Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Young People You can Still be Rich

Great article from yahoo from Ramit Sethi a 26 Year Old Author of "I Will Teach you to be Rich"

Ramit Sethi: Yes, You Can Still Be Rich

This article touches on a lot of things I've been thinking about lately, as a young adult with a somewhat stable job, I have some savings right now, and some capital, but I am nervous with what to do with it in this economy. And what if I do lose my job, I may need that money as back-up to continue living here in San Diego as I would like to right now.

"As young people, we don't pay attention to our money. When there's something you're neglecting and you just hear bad news, you again don't pay attention, but you feel guilty about it. It's a combination of apathy and guilt that comes with money, just like eating and working out. 'I know I should go to gym four days a week, I shouldn't eat that pizza.' We know that we should be figuring out something about money and should probably do a Roth IRA, but we don't know where to get started. There's so much conflicting advice out there."

Can I get an Amen.
And then rounding out the interview with this.

I assume you follow your own advice and have money in the stock market, and it must have lost significant value lately. How do you not get down about that?

I built an infrastructure where I only focus on one thing -- earning more. It gets automatically disbursed -- 20 percent to investments, 5 percent to savings, etc. In terms of dealing with losses, first of all, I don't check into my investments every day, and I don't think anyone should. Second, there's a difference between losing when everyone is gaining and losing when everyone has lost.

I'm resolutely focused on the long-term. I do believe the long-term prospects are great, but I'm not a prognosticator. My focus is on living a rich life, which also means being able to visit a friend or buy what you want. Being rich is just partially about money."

This is what really sold me on this entire article, Ramit, you've got the right idea my friend.