Tag Archives: millionaire

What does poker have to do with investing?

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Warning: This is a High Risk Post … it’s only for those poor misguided souls who INSIST on speculating (be it: stocks, real-estate, FOREX, commodities, etc., etc.) … don’t do it! But, if you MUST try to gamble your way to a fortune (admittedly, it has – albeit RARELY – been done), at least read on ….

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I have a confession to make: I love playing poker.

I had never played a hand – nor gambled at all (I hate any game where the casino odds are even 1% or 2% against me … why throw money away?!) – but, then I arrived in the USA and turned on the television just as Chris Moneymaker was bluffing Sammy Farha on his way to making history at the 2003 World Series of Poker  …

… it was like meeting the eyes of a woman across a crowded room; it was (I am ashamed to admit) ‘love’ at first sight 🙂

Which brings me to the Universe’s Cruel Joke, and it goes something like this:

I exclusively play No-Limit Texas Hold’em but met a friend who is one of the world’s top Pot Limit Omaha pro’s … in fact, I now take tennis lessons with him. This (not him!) convinced me to give the game a try, so I throw $40 (being sensible, no need to throw ‘real money’ away) into an online table while I’m chatting to a friend over the ‘phone and what do you know, I’ve made $200 about 3 minutes later!

This is a game I could grow to love, so I proceeded to lose $4k over the next few weeks, playing my usual limits …

… oh, I know this is just ‘variance’, because I’m in with the best hand almost every single time 😉

Which brings me to Josh:

Josh is one of our 7 Millionaires … In Training! and he intends to make his money trading according to a system that he has been developing for trading pharmaceutical stocks. I have high hopes for Josh, and he will probably end up with his own hedge fund, if he survives his good luck.

You see, Josh has just hit it big – and sudden – as, he explains:

My net worth increased over 1200% on May 7. Check out my networth profile I updated recently.
https://www.networthiq.com/people/jaushwa

[I put] the whole 401(k) and personal brokerage account into a penny pharmaceutical stock, (avg price was around .0475 cents.) Today it closed at .82 cents. The stock is TTNP, Titan Pharmaceuticals.

Adrian, when are we starting MM-201, I’m jumping out of my skin here?

As I said to Josh:

If you MM201′ed any harder, you’d burst :P

Picture 4

You see, it’s easy to make money when you find a stock that climbs straight up like Jeff’s Hornet on full after-burners, it’s MUCH harder to:

a) Repeat until rich, and

b) Keep it, once you’ve made it.

What has this to do with poker? More importantly, what does poker have to do with investing?

Well, if you are a trader/speculator … everything!

You see, poker is a high ‘variance’ activity – that means that there is both a skill and luck component – but, you may know this as high risk / high reward. And, the best friend of the professional poker player is not skill … or even having luck on their side … it’s bankroll management.

At its simplest, ‘bankroll management’ means not allocating too much of your bankroll (i.e. capital) to any one session, and walking away when you lose that … at its most complex, it can involve a whole set of rules, such as Chris Ferguson’s poker bankroll management system …

… Chris is a top poker professional who – as his own ‘grand experiment’ – set out to make $10,000 starting with just one penny. Even though he had great skill – far greater than any of his opponents at the levels that he was playing at – he knew that he needed to protect himself from that devil known as ‘variance’ (i.e. sheer bad luck):

Here’s how he did it:

Chris Graph

Starting with nothing but a Full Tilt Poker account, Chris played in Freerolls until he earned enough to graduate to games with real-money buy-ins. From that point on, he adhered to a strict set of guidelines to build up his bankroll:

  • He never bought into a cash game or a Sit & Go for more than 5 percent of his total bankroll; the only exception was at the lowest limits: he was allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less
  • He didn’t buy into any multi-table tournaments for more than 2 percent of his total bankroll; the only exception was $1 MTTs
  • If at any time during a No-Limit or Pot-Limit cash-game session the money on the table represented more than 10 percent of his total bankroll, he had to leave the game when the blinds reached him

Getting started wasn’t easy. In fact, it took more than seven months of steady play until he got his bankroll to stabilize at about $6.50. Undaunted, Chris maintained his discipline and dedication and continued with his challenge. Then, on November 26th, 2006, Chris made a major breakthrough. He turned a $1 tournament buy-in into $104 in prize money when he finished second in a 683-player tournament. Even with that huge bankroll boost, it still took Chris nine more months of hard work to reach $10K. But because he strictly adhered to the bankroll management strategy that he’d set for himself, Chris achieved his goal the following September.

