In economics, it helps to ask the questions, “What is really going on? What is the heart of what we are discussing?”. It surprises me that things most familiar are most often taken for granted and, in many cases, not understood very well. By reframing things through that lens, decisions often become clearer. Consider the…
There are three ways to make a lot of money in business. Typically, most businesses that are successful at making money do it in one by focusing on one of three models. They either: Sell many things at a low price Sell few things at a high price Sell many things at a high price By way of example, let’s look…
Saving money is important. Investing money is important. But if you don’t cash in some chips at some point in your life, all of your efforts will have been wasted because those claim checks on society will be taken by the government, spent by your heirs, or redistributed through fees and expenses by professionals such as attorneys left to sort out the inevitable lawsuits that result in the fight over your fortune after you’re gone.
Mental Model: The Micawber Principle In Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield, published in 1850, the eternal optimist Wilkins Micawber was known for saying “something will turn up”. He was poor but lived in expectation of becoming rich, sometimes foolishly taking on debts due to the belief. We have Micawber to thank for one of the…
As Gene Bedell wisely reminds us, nothing happens until something is sold. That is one of the greatest business truths you can ever learn. Get it engraved on the back of a watch, keep it in your pocket inscribed on a small sheet of paper, or repeat it to yourself silently, but learn this principle so…
his article deals with people who want to be rich. Not just financially independent or reasonably well-off, but actually rich relative to the average American; the folks who want to be able to write a check for a Lexus or live in a nice house, in a neighborhood with great schools, without worrying about it, while watching their net worth climb year after year, decade after decade. The strategy involved for that type of success is slightly different in that it requires you to often build off a foundation that I call your primary economic engine. But I’m getting ahead of myself …
This Halloween evening, I am sitting at one of the desks in my home, drinking a cup of Costco coffee, and penning About.com content for the Investing for Beginners site. I’m going to try and pre-write the next few months’ worth of articles and set them to automatically publish themselves due to the upcoming time crunch…
Yesterday, we took a look at the worst paying college degrees. Today, I want to look at a list of the best paying college degrees. It is clear that, like all things in a free society, supply and demand determine payoff. Engineers rule the day when it comes to making a wise investment in education,…
You know I’m a big proponent of following and monetizing your passion. If you want to be an artist, you should be. If you want to be a social worker, you should be. The key is, you make that decision knowing what it entails. The probabilities are substantial that you are not going to make as…
If you want to know how to make money and begin making more money, I’ll tell you the secret. There are only two levers you can pull. To understand this simple truth, let’s start at the beginning. To grow richer, the formula looks like this: The cash flowing into your life (income) – The cash…
