponge off family even if you don't have to". Is it me, or is there something inherently wrong with taking advantage of your family in order to be a millionaire? Logically, yes, given the mathematical magic of compounding interest, the earlier you can start saving money, the better, but still, this just seems . . . a little . . . oh, I don't know . . . welfare queen to me. I guess you're not mooching as long as you "plan how" you're going to move out. Okay then.
6. Map out your financial future. List goals and realistic plans for achieving them. You can't go places you want to go without a road map.
Look, OnStar could follow me every step of the way, until I get a little more earning power, and a little relief from ever rising bills, I'm screwed. Maybe they should have covered that in a few easy to follow steps first. Step 1: don't be poor . . .
I love the "move in with your parents" advice. Clearly a lot of winners are doing that. That's how Warren Buffett got started...
ReplyDeleteAnd if your family is too poor to let you be a human leach, you can always sleep on the subway.
Step 1 should actually say, "Have sufficient income."
ReplyDeleteUntil that happens, the rest of the list is moot.
I like how you judge people for living with their parents. Take that, you lazy, good-for-nothing losers! We're better than those people, aren't we? SO much better!
ReplyDeleteit's entirely possible to live with parents WITHOUT sponging off of them. i did it for years [their idea...]
ReplyDeleteyou pay rent. realistically, living with my parents, the electric bill went up $15 a month, the water went up $5, the gas averaged at $10; i took up some space; i ate some of their food [but MOSTLY bought my own].
i wanted to pay them $300/month, but they insisted i only pay $150 - and they still had an extra $100 a month they didn't have before.
that aside - and it ONLY works if everyone is capable of being adults AND treating everyone else as such [i coul NEVER live with my mother, for instance - i visit her for more than a week, and she makes a list of chores, wakes me up at godawful times to DO these chores - like the 3 years of laundry that's just been sitting there - and the tried to GROUND me when i say "no". she tried to tell me she wouldn't take me back to the airport unless i washed those 30 loads of laundry. thankfully, her husband? much cooler, and told her stop being stupid, i was a GUEST and she wouldn't make any OTHER guest do all of her laundry, would she? but the POINT is that living with a parent means the parent has to accept that YOU ARE NOT A CHILD, and mother is just constitutionally capable of realizing that.]
getting roommates [well, GOOD roommates] would accomplish mostly the same thing.
'course, it's too late for those of us no longer in their 20's to big huge nest eggs in our 20's, so...
as for the rest - haven't you read the constitution? it's ONLY written for rich white straight christian folk, you know.
the rest of us aren't "people"