luck

Money Lessons You Can Learn From Donald Trump

January 27, 2016 By Amanda Blankenship 4 Comments

Donald Trump has obviously been in the spotlight more often in recent months. Of course, he is known for his success in the business world, his show “The Apprentice,” and more recently his unorthodox presidential campaign. While he has a lot of valid (or crazy) points throughout his campaign, there are a few lessons we can take from Trump when it comes to money and money management.

Bankruptcy

If anything, Trump has taught those who look into different companies for investments to look beyond the headlines and deeper into the company. Although Trump has never personally filed for bankruptcy, plenty of his businesses have, even though he is one of the most successful people in America. This money lesson is a hard one. It is a reminder that sometimes failure is one of the steps along the path to greater success. It is a hard lesson to take, but it is sometimes necessary.

Love What You Do

You have to love what you do. If you are passionate about it, you are more likely to be successful. You shouldn’t just join any industry or invest in anything simply because it is a “hot” item or company. You should invest you time and money because you truly care about it. If you are not passionate about your investments or even your job, sometimes you can let the smallest things slip (because you don’t care). These things can lead to a loss of a job and even demotions — two things you definitely want to avoid if you are trying to get your finances set straight.

Negotiation

Whether you are negotiating the price on a house or a pay raise, do it in person. This is something Trump strongly believes in. Obviously in the age of technology in which we all live, this one is hard. Sending an email or having a phone call with someone seems so much easier, and it is. However, negotiating face-to-face can really change the results you receive.

You Have Control of Your Finances

If Trump has taught anyone anything about finances it is that you are in control. He is obviously financially independent, but it took a little while to get there. There is a lesson to take away here though. In America, once you’ve achieved financial independence, you really don’t have to answer to anyone. Trump is definitely proof of that.

Work Hard

Trump has often said that everyone he knew who was successful worked seven days a week. You may have to put in extra work to get the money and results that you are looking for. Working hard is something that you’ll hear from just about everyone, not just Trump. Continuing work a couple of extra days each week will likely lead to success in the workplace, raises and more money.

Use Your Resources

If Trump has done nothing else as an American, he has certainly used every resource available to him to get where he is today. He’s been able to successfully navigate the legal system and use each and every resource available to him (and every other American) to his advantage. Many other people can take advantage of the plethora of tools available to them. That means just utilizing small and simple things like 401(k) and tax deductions on investment accounts.

Luck

There’s no such thing as “luck” when it comes to your finances. You don’t get lucky. As Donald Trump has said time and time again, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Of course, it is the hard work getting him places and not the “luck.”

Photo: Flickr: Gage Skidmore

How Mark Cuban Became a Billionaire

May 3, 2014 By Jeffrey Strain 1 Comment

One of the best ways to learn about how to make money is to look at those who have been successful at doing it. It’s important to listen and learn from the advice of people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Taking the advice that they have to offer can help you do better with your own personal finances, and help you reach the money goals you have.

Bloomberg put together a video about Mark Cuban that’s well worth a look. You can learn a bit more about how he became a billionaire, and also take away some lessons that can be of use for your own personal finances.

Here are five big takeaways from the video that you can learn from and apply to your own success:

Look for Opportunities

Opportunities are out there and you need to be on the lookout for them. Cuban began to do this from an early age. One of his first entrepreneurial exploits was with postage stamp arbitrage. Cuban discovered that he could buy stamps for as little as $0.25 and then resell them for as much as $50. He became so good at it that, according to his brother, that a neighbor gave him $5000 to buy stamps at a stamp show in New York for him.

It Takes a Lot of Work

Success doesn’t just fall into your lap. As Cuban says, he looks at business as a sport, much like football and basketball. The difference is while those games are played 60 minutes and 48 minutes respectively, business is played 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You aren’t going to be a success unless your work your heart out, and put in more effort than the other competitors out there.

Have an Eye for Marketing

Marketing opportunities can come from strange places and you can take those opportunities to leverage them to your benefit. Cuban, as owner the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, told a ref that he wasn’t qualified to manage a Dairy Queen. This upset Dairy Queen which wanted Cuban (and everyone) to know that it wasn’t easy to manage a Dairy Queen, and their managers are highly trained. Dairy Queen challenged him to work in a shop. It would have been easy for Cuban to blow the whole thing off, but he instead took the opportunity to work at Dairy Queen for an afternoon, garnering him a huge amount of publicity.

Be Willing to do Things Differently

In many of the businesses that he has owned, Cuban has gone about and done something fundamentally different than what businesses in that area had been doing up until then. As he says, if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you are missing the future and where those business will be in the years to come. It’s important to not only look at what’s happening now, but to anticipate where things will go so that you’re the one to implement that future.