Besides the sheer similarity in Josh’s and Chris’ graph, there are clear parallels between poker and trading … if you still can’t see them, stop and play a little $1 / $2 no-limit hold’em online … you’ll begin to see my point, pretty soon 😉

What has this to do with personal finance??!

Well, for traders and speculators,’bankroll management’ – which we call Making Money 101 – is also the most important skill that you need to learn so that you have a base to work from and a fall-back …

… if you are still not 100% convinced, I would encourage you to grab the book about Jesse Livermore – The World’s Greatest Trader. I want you to see that he became rich and broke FOUR separate times (then, blew his own head off) … I don’t want this to happen to you.

Once you really FEEL this, read on – otherwise, just bookmark this post and wait … nothing produces discipline better than the inevitable major loss …

OK, if you are now TRULY ‘on board’, I want you to break your ‘windfall’ into three easy (well, equal) pieces:

1. Trading Account: do more of what you just did, and hope to repeat (just remember NOT to put all of your position into one investment … ONLY invest into one ‘event’ what you would be happy to lose 100% of without suffering unduly)

2. Passive Investment Account: Buy a rental; or buy/hold ‘boring stocks’ that you would be happy to own forever … fight the urge to trade these stocks!

3. Savings Account: This is what you live on (assuming trading is your major source of income), keep this in cash or CD’s. I told Josh to use this as a deposit on his own condo.

When you lose 1. (almost all poker players – and traders – lose their ‘bankroll’ at least once in their lives … some MANY times a.k.a. Jesse Livermore) forget about ever ‘dipping’ into 2. or 3. to try and ‘catch up your losses’ … it won’t happen(!): you will simply have to go back and build up a new trading account from scratch … just like you did when you first started out.

Always remember this ‘3 easy pieces’ approach to windfalls and you won’t ever go [completely] broke …

Rich 1; Broke 0; Head [Intact] – not a bad scoreline ;)

How much money can you amass living frugally?

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miser11The answer, of course, is a lot … especially if you consider $1.4 million ‘a lot’ … and, who doesn’t?

KC (a regular at my new reader community: www.sharyournumber.org) sent me an e-mail asking:

I saw this article: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/95052F7B696733CA8625759500189E1C?OpenDocument

[the headline reads: “How social worker Jane M. Buri saved $1.4 million, then gave it all away”] and I can’t begin to think how you could start to calculate whether this is indeed possible for a moderately paid social worker who lived frugally.

What are your thoughts?

Well, on the surface the lady appears to be a classic miser; she:

– never married, never had children, never missed a day of work

– drove a 30-year-old car, watched an ancient TV (she resisted replacing her old TV and icebox), lived four decades in a house bought with cash in 1969 (the furniture was her parents’)

– dressed plainly, wore costume jewelery, dyed and permed her own hair

– would buy five sandwiches for $5.95 from Arby’s (she’d eat one and freeze the four others for later; when she went out with friends, they nearly always split the bill)

I think this statement sums it up the best:

She lived, her friends say, nearly as a nun.

On the other hand; she also ‘lashed out’ from time to time; if you call eating out ‘lashing out’:

Nor did she deny herself small indulgences. Some weeks, she ate out three meals a day, friends said. She traveled to Europe, and to the Rose Parade in California. She bought a baby grand piano.

OK, this is a lesson in frugality: single woman, no mortgage or car payments for thirty years and 100% gainfully employed living frugally …

… does this mean that it’s surprising how much she managed to leave behind?

Well, we have a data point:

She got her first job as a social worker in 1954, according to St. Louis Public School records. She made $3,800 a year. Within 10 years, she was running the department and had doubled her salary.

Let’s assume that she grew her salary from 1964 until 2002 at 6% p.a. (which leaves her a finishing salary in 2000 of nearly $61,000); let’s also assume that despite her frugal habits that she still spent / donated half her money (after all, there “was nothing she wanted and didn’t buy” and she “kept stacking charity donation envelopes in her sun room, until, once a year, she sent them all in”) … which all means, that we are assuming that she saved ‘just’ 50% of her salary.

Putting this all into a spreadsheet (with the final assumption that she just managed to earn 6% on her money, compounded over the 50 years that we are talking about), I can see that $1.4 mill. is reasonable for her to leave behind; in fact – by pure coincidence, because of all the assumptions that I’ve made – that’s exactly what I came up with at my first attempt at running the numbers.

