Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
First, A Foundation and a Firewall
Chapter 1 - The Epiphany
Chapter 2 - The Vision
Chapter 3 - The Invisible
Chapter 4 - Fairy Tale Finance
Chapter 5 - The Congregation
Chapter 6 - The Atheists of the Religion of the Rich
Chapter 7 - The Paradoxical Secret
Chapter 8 - The Real Value
Chapter 9 - The Metamorphosis
Epilogue
Appendix - The Unconventional Wisdom of the Religion of the Rich: A Collection ...
About the Author
Additional Praise for Rich Is a Religion
“Mark Stevens has done it again. He has a wonderful ability to shed new light on much examined topics. In Rich Is a Religion, he is insightful and inspiring in his treatment of creating and protecting wealth.”
—RICHARD A. EISNER Founding Partner Eisner LLP
“In Rich Is a Religion, Mark Stevens shows us in a compelling way how money and life intersect, and that true wealth and personal contentment are one in the same.”
—RANDAL SELKIRK Managing Director Mapleridge Capital Corporation
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Stevens. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Stevens, Mark, 1947- Rich is a religion : breaking the timeless code to wealth / Mark Stevens. p. cm. Includes index.
eISBN : 978-0-470-44740-6
1.Wealth—United States. 2. Rich people—United States. 3. Investments—United States. 4.Wealth. 5. Rich people. 6. Investments. I.Title. HC110.W4S74 2008 332.02400973—dc22
2008019684
.
To my father,who taught me to challengeevery single thing in the worldand to ask “Why?”
Acknowledgments
To the deli owners and the clothing merchants and the magazine prescription hawkers and the oblivious Whitneys and the hotel managers and the factory foremen and the vast array of entrepreneurs who used my cheap labor in my formative years but wound up teaching me more than my more patrician peers learned at Harvard Business School. About money. About how you really make it and grow it and build a steel wall around it.
Thanks guys.The tuition check is in the mail.
First, A Foundation and a Firewall
In life, we often think and talk about how we spend our days. In our personal financial endeavors, we discuss how we spend our money. Surprisingly, the two are related and have a powerful effect on each other, in ways that you may not now identify.
In this book, you are invited to see the connection and to act on it so that you can achieve financial independence and security while also achieving peace of mind.
Think of it this way: If you “spend” your days, you simply let them begin, end, and expire without reveling in the ultimate joy, the supreme gift, that life is—or, at least, that it can and should be. The goal of life should be not to “spend” your days, but instead to maximize the pleasure, exhilaration, joy of discovery, love, and achievement that are inherent in every day of your life.
Correspondingly, if you simply “spend” your money, your life is a metaphorical trip to the mall. Yes, it may feel good to lavish yourself and your loved ones with costly material possessions—and no doubt feeling good is a lovely and essential part of the joyride of life—but before you allocate your money to anything, you need to think about it, really think about why and how you are spending your money. Rich Is a Religion will show you how to do so, by helping you understand:
• What money is and what it is not.
• How you can invest what you earn in assets that will increase your wealth.
• The key steps you must take and the discipline you must practice to protect what you have, and what you will have, as your assets grow.
• How to make money while you sleep.
• The people you should go to when you have financial questions, concerns, or challenges.
• Why it is important to reject the dangerous habits and myopia of the atheists of the religion of the rich.
• Why the most important money you have is the money that no one sees.
• Why you should stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and instead focus on keeping up with the Buffetts.
Before we begin this journey, I would like you to understand what I mean by the “religion of the rich.” You can think of this religion, this timeless code, as a prism that— if you are willing to put aside your current thinking—can serve as a medium for transitioning to a dramatically different view of how real money is created and preserved by those who have it and keep it for life. Not all rich people are born rich, or get lucky, or any of the other clichés that you may have heard. Instead, many have acquired wealth through following a philosophy, a belief system, a different way of seeing the world and leveraging its opportunities. In this book, I will discuss this ideology and provide enlightening and exceptional explanations on how you can become a member of this congregation.
As we move through a journey of discovery together, Rich Is a Religion will illuminate this financial perspective; reveal how and why the philosophy, the methodology, and the action steps associated with it work; and provide insights into the dynamics of getting and staying rich that make the difference between doing well financially and living a wealthy life. In addition, this book will reveal how the wealthy use money as an instrument of independence, confidence, stability, and timeless value instead of simply indulging in the temporal rewards of luxury.
People who say money doesn’t matter are deceiving themselves. People who say money is everything may never know why they feel unfulfilled. In Rich Is a Religion I will reveal to you how to earn more money than you ever thought possible, how to expand your horizons, and how to build a financial foundation and install a firewall to protect it.
And most of all, I will show you how to channel your money in order to maximize the gift of life.
The Top 15 Reasons Why You Need This Book
1. You know you don’t have enough money.
2. You don’t know where your money goes.
3. You don’t invest money correctly.
4. You don’t know how much is enough to invest.
5. You don’t have enough money to retire.
6. You don’t know how to go about gaining wealth or adding to the wealth you have.
7. You don’t trust your broker.
8. You don’t understand his or her advice.
9. All you do is work.
10. You don’t understand money.
11. Your life is unfulfilling.
12. You think you know what you can do to change that.
13. You don’t think you can afford to do so.
14. You feel insecure about your financial picture.
15. You wonder why others with similar incomes have so much more than you.
Chapter 1
The Epiphany
It was a convection-oven July day in Manhattan, the kind of sizzler when the sidewalks are like beds of smoldering coals, sending blasts of heat all the way to your brain. Even the office towers were nearly steamy inside, as if the massive commercial air-conditioning systems were unable to compete with the solar barrage. And then another fire, of sorts, ignited around me.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!