Luck Plays a Big Part

Even with a lot of hard work, luck has a lot to do with it as well. He ended up selling his company at the right time at the height of the Internet bubble for much more than he ever could have a few years later. While this doesn’t discount all the hard work that you must do to be successful, there is an element of luck that comes into play as well. Cuban considers himself “the luckiest person in the world” and that luck had a lot to do with his overall success.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about Mark Cuban’s business secrets, check out his autobiography How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. Its gotten an average of 4 stars out of 2,911 ratings on goodreads.com, so its well worth checking out. Pick up a copy on Amazon for under 5 bucks.

Luck Has Nothing to Do With It

December 20, 2007 By Jennifer Derrick 36 Comments

It’s very frustrating when people who don’t know us well attribute our decent financial situation to “luck.” As in, “You’re so lucky that you don’t have debt,” or, “You’re so lucky not to have to worry about your bills.” The conversation usually ends with the other person saying something along the lines of, “I wish I could be as lucky as you.” Of course, good manners dictate that I don’t scoff at their kindly meant words, but I want to tell them that they could be in the same situation as I am, even if they aren’t “lucky.” Because luck had nothing to do with it.

Luck is defined as success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions. None of our financial success came from anything associated with luck. Everything we have accomplished has come through hard work, discipline, and patience, not some random turn of fate.

Do I believe that there is an element of “luck” involved in personal finance? Not really. Most of what happens with our finances is directly related to our actions, not luck. We make the decisions to spend or save, to wait for a purchase or to give in to the impulse to have it now. We decide whether to go to school so we can get a better job, or to remain where we are. We decide whether to buy insurance to protect our belongings or to take the risk of going without. We decide whether to keep an emergency fund in place to ward off so-called “bad luck” or to spend every cent we make now. We decide whether to save for retirement or hope that an inheritance will bail us out.

Some things may seem like luck (good or bad), but they’re really just life events that happen to everyone at some point. Some people say they have bad luck if they get ill or laid off or face some other financial difficulty. I don’t think it’s that you’re unlucky, it’s just life. Everyone has troubles, illnesses, and financial crises at some point in their lives. The downs are as much a part of life as the ups. It’s how you deal with them and prepare for them that determines your financial future. Not “luck.” Is it “good luck” if you get a major inheritance or win the lottery? Not really. You decided to buy the lottery ticket and take the risk, and someone worked very hard to be able to leave you that money. It’s not “luck” that you got that money, it’s tied to decisions made and actions taken.

The fact that we are debt free and financially comfortable is not the result of luck. We worked hard for the money we earned, sometimes working multiple jobs when necessary. We were disciplined enough to always live below our means, however small or large those means might have been. When it became apparent that further education was necessary to earn more money, we went back to school. We were patient and waited to buy things until we saved the money, rather than buying on impulse. We chose our purchases wisely, buying items that were good quality but not the most expensive thing on the market. We looked for deals and bought a lot of stuff used to save money. We saved for retirement and made sure we had an emergency fund so we could weather layoffs, illnesses and other losses. We avoided debt unless it made very good economic sense, such as to buy our home. We educated ourselves about finance and financial products so that we could make informed decisions, rather than relying on the advice of those who didn’t know us or our situations.

We’ve had our share of problems; bad luck if you want to call it that. Life hasn’t always been rosy and sweet with the money rolling in. There have been tough economic times in our household but we’ve kept to our plan, adjusted our spending and, if we haven’t been able to get ahead, at least we’ve stayed even until the bad times have passed. We’ve never had an inheritance or won the lottery. Money has never once come into our lives that we didn’t earn. We’ve worked, planned, and saved to have our current lifestyle. There wasn’t any luck involved.

When people tell me that I’m so lucky to be where I am, and that they wish they could be as lucky, I want to tell them that anyone can be in this situation without luck. It does require discipline and planning. You have to be willing to live below your means, even if that means being uncomfortable at times. You have to sacrifice some wants now in order to secure your financial future. You have to save, both for the short term and the distant future. You have to have a plan and stick to that plan, even when life gets in the way. You have to educate yourself about finances and make informed, proactive decisions. You can’t just wait around and hope that you’ll get lucky and money will fall from a tree as you pass under it. If you wait for luck to make you financially secure, you’ll never get there. Am I lucky to be debt free and financially secure? No. Am I hard working, disciplined, happy, prepared, anxiety-free, and able to enjoy life? You bet.

Image courtesy of cloud_nine