.Making Financial Decisions Is Hard, Overcoming Barriers

By Philip Fernbach & Abigail Sussman Market Watch

Teaching people about money doesn’t seem to make them any smarter about money – here’s what might

Making financial decisions is hard, but three promising ideas are helping Americans overcome barriers. If the average American went in for a financial checkup, he or she might get rushed to the emergency room. Forty-four percent of us can’t cover a $400 out-of-pocket expense, and 52% of American households have no retirement savings. We seem to be chronically poor at making financial decisions. We commit costly mistakes across all areas of personal finance including decisions about savings, investing, budgeting and borrowing.

Diagnosing the problem is easy: We make mistakes because financial decision making is hard, and we lack an understanding of the decisions we face. Finding a cure is much more difficult. To many, the obvious treatment is financial education, but recent research suggests that financial education is not effective.

.5 Lessons I Learned From Growing Up In The Ghetto

(And How They Helped Me On The Road To Financial Independence)

Post From Peerless Money Mentor

“Just like a rocket ship needs a lot of fuel (energy) to escape Earth’s gravitational pull before it can get into the freedom of space, to escape the ghetto we needed to expend a lot of energy in the form of hard work to gather enough money to escape the gravitational pull of the ghetto and into the freedom of a better life.” -Jack The Dreamer

Today’s post is written by Jack who blogs about fire, personal finance, and minimalism at Jack The Dreamer.

I first came across Jack’s blog when an article of his was featured on Rockstar finance. The article was titled What Living On A Farm For A Year Taught Me About Financial Independence And Life. I really enjoyed reading it, and I think you will, too! Check it out after reading this post. Instead of writing about the lessons he learned on the farm, today he will be sharing the lessons he learned while growing up in the ghetto.

.Sustaining Wealth is Harder Than Getting Rich

by Ben Carlson

The Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people looks fairly similar at the top every year.

Buffet, Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg and the Walton family are at the top of the list in some order year in and year out (they’ve been joined by Mark Zuckerberg in recent years as well).

But this list isn’t as stable as it may appear.

Over 70% of those who made this list (or their heirs) lost their status in this rarified group between 1982 and 2014. Getting there is easier than staying there for most.

High-income earners have a similarly difficult time staying at the top.

.Animation: How Billionaire Investors Are Protecting Their Wealth

Jeff Desjardins

It can take a lifetime to build a fortune of Buffett or Dalio sized proportions.

But, as all billionaires know, there is always risk present in the market – and even though a catastrophic geopolitical or financial event is very unlikely, it is important to be prepared for anything.

How Billionaires Protect Their Wealth

Today’s animation comes to us from Sprott Physical Bullion Trusts, and it shows the worries that are keeping billionaires up at night, and how they are positioning themselves to preserve wealth in any market environment.

.On The Importance Of Putting First Things First

By J.D. Roth

Holy cats! That was an interesting 72 hours.

For the past three days, I’ve been fighting a terrible cold. Or maybe the flu. I’m not sure which. It hasn’t been fun.

On Sunday, while I was in Florida attending an early-retirement retreat, I woke with crap in my lungs. All day, I was coughing and sneezing and hacking. I still felt relatively strong, though, so I made sure to get in my four-mile training run. (I made two goals involving running this year: I want to run at least one mile every day and I want to run a half marathon at the end of March.)

On Monday morning, I felt worse. Still, I rolled out of bed and tromped the one mile I had scheduled for myself. It was a l-o-n-g mile, let me tell you. I was wheezing and gasping the entire ten minutes.

.4 Risky Life Decisions Millionaires Made — But You Shouldn't

By Emily Guy Birken 19 June 2018

When you read about self-made millionaires and billionaires, it can often seem as if their success was an inevitable result of their tenacity and savvy decisions. But sometimes those choices are less savvy and more borderline irresponsible — and it would be foolhardy for most of us to try some of these stunts in our own lives.

The stories of people going from rags to riches may be inspiring, but most of us need to remain practical. That's why you should avoid copying these four life decisions successful millionaires have made. (See also: 5 Bedtime Routines of Famous Financial Gurus)

Dropping out of high school

There are a number of hugely successful individuals who did not complete their high school educations, and it did nothing to stop them from reaching the top of their fields. For instance, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, Tumblr developer David Karp, director Quentin Tarantino, and Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson all dropped out of high school and still went on to become multi-millionaires.

.6 Things I Learned About Money From Famous People's Wills

By Carrie Kirby

I've always been fascinated by William Shakespeare's will. Specifically, by the way he left his wife his "second-best bed," especially since historians are at odds over what he meant by it.

Was this an insult to a spouse he didn't get along with, or a tender gesture? After all, since everything was handmade, furniture was much more valuable back in the 1600s than it is today.

Thinking about Shakespeare's seemingly odd bequests made me realize that what people list in their wills says a lot about what they value.

So when Ancestry made a searchable database of 170 million will and probate documents available to its subscribers, I eagerly dove in. Of course, most Ancestry members use this information to learn more about their family members; the site touts these records' value in particular for African Americans searching for family history, since wills from the slavery era may name their ancestors as property.

Stop! Don't Make These 6 Dumb Mistakes With Your Financial Windfall

By Kentin Waits

Maybe your lottery numbers finally came in. Maybe a favorite aunt remembered you in her will. Heck, maybe one day while you were shootin' at some food, up through the ground came bubblin' crude — oil that is! Texas tea! (See also: 50 Smart Things to Do With Your Tax Refund)

Whatever the source, you're the lucky beneficiary of a financial windfall. Revel in it and protect your new-found wealth by avoiding these six dumb moves.

1. Act Impulsively

Receiving money unexpectedly is exciting, and it can send even normally down-to-earth folks straight into the stratosphere. In those dizzying weeks and months following a financial windfall, we're really not ourselves, so making big decisions during that time is usually a terrible idea.