Money is personal. It’s not just how you spend and save it that tells the world something about who you are – personal requirements also matter when it comes to picking investment strategies. Someone looking into early retirement, for example, needs an income that grows over time. Their best bet? Dividend investments.
Although finance is often associated with avarice and irresponsibility, like any other ancient and sophisticated human endeavour, it contains valuable lessons. From insurance to portfolio-building, there are many things that finance can teach us about life in general—whether that’s the necessity of taking on “debt” if you seek to achieve, or the romantic wisdom contained in corporate mergers.
Money is so fraught and laden with meaning that it’s almost impossible to act rationally around it. We overestimate how much we have and are too optimistic about how much we’ll save. We’re susceptible to marketing that plays on our confirmation bias and relaxed attitude to credit.
Millionaires aren’t some rarified class of people. They weren’t born into money and privilege. Instead, they’re regular people who set goals early on in life and were willing to put in the hard work and sacrifice to make those goals happen. Becoming a millionaire is the American dream, and it’s far from dead. In fact, regular people make it happen every day
Getting a handle on your finances comes down to one basic principle: follow the math. That means ignoring feel-good advice like choosing to study a subject you love rather than one that will bring in a salary you can actually live on. It also means bucking social trends if they’re not right for you
