When you are starting out as an investor you can get inundated with how to start.
There are tons of mutual funds, millions of stock…..
to add to your confusion you get bombarded with infomercials on the next
business opportunities and……
spammed with emails for investing in the ” next millionaire internet opportunity”
Heck ! how do you wade through all these tons of information.?
I must admit it could be daunting but easy to do.
The editors at MSN Money put together a Beginners Guide to Investing.
The beginners guide listed the following steps….
- Determine how much you plan to invest
- Choose one mutual fund
- or build a portfolio of funds
- follow a guru
- open an account and get started
The problem with this guide is that it only talks about mutual fund investing…..diversifying into mutual funds
it also wants you to follow a “guru” , whose performance is unrelated to his canny skills in investing.
I think this is the worst form of advice an investor can ever get and…. it only serves the interest of Wall street
who advertise in MSN money.
This brings me to my next point…..how to get wealthy starting out as a beginner investor.
I think above anything else you need a change of mindset.
Why should you change your way of thinking?… because what the media and Wall Street is selling you about wealth is wrong..
The decision to become an investor involves a change in mindset
By this, I mean the way you think.
When it comes to thinking about investing the ultimate aim is… wealth creation
In addition, wealth can also be unencumbered value.
I had the privilege of attending a Seminar organized by Michael Masterson, bestselling author and Founder
Early to Rise.com
He classified wealth as any activity or venture you invested in that gave you equity…
wealth was is directly related to having assets.
Before we go on lets quickly look at what wealth is not…
Wealth is not…
- Having high income
- Having physical possession of luxury cars
- Owning a self employment business
- Your personal house
However, wealth is having
- Financially valuable skills…we will talk about more about that in my next post
- Equity in a business
- Rental real estates
- Intellectual property and licensing rights
- liquid savings in the bank
- Marketing skills
The important distinction about wealth is that you have….
assets that add value to your net worth.
How does an investor recognize the subtle difference…
It’s by having a rich mindset?
Here is what my criteria is
#1. You recognize reality that every time you become aware of investment opportunity is an opportunity to make yourself richer or poorer
#2. You have courage to take action and seize the opportunity
#3. You can analyze the situation and make the right judgment
I can easily apply this criteria to my last post on Donald Soffer
You can see that he recognized that the marshland in Miami was an opportunity to get
wealthy, he took action by buying the marshland and he developed a luxury real estate destination-ultimately becoming wealthy