How I Will Be Rich

This site is called “How I Will Be Rich”. I’ve decided that now might be a good time to kind of explain what I hope to accomplish. I may add more to this later but for now, here are 8 steps that I plan on taking. The point of this post is two-fold. For starters, I am setting goals for myself that I plan to achieve over the course of the next few years. Second, I am explaining to others what steps I plan to take so that others may also give my method a shot.I will give you my list of steps that I will take and then I will elaborate on them in future blog posts and continue to post my progress.Here are my steps:

1. Get a job that you don’t hate.
   I’m pretty much at this point right now. There are days that are stressful and I just want punch a wall and go home and cry. (I never do though… At least not the wall punching thing). That’s pretty much to be said with any job though. I’ve never actually known anyone to say that they absolutely love their job and there is never any stress involved but for the most part, you’ve got to be doing something that does not make you miserable. I’m making descent money and for the most part I’m happy. Consider this goal accomplished…
2. Open a Roth IRA and invest the maximum each year.
   I’ve already explained why there is no reason not to have a Roth IRA and then Joe elaborated on the topic. Max this out every year. Invest in index funds that have been proven to be consistent gainers. If you absolutely need to, you are allowed to pull your contributions out and you can even pull some capital gains out if you are using it for a house, school or an emergency. I just recently set up my Roth but I haven’t quite contributed the max yet for this year… I’m well on my way with this one…
3. Open a discretionary investment account.
   You can only put so much money in to a Roth IRA each year. I love investing and I think it’s a good idea to have a discretionary account in which you can add and pull money from as you please. I like to use this account for trading individual stocks. I wrote an article on my investing technique. Some people might say that it’s trying to time the market but, so far, for me, it’s been a great way to tell when to get in to a stock. From then on out, I tend to hold for a while. I personally have a Scottrade account but I think it’s about to go bye bye. I’m currently looking in to setting up an account at Zecco.com because they offer free trades. Scottrade is too slow and it seems to be sort of difficult to pull my money from the brokerage. Besides, how can you beat $0 trades? I’m well under way with this goal as well.
4. Adopt a more frugal lifestyle.
   Some people get frugal and cheap confused. Ramit over at “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” describes cheap people as people who care about the cost of something while frugal people are people who care about the value of something. Buy what you need and shop smart. I am working on this one.
5. Start a blog and take steps to monetize.
   I guess my ultimate goal with the whole blogging thing is to make enough money with it that it covers one of my monthly bills. It would be so nice if I could some day say that my rent payment was covered by my blog. I still think I’m a little off from that goal though. Does anybody know of a place I can rent for $10 a month?
6. De-clutter my life and sell what might be valuable.
   I read a post over at Get Rich Slowly called “The Frugal Collector: 10 Ways to Curb the Habit“. It really made me think about how much I have and how much I can probably get rid of. When I was younger I used to collect comic books. I have hundreds and hundreds. Some are probably worth something too. I’ve decided that one of these weekends, I’m just going to go through all my collections and see if anything is of any value and try to sell whatever I don’t want. I have comic books, dvds, cds, books, computer software and various little gadgets that I probably haven’t touched in years. I can probably make a little bit of money with these and, if I’m lucky, pay down my truck a little. I’m done with hording things. I’m going to stop buying the things that aren’t necessary and started getting rid of the things I don’t need.
7. Start my own business.
   I have so many ideas for different businesses some of them brick and mortar some of them online. I hope to get at least one of them started within the next couple months. This will most likely be the online business because it requires much less start up capital. I just want to have a job where I can set my own schedule and my wages are only determined by what I can do. Then when I’m ready to retire, I can sell all the businesses I’ve created. If you’ve ever read The E-Myth, Michael Gerber explains that when owning a businesses, always have the mindset that you are building it to sell it. Can’t quite say that I’ve accomplished this goal, but I will…
8. Buy a home.
   Finally, I want to own a home. This is not my first goal though. I want to achieve all my other goals first. I want to make sure that when I purchase a home, I can do it comfortably. I know that when my parents bought their first home they had no idea how they were going to pay for it. I want to have a plan and I want all my debts to be paid off. I want to know that my blog or my online business is covering my mortgage payment every month. Mark this goal as still pretty far in the future…

Those are my steps. I’m constantly reading blogs and new books so I may have to add new steps and new good ideas. But as of now, that is my financial goal set. Feel free to comment.

-M

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