What are the most important lessons to learn about personal finance?

Screenshot 2014-05-21 13.38.29Everybody has an opinion about the most important financial lessons that you can learn about personal finance. Just look at how many personal finance blogs there are [Hint: over 7,000 are listed] … and, here I am adding one more blog to that long list.

What do these blogs suggest? What do they say are the most important lessons that their authors have learned along the way?

Is it to avoid debt? Probably [here are 50 blogs just focussed on debt reduction].

Perhaps, you need an emergency fund? Of course [Googling “emergency fund” brings up 1,050,000 results].

How about spending less than you earn? Naturally [Googling “spend less than you earn” brings up 844,000 results]!

Sure, each of these can be important …

… equally, each of these can actually hurt you!

It all depends on what your ultimate goal is. For me, it’s to live my Life’s Purpose, but let’s just wind that back a little to a more generic goal – one that doesn’t require a degree in philosophy to understand:

The most important financial goals are:

1. Satisfaction – having sufficient money on hand to satisfy your most important needs, and

2. Security – having sufficient surety that your most important financial needs will always be met.

Think about these carefully, as they appear to be similar … but, they are not the same:

One (satisfaction) points to understanding your true needs (physical, environmental, emotional, etc.) and ensuring that you have sufficient income to provide for them, whilst the other (security) points to forward planning of the cash-flow required now, whilst you are working, and in the future, when you are not.

And, financial satisfaction & security is only really achieved when you have:

1. Sufficient money invested to safely fund your required lifestyle (not to be confused with your current lifestyle) – by a date of your choosing and for the rest of your life – without needing to work, and

2. Sufficient cash buffer to ensure that you can maintain that lifestyle for a reasonable period should something go wrong (market corrections; real-estate vacancies; etc).

EVERYTHING else that you do (financially-speaking) has to take you closer to achieving the above.

To illustrate the importance of this, let me give you three examples:

1. If you are young (say 25), happy to work in your current profession for the next 40 years, and living a frugal lifestyle is sufficient to satisfy your needs for the rest of your life, then financial security can be easily achieved for you simply by saving the equivalent of half your current after-tax salary (indexed for inflation) until you retire.

Of course, it would help if you avoid piling up debt, and put in place the necessary insurance (incl. an emergency fund), in case of any glitches along the way; in any event, most such issues will likely be nothing that another 4 or 5 years of hard work can’t resolve.

2. If you are in your 30’s or 40’s, entrepreneurial, and have desires in life that only early retirement can satisfy (e.g. you want to be a full-time artist; writer; traveller; and, so on), then you simply won’t be able to save enough to maintain the security of your lifestyle when you stop work in 5, 10, or even 20 years (even if you somehow manage to save 25% – 50% of your salary, accumulate no debt, and build up a huge emergency fund).

So, you will need to take my path: focussing on growing income first, then saving second (e.g. simple math shows that investing 25% of $250k a year will get you much further than saving 50% of $50k a year). Starting a business and actively investing as much of the proceeds as possible into real-estate, stocks, and bonds (rather than in your own lifestyle) has a better chance of taking you to an early, self-sustainable retirement [a.k.a. Life After Work] than any amount of debt reduction, emergency fund building, and so on.

3. If you have retired early (or late; it doesn’t matter), you are pretty much stuck with whatever level of lifestyle you have been able to satisfy from the retirement nest egg that you have built up … now, the main financial goal you need to focus on is security.

My recommendation is to now focus purely on capital protection and income:

Purchase real-estate outright and live from 75% of the net proceeds, and keep 2 years cash as an emergency fund, or purchase inflation-protected federal treasuries. Forget stocks; you will put too much strain on your heart and psyche as you watch your net worth double and halve every 7 to 10 years. That’s pretty much it.

So, when people tell you their ‘Top 10 Strategies for Financial Health’, ignore them …

… any such set of strategies is meaningless unless you can first put them into context:

How do they help you achieve your desired level of financial satisfaction and security?

I am 21 and clueless …

Screenshot 2014-05-21 12.37.01This is quite typical of the types of questions that I receive from time to time:

I’m 21, and am clueless about finance. I want to start up a business at my mid 20s. Should I opt for endowment plans or unit trust?

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are no further details, as though there’s a ‘pat’ answer for every clueless 21 year old.

