The Warren Buffets Next Door

The holiday season is upon us! As always, I believe the best gifts you can give is the gift of wisdom, education and financial knowledge. Consistent with that, I will soon start letting you know about great deals as well as posting about what I think are great gifts. As a prelude to that, here's a great book (The Warren Buffets Next Door) is a recently released book that I've come across that would be good for anyone interested in becoming more financially savvy.
 
While many of us have heard of great investors like Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc., this book reveals how 10 ordinary people consistently achieve extraordinary returns on their investments (and how you can, too). The book takes you inside their investment strategies. However, one thing I would caution about this book is that even though this book highlights 10 ordinary people who've done it, one shouldn't assume that it's a easy as pie to do the same. After all, good investing and success come with spending time, learning the craft but this book is a good start  and it's a good book for anyone who may be interested in investing.

What Would You Do With a Cash Windfall?

It's raining money. Well, not exactly. But it might feel that way when you come into money that you weren't expecting to get: Lottery winnings, an inheritance, a Christmas bonus, a tax refund. So what would you do if you got money that you weren't expecting to get?

I know many of us will say that we'd save it for a rainy day, invest it, or payoff debt. But, have you done that with any unexpected cash in the past? And if not, what makes you so sure that you'll do it this time?

I recently gave someone a savings bond that I had been holding on to for 20 years. It was a $50 bond, which means the giver paid $25 for it. He took it to the bank the same day and cashed it for $69. And within an hour, that $69 was gone. That got me to thinking. One, it would probably take him about two hours to spend the other bonds that I have for him. (I haven't given them to him to find out.) Two, how much would that $69 have been worth in 20 years if he had added $31 to it, and treated it the same way that I'd treated the bond for the same length of time? What if he had bought two $100 bonds and not touched them for 20 years?

With the government bond rates being .30%, he certainly wouldn't double his money. And the same can be said if he had invested the money in a Certificate of Deposit (CD). There's not much of a return on investment there either.

Here's the deal. When you're broke, and someone puts $69 in your hand, it looks like a lot of money. But when you look at it in terms of a long-term investment, and you see that you won't get much on your return, you think why bother? Well, here's why you should bother, you have to start somewhere. You have to see starting small as the beginning of something big, because you then start the habit of saving. And as you continue to invest small amounts regularly, you'll start to see them yield bigger results.

Feedback Friday Question: Imagine getting a cash windfall of $1,000, $10,000 or $100,000. What would you do with the money? Is any part of it worth investing?

Shake Those Haters Off!

Hater: A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person. Hating, the result of being a hater, is not exactly jealousy. The hater doesn't really want to be the person he or she hates, rather the hater wants to knock someone else down a notch. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

By show of (virtual) hands, how many of you are sitting on what you believe to be a million-dollar idea, because your critics have silenced you? Come on now, be honest. They said one bad thing about you or your idea, and you took it to heart.

While doing research online for a project today, I came across a book review that inspired this post. The reviewer gave the book two stars out of five, and then proceeded to cut the author down at the knees because he used the people he knew to make his book a bestseller, and then used the book as a springboard to create a multimillion dollar internet business. Ummm, what's wrong with that?

It was clear that the review had more to do with someone hating on the author than it did the book's content. The reviewer also has a a print book and several ebooks, but the author of the book he was reviewing has used his as an in to his profession, making millions of dollars training people to change. And when I visited the reviewer's website (of course I went there), I saw that he has a program that is very similar to the author's. So that got me to thinking. Did he give this book a poor rating because his hasn't experienced the same level of success? I can't say for sure, but it's possible.

At the same time that I was doing my research, I was listening to a discussion about Tyler Perry's latest Hollywood project, For Colored Girls. And then it came to me like an epiphany. While we're sitting here chatting it up about all the reasons we do or don't like Tyler Perry's body of work, he has already shaken his haters off, and is somewhere working on his next multimillion dollar project. And I was like, dang girl, get a clue. Let these people have this discussion, and get back to work securing another contract for yourself. It's not like this is Siskel and Ebert, where anyone in this discussion is getting paid to give this movie a thumbs up or down.

As I sit here writing this, I can hear Venus Williams on the TV behind me promoting her new EA SPORTS game. Imagine where she would be if she had allowed the people who criticized her because of her hair and her braces to cause her to not become the tennis phenom that she is today. She certainly wouldn't be promoting a video game.

So, go ahead and shake those haters off. Otherwise, you may never develop that million-dollar idea.