Have you ever been chatting with a friend or family member about the shenanigans of a wealthy celebrity? Or perhaps you’ve talked about how your upscale neighbor – the one who has the new Lexus – always seems to be living so well. The odds are high that at some point in that conversation, either you or your friend has used this phrase:

As in, “That’s just the way a lot of rich people behave” or “It would be nice to be rich people like they are, so we could afford nice things.”

Most of us have a tendency to think of “rich people” as being, somehow, a tribe apart. Rich people vacation in certain places. Rich people endorse certain values. Rich people vote for certain political parties. Rich people do x, y, or z. Rich people certainly aren’t you or I; we can’t be rich, because we aren’t rich now.

This is a fundamental error in our thinking. We think of “rich” as being a condition of inner being, when in fact, it is simply the outcome of historical events. Our inner being is just fine, thank you. What’s in our grasp is that we can do a lot to change the outcome of events.

You see, there is no such thing as a “rich person”.

There are only people who have become rich.

A few of them were just fortunate – they became rich when they were born (think the Rockefellers). Most of them created their own wealth – some of them through creating something new and wonderful (Steve Jobs), or through having some incredibly advanced skill or talent (Michael Jordan), but more often, through a combination of prudent living and intelligent investing. The number of people who have become wealthy by being like Michael Jordan, you can count on one hand. The number who have gotten rich through investment and prudence are numbered in the millions, even in these debt-fueled days.

I have a news flash for you. ANYBODY – anybody at all – can live prudently and invest intelligently. I have done it. You can do it. By investing intelligently, you can create your own wealth. You can apply the same tools and strategies that wealthy people do, and you can do it in as little as ten minutes per year. All you need to do is learn and understand the basics, and commit to living in a way that builds your personal wealth.

You can be rich. Anyone can. The first step is easy: make a decision to do it.

The next steps are a bit more involved than just making a decision, but they are not beyond your abilities. I know this for a fact, because in the last five years I have helped friends, neighbors, co-workers, and even complete strangers to turn their financial lives around and start building wealth. All of these ordinary people learned key investing basics, created investment plans tailored to their own situation, and began to feel more confident. Why? Because they had taken control of their financial lives, and they had found that they could handle it!  Many of these people have ventured into their own investment management for the first time in their lives.

I can do the same for you.

What Kind of Money Do You Need?

An associate of mine tells an amusing story of needing a loan to expand his business, and talking with a friend who he hoped would be interested. He talked circuitously with his friend, dancing around the question, but the friend wasn’t fooled, finally interrupting yet another “if I only had…” digression with a blunt question: what kind of money do you need?
That is one of a set of questions that every investor should ask themselves – what do I need, when do I need it, and what do I need it for? “What do I need it for” is really up to you – I can’t counsel you on whether travel, retirement security, or just a reduction in your workload is the right path for your life. I can only show you how to make the financial changes that will let you get to your goal, whatever it is. So we’ll focus on what you need, and when you’ll need it.
Let’s look at a couple of case studies and explore what these people need, and how investments provided it for them.

10 Minute Investing Case Study: Andy

Andy is in his early thirties, single, and loves to live a comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle – and his bank account proves it. He has spent everything he’s earned since getting his first job after graduating college. Andy always told himself he would have all the time in the world to save and invest for retirement “once he was a grown-up”.

On Andy’s 30th birthday, he received a subscription to a personal financial magazine from a friend, and it has turned his comfortable complacency upside down! After looking at the articles in the very first issue of his subscription, he read about how much savings it takes to retire comfortably. After reading that people who wait until they are fifty to begin saving and investing for retirement need to set aside 30 percent of their earnings per year in order to have a modest but sufficient retirement, Andy’s palms started to sweat. He decided to begin getting his spending habits under control and to start saving for retirement…

Andy is on the verge of being an extreme case. If he were fifty, and making $80,000 a year, and had no savings put aside for retirement, he would need to begin setting aside 30 percent a year. Ouch! 30 percent might not seem like an impossible goal, but consider that your mortgage payment or your rental payment are (if you are like most Americans) about 30 percent of your current income. Could you suddenly start making another mortgage or rent payment?