There’s no doubt that living this frugally for 50+ years, having no major expenses (family, house, car, etc.) is the secret to this kind of financial ‘success’ … she apparently enjoyed the life of a ‘nun’ … so might others … would you?

Ooops! She broke the 25% Rule ….

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keeping up with the jonesI wrote a post some time ago about how I broke (nay, smashed!) the 20% Rule (you know, the one that tells you what % of your net worth you should have ‘invested’ – read: tied up – in your own home) when I bought my latest house – considering that we paid $4 mill., are about to renovate for at least $1 mill., and still own another $2 mill. house that we haven’t been able to sell due to the crash, I’d say that we need some major corrective action … which, I outlined in this post.

The next housing problem that I wrote about, doesn’t affect me (as we paid cash for our houses) but, was how to deal with the now-all-too-common situation where you are ‘upside down’ on your mortgage.

Now, thanks to Alexandria who commented on that post with a question, we can now assess the third major housing-related financial problem: what to do when you break the 25% Rule (the one that lets you know how much of your income to spend on rent/mortgage payments)?

Panic is always a good first option …

… before we do that, let’s hear Alexandria’s ‘problem’:

Ok… after reading the above I want some options on my situation. Married, three school aged kids. Currently own a home with a high mortgage that is worth just about $50K more then we owe. Not the home of our dreams. We are not in foreclosure. I am self emplyed and my husband is a Police Officer. We can make our monthly mortgage but it eats up about 60% of our monthly income. We have no savings, a mininal 401 plan, no large other debt. We are both in our mid thrities. We can rent a much nicer home in our area for about $1k less then our mortgage a month. If you were us, would you sell and rent or keep the house?

OK indeed!

My first piece of financial advice would be to dump the copper and marry some rich bloke (I’ve seen your photo) who looks like me … but, marriage proposals aside, I can’t offer you any better advice than that, because I am NOT you …

… that’s why I struggle to answer specific “what would you do if …” questions on this blog, because I rarely have enough information to know how to deal with YOUR Life’s most difficult financial decisions.

BUT, it’s not all doom-and-gloom, because I can use wonderful readers’ questions, such as this one, to inspire some general points: just don’t construe it as direct personal advice, even though I may liberally intersperse “you” and “should” in my posts to make them more readable.

Disclaimer out of the way 🙂

Even though I can’t really give you the answer that you can ‘take to the bank’, I can ask why you would consider keeping a home that you don’t like, when you can sell it and rent a nicer one and save/invest an extra $12k a year?

Better yet, what would it do for you financially (balanced against family ‘needs’ … not keeping up with the Jones’ … hence, the image at the top of this post) if you sold this place and used the freed up equity as a deposit against a smaller/cheaper place that fits closer to the 25% income Rule, and then used the money saved on mortgage payments (100% of it!) to finally start to build your financial future?

Remember, given that this is effectively your first home (i.e. you have not built up any housing equity yet) the answer – for you – maybe somewhere between the two …

Nice house v fewer financial headaches … what a trade-off to have to make 🙂

Don't ask "if" … ask "how"!

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car

I got home very late last night to see this e-mail from my son – we live in the same house, but he is 14 years old, so that is now his preferred mode of communication 😛 –

i have decided that this is gonna be my car, i dont know how but somehow …eventually : http://www.carpoint.com.au/used-car/NISSAN/GT-R/Victoria/csn6641299.aspx?State=VIC

You have no idea how proud that made me feel …

To explain, let me give you some background:

I was a ‘late bloomer’ in that I was always willing and able to work, and never stood in line for a handout … but, I didn’t really get hit by the entrepreneurial bug until my late 20’s (even though I always had that vague “make my first million by 30” idea in the back of my mind. Oh, I missed by about 15 years … then retired at 49).

On the other hand, my son has had his own eBay business for about 2 years (off and on due to various accidental – and minor, in my opinion – account ‘oversights’); we are used to the idea of seeing packages on our doorstep in the morning (left by our son for the postman to deliver to his customers) and in the evening (packages left for my son, containing stock from overseas … usually China).

Right now, he is instant messaging (i.e. in ‘live’ conversation) with various suppliers in China looking for more genuine Bose headsets (he has just imported 2 at about $150 each).

