Maybe I’m lucky. Or maybe it’s just common sense. I’ve been involved in the investment advisory business for 30 years. And except for a few early mistakes buying real estate, the big financial hoaxes and bubbles that devastated so many investors never burned me. That made a huge difference over time. It allowed me to […]
I grew up relatively poor, the second of eight children. My father earned $12,000 a year as a college professor. As a teenager, I was ashamed of our small house, my hand-me-down clothes, and my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. I dreamed, literally dreamed, of living like a rich man. And so, when I got my first job […]
In the mid-1980s, a few years after I “decided to be rich,” I bought my dream house. It was a 4,000-square-foot chateau-styled, custom-built, five-bedroom home in a very nice gated neighborhood called Les Jardins in Boca Raton, Florida. The cost of the house was about $600k—more than I ever imagined I could afford. But thanks […]
Some time ago, I discovered—very much to my surprise—that my broker at Raymond James was “no longer with the company.” “What does that mean?” I asked. “He’s just not with us anymore.” “So why wasn’t I told?” “We were just about to notify you.” It miffed me a bit that they didn’t contact me right […]
I am not a spendthrift. But I’m not a cheapskate, either. I know people who are not happy in a deal unless they feel like they’ve beaten the other guy down to nothing. That approach to business is mean and inefficient. Most times, it will end up backfiring. Let me tell you why. You are […]
Many times, the things/experiences that give us the greatest joy are free. But oftentimes, money is involved. And when that’s the case, we have to weigh the cost of the thing/experience against the pleasure we will get from it. One example: owning a home… In my book Automatic Wealth, I argued that one of the […]
You are middle-aged. Your net worth is meager. Your income is barely sufficient to meet expenses… And those expenses are going up. The Great Recession is looming. Economists are predicting things will get worse. What can you do? Should you give up your dream of retiring comfortably one day? Should you accept a future of […]