Still, let me suggest the following if you are 21 years old and also want to start a business ‘one day’:

1. If you consider yourself clueless about personal finance, start by reading everything you can.

Since you are young, start with I Will Teach You to Be Rich – I was weaned on a diet of Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Richest Man in Babylon, and so on …

Warning: The important thing to note is that these books are only to whet your appetite, they will  NOT make you rich … once you reach a certain point, much of the advice will have to be discarded.

2. If you want to start a business in your mid-20’s the best way to prepare is by starting one now:

It doesn’t matter if the business is successful or not, the idea is to learn by doing.

While you are studying, you can easily start an online business: become an eBay seller; start a drop-shipping business; write a blog about your passion (or, perhaps about your financial journey) and package up some of the posts into a series of information products that you can sell.

3. If you are worried about company structures, don’t!

Just get started … and with your first $1,000 in savings (from 1.) and/or earnings (from 2.) see an accountant and do what they suggest … this isn’t the place for such technical advice.

If you do these simple things, you will be financially better off than 99% of your peers within years, if not months, and should remain so for the rest of your life.

Why?

Because they will remain clueless, whilst you will not 😉

A 10 minute primer on how to get rich?

primerOn Quora, somebody asked for “something I can learn in 10 minutes that will make me rich?”

The obvious answer is: “not much”.

But …

… this is my blog, and I’m up for a challenge.

In fact, I think you can learn pretty much everything that you need to learn about getting rich in just 10 minutes.

Unfortunately for me, if I’m right, you’ll know everything you need to know in just this one post, so you’ll have no need to keep reading …

… and, if I’m wrong then you’ll simply delete your bookmark to this blog, as it will prove I can no longer deliver.

It appears that I lose either way 😉

Even if this puts this blog out of business, I’m willing to take the 10 Minute Challenge because it also puts every other best-selling ‘get rich’ spruiker – and, let’s face it, most of them are crooks – out of business, as well.

And, that’s worth the sacrifice …

So, here goes:

I think the number one thing that you can learn in 10 minutes is: “what is your Number?” … in other words, how much is ‘rich’ for you?

For example, think about how much annual income you would need (start with $250k p.a. and work your way upwards) and multiply that number by 20.

[AJC: the question was about “rich”, so the answer needs to be $5m to $10m++ … but, this exercise is still valid even if your Number is based on 20 times $50k or $100k]

Once you have that Number in your head, think about how long you are prepared to wait before becoming ‘rich’ (if you are prepared to wait more than 5 to 10 years, surely you can give this exercise longer than 10 minutes)?

Once you have those two numbers, a few minutes playing with this Compound Annual Growth Rate calculator will tell you what % return you need on your investments each year, over that time frame.

Finally, 30 seconds with this chart will tell you everything that you need to know about how you can get rich, which was your original question:

[Source: Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Fast-Track Plan to Becoming a Millionaire (Agora Series): Michael Masterson: 9780471786757: Amazon.com: Books]

Now, as promised, this really is everything you need to know in order to become rich …

… but, I’m not worried about losing readers, because – now that you know what to do – you’ll want to bookmark this page so that you can keep reading to learn how to do it 😉

What’s an eco-friendly standard of living?

Fellow blogger, Jonathan Ping, was kind enough to include a chart from one of my earlier posts in one of his recent posts, so I thought that I should repay the favor by including one of his charts, here:

Income
I recommend that you read his original post, but the chart itself is pretty self-explanatory; it shows the problem in personal finance … and that’s:

As your income grows so do your expenses.

It’s called ‘lifestyle creep’ and is one of the key reasons why the actual wealth of high-income earners (as indicated by the grey shading between the green income line and the red expense line) is not necessarily that much higher than that of some medium- (or even low-) income earners.

The obvious solution, according to Joe and many other pf bloggers, is to reduce your spending:

Low Income

 

This way, you decrease the red expense line relative to the green income line …

… in the process, enlarging the grey-shaded area between the two lines i.e. allowing, at least in theory, even low-income earners to increase their wealth!

The problem with this strategy is that saving – especially, saving more (probably a lot more) than you do now – is really, really, really hard.

Austerity hurts. Austerity is against nature (well, my nature).

It gets worse: saving now so that you can spend later simply doesn’t work!

