I paid off my credit card and it felt so good. I am humbled that I have been given the opportunity to serve others and there have been so many people who have helped me towards my financial freedom.
This is what I have learned from my favorite billionaires along the way:
DO NOT START A BUSINESS ON A LOAN
The first thing you do before investing any money is to pay off all your credit cards. One must understand that what a credit card really is is a short-term loan at an extremely high interest rate. Depending on what your credit score, an average APR + Variable Rate can range from 10%-25%. These rates are compounding. Credit card companies are NOT stupid. Would I want to loan you money at 25% interest? You bet your ass I would. And, if you don't pay up then the banks take your car, your house, and your future credit makes it difficult to get future loans.
So what do you do when instead of loaning money from a credit card?
A. You get a loan from the bank at a lower rate. Money is cheap right now. Again, depending on your credit score, a person can probably get a loan for about 4% (perhaps, less).
B. Save your money by putting it into a savings account that yields a high percentage. I use a bank account via Barclays that yields 1% interest which is significantly higher than the .001% that I would yield from my local bank.
Click here for online saving accounts with good interest rates.
What I did was I linked my branch banking account with my online savings account and I make transfers to my savings account to receive a higher interest rate.
BUY ASSETS: BECAUSE CASH IS A BAD INVESTMENT
In the book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad', the author, Robert Kiyosaki states that the difference between rich people and poor people isn't necessarily how you get your money, but rather what you do with your money. Warren Buffett says 'cash is always a bad investment.' The reason that cash is a bad investment is that it loses value over time due to inflation (about 1%) and that cash does not produce more cash own it's own over time; thus, the best thing to do is to buy assets. Assets are property that appreciate in value over time. Buffett was given a choice of whether he would choose to invest in gold or good businesses and he said that, though, gold would be pretty to look at it (like money), however, does not produce more gold over time. In contrary, good businesses are made to continue to make money over time.
ALWAYS HAVE CASH AVAILABLE
You may be asking: 'How do you buy good businesses?' And, the answer to that is that there are several ways that you can do so. The first thing to do is to have available money. The easiest way to buy good businesses is to invest in the stock market and understanding that you are actually buying a part of a company when you buy a share of a stock.
Or, you can create and start a company on your own, but unless you already have the capital to fund your business then you would have to find a venture capitalist like Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
DO YOU HOMEWORK BEFORE INVESTING
I cannot stress enough the important of knowing WHAT you're going to buy and HOW to buy something before you buy it.
This is the book that I recommend reading before investing in the stock market.
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Benjamin Graham is the pioneer of 'value investing' and was the mentor of Warren Buffett at Columbia University. Buffett later on went on to work for and learn from Graham.
Most Helpful Opinions