Fortunately, Andy is only 30. He still has time to get with the program! If by age fifty, Andy manages to set aside $300,000 in savings, then his situation becomes a lot more viable. From fifty until retirement, he will need to save just 15 percent of his income in order to comfortably retire. That is a lot more attainable.

10 Minute Investing Case Study: Jenny

Jenny, 26, grew up with her grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and who saved every penny. Jenny grew up saving rubber bands from the newspaper, keeping Christmas bags and wrapping nice “for next year”, and generally living frugally. Jenny adopted these habits from a very early age, and they stuck – once she graduated from college and started working, she managed to live on half of what she earned, saving the rest. It doesn’t add up to much because Jenny does not have a high-powered job, but the numbers are growing every quarter and Jenny’s bank balance just gets higher and higher. However, she didn’t really know what to do with her money—she knew that simply putting it into a savings account wasn’t the best move, but felt insecure and overwhelmed at the idea of putting her money into the stock market. A kindly bank manager advised her one day that while the bank welcomed her deposits, she really should consider looking into a more aggressive investment strategy given her youth and ability to live simply. Jenny decided to take the plunge and start investing her surplus income…

Jenny is another extreme. Most of us would consider ourselves doing well to save fifteen percent out of a “starter job” paycheck – Jenny is managing to live on half! That’s a lot of library books, broadcast TV, and quiet evenings at home curled up with a bowl of noodle soup. Although her case is extreme, her situation isn’t really that uncommon – many people have some money that they could easily redirect to investing, or could invest with greater success.

Where Andy needs to rein in his lifestyle and start prioritizing investment, Jenny needs to boost her confidence and learn how to handle the money she is so prudently accumulating. Most people are somewhere between these two situations - where are you in this picture? How much have you saved, how do you spend what you earn, and how much time do you have remaining before retirement? Your answers to those questions will help you decide what investment and savings strategy will get you to the finish line in style.

Where We’re Going

In this program you will learn how to create an investment plan that is compatible with your lifestyle and with your needs for retirement. You’ll choose the strategy that best fits your needs in terms of:

•    the time you are willing to put in
•    the amount of risk required to earn what you need to meet your goal
•    how soon you plan to retire

Then, you’ll monitor your investments and evaluate them according to the investment rules you set up when you created your plan. You’ll know what to buy and when, and when to sell. No guesswork, no stress, no worries – just good financial behavior that will build your wealth and safeguard your future.

Although in this manual we will naturally focus on retirement and on reaching a particular financial goal, the system I am going to outline for you will create opportunities that you may have never thought were possible, whether they relate to your retirement, to your career choices, or to your family’s future. The old maxim that money can’t buy happiness is true, but money can give you options and provide opportunities. Your investment plan may allow you to retire and travel the world, change from full-time to part-time work, or pursue a career that pays less but gives you more satisfaction and fulfillment. You may want to use the proceeds of your investments to pay for your children’s or grandchildren’s education, to donate to causes you’re passionate about, or to fund a new business venture. Or, you may simply want to have the freedom to splurge on the little (and not so little) things that make life more fun—tickets to a Broadway show, the sports car you’ve always dreamed of, learning to scuba dive.

It’s about your priorities and your goals. I’m just here to help you reach them.

Why You Should Listen to Me

Because I’ve invested successfully, that’s why.

I’m on a mission to educate and empower people about investing and how to create lasting wealth. I’m an advocate for individual investor rights. And there’s a dire need for straight advice, untainted by conflicts of interest that are so common in investment management today.

OK, many investment professionals may profess such a mission. What’s different about my approach? Two things.

First, I’ve translated academic research on investing and market behavior into English any fifth grader can understand and transformed the learnings into powerful principles you can use now. I’ve attempted to make the most powerful concepts easily digestible and have developed the Best Fit Strategy™ to guide you to the most appropriate investing strategy, given your situation.