To make this type of cookie cutter personal finance plan actually work, you need to be debt-free and be able to live on just half your current annual income for your whole life.

In other words, you need to drop the red savings line to no more than half the green income line … not later, but now … and keep it there for the rest of your life.

Never fear, I have a better plan …

… it’s one that is far more natural, because it allows you to maintain your current standard of living, even increase it over time:

wealth graph

Let’s say that you start off as an average-income earner; here are your steps to success:

1. You can start to save a little, perhaps more than you have done in the past. Don’t worry, this austerity is temporary … after all, you already know how I feel about too much belt-tightening.

2. Once you have a little money beginning to pile up, you should find a way to put it to use to help you grow your income. Perhaps you could: start a part-time business; buy an ‘absentee-owner’ franchise; or open a car wash. You could work a little smarter and score that big (or little) promotion. Maybe you could collect a windfall: a tax refund; find a rich aunt who dies and decides not to leave all her money to her cat after all; or, you get really lucky and hit a small jackpot at Binions.

3. As your income grows, you should increase your spending by no more than 50% of your after-tax ‘pay rise’. The rest must go back into your little pile of money. Then you should concentrate on finding even more ways to put it to use to help you grow your income. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

4. As your income grows at a (much) faster rate than your spending, you will slowly begin to see that you are actually already tending towards saving 50% of your income without even trying!

Keep it up for 15 to 20 years, and you’ll be able to sustain that savings rate all the way through – and beyond – retirement, as you build a big enough bucket of wealth (your net worth) as shown by the green-shaded area between your income and expense lines.

What’s more, this fully sustainable standard of living is always more than your current standard of living, so you never, ever need to tighten your best. The secret with this plan is that you simply don’t loosen your belt as fast as other high-income earners tend to do.

Obvious, really …

Now, that’s what I call eco-friendly finance 😉

[You can also read this post in the Carnival of Personal Finance:  http://wealthpilgrim.com/carnival-of-personal-finance-happy-days-are-here-again-edition ]

How much do you really need?

2013-02-14 17.05.10My soon-to-be-nephew is having his wedding at our house; he’s an event organizer (amongst other things) so this is his opportunity to create his (and my niece’s) ideal wedding …

… we were, of course, delighted to be able to lend our house.

As he was supervising the erection of the marquee over our tennis court and false flooring over the pool, we were chatting about wealth.

During the course of discussion, the subject came up of how much do you really … and, ideally … need?

What is the Perfect Number?

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will know that I’ve said that you need as much passive income as you need to live your Life’s Purpose.

Even without knowing your Life’s Purpose, though, I can still tell you roughly what your Perfect Number should be:

You should aim to live no better than your closest group of friends.

Let me explain with a personal example …

We have a long-standing group of friends.

We eat often eat together. We party together. We travel together.

Not always. Not only. But, often enough.

Now, how would you feel if you travel coach, most of your other friends travel coach, but one of your friends is always at the front of the plane?

How would you feel if you like to eat out at a mid-priced restaurant once every couple of weeks with your friends, but one of your friends is always trying to arrange 5-star dining? And, 5-star hotel’ing?

I think your friend would eventually price herself out of your group of friends.

Well, I am in danger of becoming that friend.

Our friends are all quite well-off, because they are all professionals (both husbands and wives) drawing great incomes for many years. All of our children privately school together, and vacations are now flying coach (with kids) or business class (without kids), staying at international 4-star resorts at least once, and probably twice, most years.

But, our house is clearly the best in the group. Our cars are the best (and, could be better, but I’m starting to realize that I should hold back a little). And, we could be flying business class (sometimes even international first class), and easily stay in 5-star hotels.

In short, we have to be careful not to make the difference obvious.

That’s why I told my nephew (to be) – as I am telling you now: aim to live no better (but, no worse) than your closest group of friends, assuming that you wish them to remain your friends.

I can add a little more:

– Aim to be towards the top of your circle in terms of sustainable annual income.

– Aim to have a buffer, so that you can maintain that standard even if something goes wrong.

[AJC: This is not the same as an emergency fund: this means, for example living on the same $50k p.a. as your friends, but actually earning $70k p.a.]

– Aim to be able to maintain that standard of living (with buffer) when you begin to live Life After Work.