Now, to put this in perspective:

– he was 12 when he started his business

– he researched and set it up totally on his own

– he found and negotiated with his own domestic and foreign suppliers (mainly communicating via e-mail)

– he downloaded Quicken (accounting software), integrated it with eBay’s software, and worked out how to set it up (including opening balances)

– his allowance is twice his age (currently $28 per month) and easily outstrips that rate with his eBay profits per week

… and, he did all of this with NO outside help (I have no idea how to do ANY of this).

So, I am proud of my son, not just for his entrepreneurial spirit (he is self-starting 10 to 15 years before I did), but that he has discovered something important:

Don’t ask “if” or “I wish I could have this car” … ask, “HOW can I get this car“; as I said in my e-mail back to him  – I think I need to make an appointment in his busy schedule to speak to him about this 😉  –

This car is WAY too powerful for you to drive until you are at least 25 years old … but, after then, the world is your oyster (that means: go for it!) …

BTW: You are asking the right question: How can I get this car? Not: IF I can get this car? Once you ask yourself HOW, your subconscious starts to work on providing the answer and eventually it will come! Good Luck!

Notice that I did NOT say ” good boy, now rich dad will buy it for you” and, notice how he didn’t ask? That’s MY boy 🙂

How do I invest with only twenty dollars to spare each month?

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This is actually a very common question: How do I invest with only twenty dollars to spare each month?

It was most recently asked by Jacqueline Robinson of TX in response to a US News article that I contributed to:

Basically, I would have to put back pennies at a time and hope that one day it will add up to a nice saving for me in the future. Ok, yes I would like to have that special person to come onto my job at Sobway and say, I read your story on the us news and how I feel that this money would benefit you more than it would me at the moment, or that you are the lucky winner today. Well, that would be living in a fantasy world, so if I could get some good, strong suggestions on how to save money and invest at the same time for my future I would leave El Centro College in Dallas TX with a smile on my face.

Well, Jacqui, I’m certainly not going to come into your ‘Sobway’ for a sandwich and write you a check for $150,000 as a ‘tip’ as you will no doubt lose it pretty quickly because you need to first learn the lessons of money before you make your money so that you can keep your money 😉

The question is normally asked in a manner that suggests: “$20 is such a small amount, what possible difference can it make if I save it instead of spend it?”

Well, in some respects I understand the ‘losing attitude’ because even if you faithfully save $20 each month and somehow manage to match the 30 year ‘guaranteed’ stock market return of 8.5% compound (ignoring fees), after 30 years Jacqui will have saved less than $30,000 (which is worth less than $9,000 in today’s money if inflation averages just 4%).

But, Jacqui will no doubt be receiving better and better jobs and at least increasing the $20 monthly savings with inflation (won’t you, Jacqui?), so she should end up with something approaching $45,000 (or, less than $14,000 after inflation) …

… so, I share her implied pain.

But, with $20 a month you can rent a stall at a market and sell on consignment seconds from local manufacturers (that means that local manufacturers will gladly let you have a bit of their not-quite-right stock on ‘loan’ until you can sell it and pay them a pretty cheap price) … or, one of a hundred other ‘micro businesses‘ that require little to no start-up funds.

With the couple of hundred dollars a month that you might make from that activity, you might be able to build up a ‘nest egg’ 10 times larger than before …

… better yet (because, who can live the rest of their lives off the equivalent of $140,000 after inflation … total?!) use that money to gain a higher education and/or start an internet-based business that might make you an extra few hundred dollars a month.

With, say, an extra $700 a month you could ‘retire’ after 30 years with the princely sum of $450,000 (in today’s ‘after inflation’ dollars) or use that few extra hundred dollars a month to start a ‘real’ business … one that can …

… well, you know the rest: it’s how I went from $30k in debt to over $7 million in the bank in just 7 years.

Jacqui, you’re already $30k – and, $20 a month – better off than I was when I started my journey, so suck it up and get to it! 🙂

Speculating on your own home?

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Ryan, who is upside down on his own mortgage asks:

I agree that plenty of investments, if not most, will give you a better APR than your house, but what about leverage?

$500,000 House( $400,000 Bank’s money, $100,000 Your Down Payment) * .05(expected year 1 appreciation = $25,000

$100,000(Your would be down payment) * .15 (from a successful investment or business venture) = $15,000

This is POSSIBLY true IF you gain market appreciation; that’s called speculation.

On the other hand, if you put the same money into a cashflow positive rental, then you make money on the rents and any future appreciation is a bonus; that’s called business.