Second, I’ve created investing strategies that you can put to use and maintain in ten minutes or less a year. When surveying people on why they don’t manage their investments, the number one reason they stated was lack of time. The second reason was intimidation about investing. I’ve addressed both these concerns in 10 Minute Investing Strategies.

I’ve researched sound investment advice and strategies for over a decade. I’ve studied over 350 investment books, hundreds of articles and spent time with respected advisors and academics. Some of the information I found has been quite valuable, and some of it has been downright misleading. I made a lot of mistakes, including thinking that I could pick stocks better than Wall Street analysts - only to discover that most of the time they don’t do better than the market as a whole (more on this later). Through learning from my mistakes, careful research, discernment, prudent investment, and consistent application of my selected strategies, I became a millionaire at age thirty-eight.

Over the years, more and more people have asked me about what I’ve learned, and have requested my advice on investment strategies – and that trend has accelerated as people become more overwhelmed with the complexities they perceive in the world of investing. In the last five years, the calls and emails have been pouring in. I’ve met with people one-on-one and met with small groups in my home to share what I’ve learned. And the results have been amazing.

One couple that came to me for advice had been working hard at pursuing the American dream for almost twenty years. A nice house, two good jobs, kids in a good school district – they had it made. Except that they had so much debt and so little savings, they were on the fast track to being forced to spend their golden years trudging away to the same jobs – they just could not possibly afford to retire. The husband confided to me that his greatest fear was one day having to tell his grown child, “sorry, son, I’d love to come see our first grandchild being born – but I don’t think I’ll be able to get off work.” Not the scenario most of us dream of, is it?

Fortunately, I was able to help them, using the same ideas and the same strategies that I’m going to share with you. The couple I counseled, after we had turned things around for them, told me that my advice was like visiting a tourist attraction with a professional guidebook, a GPS locator device, and a personal guide who showed them all the best places and shared all the best stories. Instead of wondering where they might want to go and how to get there, they now understand how to think about investments, how to create a workable investment plan, and how to apply one or more proven investment strategies. Once they’d taken the time to learn the basics, they applied the strategies and monitored their investments – and they watched their financial picture transform over a relatively short period of time.

As I worked with investors, both novices and experts, I received many requests to write a book. Personal counseling is wonderful, but there’s just no way I can sit down with everyone who asks my advice. My friends asked me to create a written document that covers these strategies, to help them and others achieve the kind of success and financial freedom that I achieved for myself. And although there are numerous guides to investing available already, I’ve come to realize that most investing books are not what most people need.

A theoretical explanation of internal combustion engines is great if you want to know all the intricate details of how your car’s engine works, but it won’t tell you how to drive your car. It won’t even give you good guidance on how to fix minor problems – for that you need a Chilton’s manual. Most investing books are like that highly theoretical treatise - they go into great detail about every aspect of investments, but ironically, don’t actually teach you how to invest. You don’t need to know every feature of every type of investment, just as you don’t need to know the details of gasoline combustion to get to the store. You just need to learn how to turn the key, and what the basic controls do. You need to learn the rules of the road, and know what common errors to avoid. You won’t find that in a book of theory.

Instead of theory, you need what I’ve laid out for you in this book—a “just get me to the store” manual for investing. There are basics you need to know, three clear steps you must follow, and a specific strategy you can choose based on simple criteria you determine. By the time you have read this book, have worked through the exercises in the workbook, and have put together your own financial strategy, you’ll have learned what you need to know to reach your financial goals.

In this kit you will learn….

First, I'll show you how to create your investment plan. Then, you'll choose the strategy that best fits your criteria - in terms of the time you are willing to put in, the amount of risk required to earn what you need to earn to meet your goal and how soon you plan to retire or use your investment money.

Then, you'll monitor your investments and evaluate them according to the investment rules you set up when you created your plan. You'll know what to buy and when, and when to sell. No guesswork.

Get excited because you're about to create opportunities for yourself that you may have never thought were possible. Perhaps your dream is to retire and travel the world? Work less? Say goodbye to the corporate rat race and start your own business?

Whatever your goal, you'll learn what the pros do with their own money. Let's get started!