– Make sure that your Life After Work (i.e. very early retirement) makes you still ‘look’ busy

[AJC: Sitting on a beach all day while your friends still 9-to-5 it 50 weeks a year will just as quickly put you in the ‘former friend’ category as flashing your cash]

So, how much money do you really need?

Step 1: Take what your friends are earning and add 20% buffer

Step 2: Multiply that by 20

Step 3: Add the amount remaining on your mortgage (or, what your mortgage would be if you bought one of the better houses owned by your friends)

Step 4: Add any additional ‘crazy money’ that you need for some of your ‘keep busy’ Life’s Purpose activities.

Step 5: Double your final total for every 20 years until you expect to be able to accumulate that amount of money (or, add 50% for every 10 years), to account for inflation.

That should give you a very practical Number … you might even say your Perfect Number 😉

Now, you just need to go out and get it.

What’s a simple business to start?

Often, I’m asked about businesses to start.

Usually, the person asking has low-to-zero capital to invest; wants to start part-time; and, wants “a simple business to start”:

What is a business that I can start, so simple in nature, that virtually I (perhaps with the help of a friend) could start with less than $3000 and some hard work?

Well, there are lots of what I call ‘traditional’ businesses that you can start part-time, depending on your talents:

For example, if you are good at photography, you could do wedding photos at nights or on weekends. Same if you like baking (“cakes delivered to your door”).

But, these aren’t as easy to scale part-time, in my opinion,  as an online business …

… which is why I prefer online businesses, these days.

Even then, some online businesses are better than others:

For example, starting a blog (perhaps like this one), or selling information products (e.g. eBooks), or even starting an eBay business might be relatively easy, but they’re hard to scale into something that might one day take you full-time (so that you can quit your job and become your own boss) or even – eventually -become saleable.

So, let me share with you the little-known secret of the type of online business that I think is:

1. easiest to start, and

2. makes the most money, and

3. is still quite scaleable and saleable (the two magic words if you want to retire rich).

The secret is to create a 2-sided market place.

A two-sided market place is any kind of business that has buyers on one side and sellers on the other:

1. eBay is one example: it’s people and businesses selling to other people and businesses.

2. Amazon is NOT an example (it’s very hard to set up a warehouse and systems to become an online seller like Amazon) but the Amazon Marketplace is a example: it has buyers and sellers using Amazon’s payment platform to sell stuff to each other.

3. Etsy is another example: people make things (arts, crafts, jewellery, etc.) and list it on Etsy.com where people browse and buy things: Etsy doesn’t make anything, sell anything, or hold stock … it just makes a % of every sale for introducing both sides of the marketplace to each other.

4. The most famous recent example is Airbnb, started by 3 guys who simply came up with the idea of letting people share their couches for backpackers to stay (they weren’t even the first: couchsurfing.com got there first); it has since evolved into a real competitor to the Expedias and Pricelines of this world and is on track to become a $1bill.+ company.

That’s why, when people ask me what business to start, this type of business is usually where I then point them.

But, how to start?!

To start Airbnb (I suggest you don’t, this is just an example):

1. One of the startup’s founding team goes around their home city photographing and signing up a whole bunch of ‘bed and breakfast’-style accommodation (I know that Airbnb didn’t start with this; remember, this is just an example)

2. The other founder gets to kick back with a tiny budget to drive traffic to a ‘sign up to be notified when … ‘ landing page (LaunchRock is ideal for this).

[HINT: try $50 worth of Facebook ads and another $50 of Google Adwords and see if that drives any traffic. Spend $10 on each ad platform on 5 different keywords rather than $50 on one. Remember to target your ads specifically to your city (I know FB allows this; I’m not sure if Google does). Submit your landing page to sites like betali.st and startupli.st. Wait for a more significant story before you spam Techcrunch and Mashable]

3. Once you have 20 to 50 BnB’s signed up, and perhaps 200 – 600 names on the landing page, you put the two sides together and see if magic happens!

4. If so, you rinse and repeat in another city, and another (until you raise sufficient investment to allow you to hire ‘city managers’ to do the photographic/doorknocking for you).

5. If not, this marketplace idea sucks. Try another.

Now, stop asking and go do it … 🙂

LATEST NEWS

Catch my latest interview herehttp://www.creditcardassist.com/blog/7-million-7-years-best-of-the-best-blogger-series-22702/ – thanks Bill (founder of Credit Card Assist).