A case can possibly be made for using your own home as a ‘business’ investment IF you presume to (nominally) charge yourself market rent for the same type of accommodation …

… but, would you pay that same rent rent to somebody else?

The answer must be ‘yes’ for this to work.

If so, then compare how the property then stacks up as an investment if you were the owner and renter i.e. is the pseudo-rent greater than the mortgage?

But, there is still a catch: you also lose most of the great tax benefits of a true investment (e.g. depreciation), even though as home owners in the US you gain some (capped) tax-benefits – particularly in relation to your mortgage interest.

But, there is a solution: buy a house to rent out, and rent the identical one from somebody else!

Rent out the one that you own and rent the other one from the owner: this way, you ‘force’ yourself to treat the one that you own as a real cashflow investment and the other as a place that you live in.

What do you give up?

Probably that sense of ‘ownership’ (but, hey … you do own the identical one, right?) and security of tenure.

But, you must weigh this up against the benefits:

1. True investment ‘status’ … buy, sell, hold, refi as the numbers dictate

2. Gain depreciation benefits for anything that you add (works great if this is a new’ish house!)

3. Full, uncapped tax-deduction on mortgage interest, etc.

4. ???? [you tell me?]

In fact, if you have a friend, why don’t you each buy a house and rent it to the other? Now, that is a strategy worthy of a millionaire … in training! 🙂

Please cough, sir …

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picture-11

This is a neat little tool produced by CNNMoney to check your ‘financial health’ … it asks a few simple questions and gives you a diagnosis, highlighting problem areas in the red ‘bubbles’ (the blue ones are all OK).

The one shown here has been done for somebody who certainly seems to have some financial problems, having scored only a C+; this person is:

1. Paying too much for housing

2. Not diversified enough

3. Has too much of their stock portfolio in company stock

4. Has no life insurance

The problem is, this person is me 😉

CNNMoney thinks that a multimillionaire scores a C+ on their finances, but somebody who can’t rub two sticks together scores an A+ as long as they:

– Are diversified,

– Have life insurance,

– Pay too much for their house

[AJC: CNNMoney recommends no more than 38% of your gross income; we would say no more than 25% of net income]

… and, so on.

A common-wisdom tool with a common-wisdom result for a common-wisdom (work for 40 years, retire on minimum wage at 65) outcome. At least you won’t be broke.

BTW: Why did I [almost] fail?

a) We are renting a house ($35k a year) while renovations on our new one are underway, and we have not yet sold our US home, so land taxes ($30k a year) still have to be paid; both temporary costs

b) We fail diversification because it doesn’t ask about real-estate and we have too much in cash at the moment; the way I look at it, we pass on the ’emergency fund’ bit because we have at least 20 years living expenses on hand right now 🙂

c) We failed on company stock because we had a few mill. in bonus shares [AJC: now worth two-tenths-of-f**k-all as they say in Aus] and are waiting for some semblance of a ‘rebound’ before we sell … could be a loooonnnngggg wait

d) Life insurance? see b) 😛

Try the tool and let me know what you think ….

Folks are dumb where I come from …

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I had cause to use this video, but it got me to thinking – at least, if I could fire up those few little grey cells that I got left – about the relationship between money and intelligence …

… it turns out that there ain’t none 😉

[AJC: At least I’m smart enough to embed a video, insert a couple of links, write 15 or so words, and …. voila … a day’s posting/work done!]

It's all about the curve …

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The secret to making money can actually be most easily explained visually; at least I’m going to have a go at trying to explain it visually in this three-part series:

The Straight Line Curve

line-1

A straight line is actually a ‘curve’ mathematically / graphically-speaking …

… but, financially-speaking it describes a situation where you may have a lump sum just sitting in CD’s and earning you 2.5% and you withdraw the interest to spend. This describes a basic Making Money 301 situation where you may have already reached your Number, want to keep it in the bank (safe, right?), and can afford to just live off the interest.

[AJC: This would be OK, if it were not for the effects of inflation; in reality, your Net Worth would be decreasing as inflation erodes the buying power of your lump sum savings]

This ‘curve’ also describes what happens when you earn money primarily from your own labor: you have a ‘lump sum’ (i.e. the total number of hours that you can apply to your job/profession), which provides a ‘fixed return’ (i.e. the hourly rate that you are paid or charge) that you spend / live off: nice, while lasts 🙂

Given that none of my readers are interested in ‘straight-lining’ their way to certain financial ‘death’, in the next two parts of this series, we will examine ways to accelerate your returns …