People who want to be smart go to college. Or at least educate themselves. Some people think that they can just read books and they’ll know something. That’s not actually true. You can’t just read books or just observe others doing things. You need to apply your knowledge to really learn things. You have to read the book and apply what’s in the book to really learn. Otherwise all you have is a bunch of theories about how things are but you don’t really know. Many times the theories are nice but they aren’t entirely accurate when it comes to practical application. Also, if you don’t apply your knowledge to practical applications you won’t learn when it is appropriate to apply certain ideas to various situations. Knowledge that cannot be properly applied is useless.
You also will never be smarter than a book if you only do strictly what the book tells you to do. You have to color outside the lines or you will stifle your ability to learn and grow. By applying the book to the real world you will see that how the book tells you to do it may not be entirely accurate. Now you know more than the book is telling you.
When it comes to finances there is probably a book that will tell you anything you want to hear. If you want to believe that you can get rich flipping houses, a book exists that will be more than happy to take your money in exchange for telling you that. If you want to believe you can get rid trading on the foreign exchange (aka forex) there are books and programs that will take your money in exchange for telling you how you can get rich doing just that.
There are also books that will explain why you can’t get rich on the Forex markets or by flipping houses.
The fact of the matter is; they’re both right. The forex market contains a huge amount of risk. You can get rich and you can fail. Same with flipping houses. The key factor is you. The amount of effort you put into doing those things. You can’t just throw money at a problem and expect more money to come back.
So you need to educate yourself. If you’re not willing to learn and educate yourself then you really should stick to just reducing spending and putting your money in safe places like high yield savings accounts and bonds.
Your biggest financial investment is you. Educating yourself. Spending the money to learn. Get the information and get the tools to apply it. Don’t be the idiot that risks their life savings on their first time out playing poker. Be the smart player that finds ways to play for free and then goes in with some beer money to see how they can do once real money is involved.
There’s not a day that goes by that there isn’t a great opportunity. Smart people don’t bet on the “once in a lifetime opportunity” they learn how to find opportunities every day. And once you realize that, you don’t mind taking your time to learn because you know you’re not missing out on anything you can’t get when you’re really ready.