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Make money when you buy!

There’s an old saying that you may have heard. It’s used particularly in relation to real-estate, but it can be applied to many forms of investment. It’s:

You make money when you buy, not sell.

One of my new readers asked me to explain what it means:

Could you expend on this statement a little or maybe you have some related blogs about this on your site? “…buy at the right price you make money when you BUY not when you sell.”

I don’t think I’ve ever written explicitly about this age-old investment adage, because it’s almost a tautologogy …

… after all, an investment is something that you should never need to sell!

To me, a true investment is something that generates ongoing income. So why would you ever sell it?

Any ‘asset’ that you buy, specifically to sell to (hopefully!) generate a profit, is in reality a SPECULATION, not a true investment.

Business makes these kinds of speculations all the time: buying trading stock (or labor) with the expectation [read: hope] of selling it at a sufficient price to generate a healthy profit.

Businesses take a calculated risk in doing so, hoping that the potential profits justify the risk, but …

90% of business owners are wrong!

They say that 9 out of 10 businesses fail within their first 5 to 10 years. They fail for lots of reasons, but one of the main ones is that these simply cannot make enough money when they sell due to competitive pressures, new products, outdated manufacturing techniques, low volumes, etc., etc.

As investors, we cannot afford to make the same mistake, otherwise we are just gamblers – gambling that: red will hit more times than black; we will roll a natural 7; AAPL stock will go long this month; Las Vegas house prices will continue to climb.

On the other hand, as true investors, we have to buy well, then hold on for the long run.

It is the income from our investments that makes us rich (by funding our dream lifestyle), not the amount that we could sell the investment for.

How about you? Are you an investor or gambler? Do you see the difference?

The right time to speak to a professional …

I have previously gone out on a limb to say that it’s very difficult (actually, I said impossible) to pay to get good commercial / investing advice.

Why?

Unlike a doctor, accountant, or attorney who can only give themselves so much self-help [AJC: unless the doctor’s a hypochondriac; the accountant’s an embezzler; or, the attorney’s a criminal]  …

… any “investment / business advisor” really worth listening to is probably making too much money for themselves to waste their time advising you on how to make money.

On the other hand, on rare occasions, you can find such high-quality advice:

– You can find a mentor; somebody who’s been there / done that and is willing to counsel you one-on-one

– You can buy stock in a company owned by such a person e.g. Berkshire Hathaway; by investing in BH (for example) you are ‘paying’ Warren Buffett to look after your wealth as a by-product of looking after his own.

WARNING: if you ever receive a bill from either of these types of people … run for the hills! They are not whom they seem 😉

But, there is a time when you DO need to seek – and, pay for – financial advice; to illustrate, here is an e-mail that I recently received:

Heh Adrian, do you think you can help and ole lady, who has been swindled more time that you can count, now unemployed (forced retirement), drowning in debt with but 1.1 million in property assets and 80K in bank that I am using to live off but it will only last 11 months with what I am paying out? I am 66 my husband (also retired) is 68.

It was our two financial advisors that got us into some of this trouble. We Lost our retirement investment through their recommendations. Even our other real estate investment (2 raw land and 1 condo) are now worth less than the remaining mortgages.

[My last] $80k is not just spending money; it is also supporting those mortgages, which I can’t sell due to the market.

You see, the time to pay for GOOD financial advice is when you think you might be in financial trouble (even if it was BAD financial advice that got you there, in the first place).

That’s why I don’t like to seek advice about WHERE to put my money.

But, this reader DEFINITELY needs to seek urgent professional financial advice!

She should get a recommendation from a friend to a fee-based advisor and/or accountant and just ask them to help her make some immediate decisions about her current structure: e.g. should she (can she) walk away from her mortgages? How much can she budget for the next 12 months in living expenses, and so on?

Then she’ll need to start learning (reading this blog is a good start) how to make real money, all over again …

What would you do in her situation?

Are you still relying on your mother?

At what age is it appropriate to take financial responsibility for your own life? Before college? During college? After college?

When is it appropriate to grow up, financially?

