Michael Hong > Recent Status Updates

also have heroes such as Donald Trump, Warren Bu$ett, Peter Lynch,
George Soros, and Jim Rogers. I know their stats just like I knew the
ERAs and RBIs of my childhood baseball heroes. I follow what Warren
Bu$ett invests in, and I read anything I can about his point of view
on the market and how he chooses stocks. And I read about Donald
Trump, trying to find out how he negotiates and puts deals together.

So wise investors must look at more than ROI. They look at the assets they get for free once they get their money back. That is financial intelligence.

Poor people have poor habits. A common bad habit is innocently
called “dipping into savings.” The rich know that savings are only used to
create more money, not to pay bills.

You become what you study. be careful what you learn, because your mind is so powerful that you become what you put in your head.

Wise investors buy an investment when it’s not
popular. They know their profits are made when they buy, not when
they sell. They wait patiently.

I would say that one of the hardest things about wealth-building is
to be true to yourself and to be willing to not go along with the crowd.

What I know makes me money. What I don’t know loses me
money. Every time I have been arrogant, I have lost money. Because
when I’m arrogant, I truly believe that what I don’t know is not
important,” rich dad would often tell me.

Forcing myself to think about how to make extra money is like going to the gym and working out with weights. The more I work my mental money muscles out, the stronger I get.

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized
anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

For example, one dad had a habit of saying, “I can’t a$ord
it.” !e other dad forbade those words to be used. He insisted I ask,
“How can I a$ord it?” One lets you o$ the hook, and the other forces you to think. My
soon-to-be-rich dad would explain that by automatically saying the
words “I can’t a$ord it,” your brain stops working. By asking the
question “How can I a$ord it?” your brain is put to work.

Old ideas are their biggest liability. It is a liability simply because they fail to realize that while that idea or way of doing something was an
asset yesterday, yesterday is gone.

Often in the real world, it’s not the smart who get ahead, but the bold.

Minding your business doesn't mean starting a company, though for some people it will. Instead, your business revolves around your asset column, not your income column.

An important distinction is that rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first.

When I say mind your own business, I mean to build and keep your asset column strong. Once a dollar goes into it, never let it come out. Think of it this way: Once a dollar goes into your asset column, it becomes your employee. The best thing about money is that it works 24 hours a day and can work for generations. Keep your day job, be a great hardworking employee, but keep building that asset column.

The rich focus on their asset columns while everyone else focuses on their income statements.

• The rich buy assets.
• The poor only have expenses.
• The middle class buy liabilities they think are assets.

My next goal would be to have the excess cash flow from my
assets reinvested into the asset column. The more money that goes
into my asset column, the more my asset column grows.

I now have income generated from assets each month that fully cover my monthly expenses. If I want to increase my expenses, I first must increase my cash flow to maintain this level of wealth. Also note that it is at this
point that I’m no longer dependent on my wages. I have focused on,
and been successful in, building an asset column that has made me
financially independent.

Wealth is a person’s ability to survive so many number of days forward—or, if I stopped working today, how long could I survive?

wealth measures how much money your money is making and, therefore, your financial survivability.