To help us explore this issue, here is a question that I received by e-mail from RichKidSmartKid:

I’m 29 presently in my first year of college where I used money from my inheritance that I had invested, sold and used to pay for college. I’m soon going to be broke and wont have an income and will be relying on my mother to help me financially though school.

I want to bounce back from this financial hell and increase my networth. Possibly even made some money by the time I complete univeristy. I was wondering what advice do you have?

Sounds like her name is where RKSK wants to be rather than where she is. It looks like she had money, but now it’s gone, and would like some again!

Look, with $6k cash and going to college, the reality is that she is still probably $6.5k better off than most college kids, so here is my advice:

1. Talk to other college kids and see how they do (or intend to) get by – it’s amazing how much you can learn by listening to what other people have to say – then do the opposite 😉

2. Read this post, it’s probably my best advice for college-age kids:

http://7million7years.com/2008/08/22/start-the-next-facebook/

Now, this doesn’t directly apply to RichKidSmartKid who is 29 – but, only in 1st year (good on her for finally thinking about her education, though) – but I have an issue with college kids calling themselves ‘kids’:

In most countries (other than those in the privileged west), by the time you reach college age you would be an adult, long married, with plentiful hungry children and a crop in the field.

In those countries, RichKidSmartKid would have been considered a self-supporting adult a LONG time ago!

Maybe it’s time to start thinking like one now?

The False War On Debt …

There’s a war raging out there: it’s being fought by authors and bloggers everywhere.

But, is it the right war? Is it a just war? Or, are we just throwing ourselves, by the millions, into a hail of fire: exploding spending, rampant inflation, the death of social security?

Sure, as we sit in the relative safety of our trenches (at least, that’s what we tell ourselves, until a random mortar shell of job loss or unexpected expenses chooses to lob our way) this is not OUR future … it’s somebody else’s, or it’s too far away, or it just can’t happen …

The sad truth is that legions have jumped the wall before us and have been brutally cut down for lack of an adequate nest-egg; it’s sad to see them go over the dreaded wall of retirement (be it their time, or forced on them early) without an adequate safety net … when they do, it’s as though their grim fate had already been sealed.

Broke – or ‘just’ financially crippled – and unable (for financial reasons) to live life as they had hoped, they are a sad, sad lot.

You see, the war that they fought wasn’t – isn’t – a just war. It’s not even a war … well, it shouldn’t even be more than a skirmish.

It’s the War Against Debt!

When it comes to that war, I’m strictly a pacifist; isn’t it better to simply avoid BAD debt?

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can’t … shouldn’t … defend ourselves.

Far from it: if we find that BAD debt has snuck through our defences, let’s keep an eye on it. And, if we find that it’s also EXPENSIVE debt, then let’s whip out the Big Guns and wipe it out. Quickly, surgically …

… but, let’s not commit Debt Genocide.

You see, unlike the well-intentioned, but largely Debt-McArthyist “ALL Debt Is Bad, So Let’s Wipe It Out” rabble out there, let’s first ask The Missing Question:

What will you do after your debt is paid off?

“Well, start investing of course!”

But, does that REALLY happen? Who better to ask than Money Reasons:

This past February 2010, I became totally debt free, but now what!

I thought that there would be a period where I would break even for a while, and then start to plow about $1,000 extra each month into investments!  So now that it’s seven months later and how much extra did I save or invest?  Not a single cent!

Hang on, the whole purpose of suiting up for battle – for going to war against debt – was so that you could start investing, right? What’s up with that, Money Reasons:

Well it’s been a matter of bad luck with equipment breaking down and needing replaced and spending too much for our past vacation to Hilton Head Island!

But it’s also been a subtle form of LifeStyle Inflation!  Thinking back now, I realize that when wants would arise, I would just go ahead and buy it.  Yeah, I thought about it a bit, but I knew that I had the cash.  Then when your car and lawn mower broke down, I had the cash too…

Money Reasons should have started investing well before all of his debt was paid off … he should have started investing as soon as his expensive debt was paid off and left his cheap debt on a regimen of minimum payments.

The problem with this war is that it’s an unjust war; as TraineeInvestor said: “Debt is a tool. Paying it off is simply choosing not to use the tool.”

Yes, becoming debt free is simply a tactic

If you have to go and fight a war, don’t fight a war against debt …

… go and fight a war for investment 😉