My Day by Day 

Day 1

Hey everyone I'm hoping you read my basic intro in the home page. A little more info about me: I'm in my mid 20's, have a stable but not overly high income job, my expenses are currently low due to a large amount of luck and a great family background, my schooling was private through high school and I have just a bit of college under my belt, oh and I'm not rich. Yeah I know, my whole deal is that I'm supposed to be some rich guru here to turn your finances  around, but the reason I claim to be rich is because that is my mindset and I will get into that a bit later. However, this is still my intro so... Anyway as I was saying I do have a step up from the average American and I cant deny it (And I thank God for it every day) my parents are still together and pull an upper mid class income and I have two younger sisters that are an equal amount of wonderful and terrifying. I also have a two year old pup that I love to bits and is so scared of his own shadow he still wont go up more than three stairs at a time. Now back on topic, I have decided to write this half for myself and half for all of you. I figured this would be a good way to reinforce the topics and ideas I've decided to study and I might as well share it with others for all of our benefits. If you have any suggestions please feel free to comment.

Day 2

Ok well lets actually start to get into it. Now I'm sure some of you out there have read what I see as the book that started my desire for wealth. Its the Richest man in Babylon, I first read this book sometime in high school because my grandfather recommended it to me. I found it incredibly interesting and actually ended up taking a personal finance class and co- founding a finance club at school. Sadly, at the time i was just paying lip service and not following through with what I knew to be incredibly solid and helpful ideas. The main things I recall (I also recently listened to it on Spotify as an audiobook, which was wonderful) are: a percent of all you earn is yours to keep and make money work for you. Sounds easy right? Well, some is and the trick is doing it all properly. I'll try and basically explain the concepts in ways that can easily be followed.

• A percent of all you earn is yours to keep- when beginning on your journey to financial success TRMIB recommends starting low. 1/10 of all you earn should be saved. If you do this, a helpful trick is to think of your savings account or whatever as a separate entity that you owe money to. Honestly, if you regularly put this money away you will barely notice a lifestyle change and instead start to see yourself amassing wealth. Its wonderful.

• Make money work for you- all our life we are told to work for money, and most of us do. I mean that's how you make money right? Well not always. Money is the best employee you can have, if invested properly it will work 24/7 365 days a year and not complain a bit. Think of even how savings accounts accrue interest over time, that's what we are talking about here. 

I am just focusing on the basic concept for now not my recommendations for investment so please remember that and tune in for day 3 

Day 3

Alright welcome back hopefully you are enjoying my advice so far. Today I want to talk about a different book, its called Rich Dad Poor Dad. In it the author Robert T. Kiyosaki, was able to completely change my view on finance and reignite the spark for my desire of wealth. I will be sharing the messages from this book for days and weeks to come I'm sure if not longer. I'll do this piecemeal so as not to overwhelm and drive people away from learning more on finance. So for now lets start with his concept of assets and liabilities. It is pretty simple anything that doesn't bring in excess money cannot be considered an asset. Thus, assets are entities that bring in revenue or are appreciating in price without driving up expenses. Liabilities are anything that costs you more money than you earn. Now this can cause a conflict in many of your current viewpoints. If I was to ask you if your home was an asset or liability most would call it an asset without a second thought. According to what I just explained however, that is not the case. Think about property taxes and basic upkeep. 

Ok, so now that I have gotten that out of the way back to his concepts. A key to growing your wealth is just having your assets out way your liabilities. So, I'm not saying you shouldn't own a home I'm just saying that you should have enough assets to offset any expenses caused by your home. While this concept is easy to understand and the math is basic it can be difficult to truly accomplish, tomorrow I will start to cover Kiyosaki's "Process for Development" which will help you through your financial journey. 

Day 4

Ah yes, I promised to share Kiyosaki's 5 steps for development today. I will try and explain them in my own way however in order to make them simpler to understand.

1. Find a reason greater than reality- AKA the power of spirit. This is pretty much saying that you need to find within yourself a motive that truly resonates and can drive you forward towards your goals. Honestly, I see money and its growth as a sort of game. One that everyone on the planet plays at some level and becoming the best player is a huge driving force for me. Its great because no matter how much I learn on the topic there will always be more info for me to learn in order to remain the best ( even though currently I am far from it). 

2. Make daily choices- this is pretty self explanatory. Every day do at least one positive move, over time if this continues then you will eventually be on the road to success. Now these can be large or small steps, a lot of mine are actually quite small. Most days my forward steps just consist of learning; be it looking at stock trends, the housing market, or just listening to an informative audio book for an hour or so. The other day I did actually take a big step. For months now I have been putting off looking at my last student loan it had changed hands from one loan company to another and I just didn't feel like dealing with it (Auto payments were still being taken out). I had a day off and was going over notes and read this one and made the decision that today I was going to look at it and make a bigger payment than normal. When I was looking at it and reading into the loan agreement I noticed that if nothing changed I would actually be paying off this loan for the next 9 years and I actually had the amount needed to just pay it off in one go right now. So instead of paying interest for what would feel like ever and letting it build up I went ahead and watched my bank account dip down to almost nothing. While this hurts now and I wont be getting any coffee at Biggby soon I know that it was the right choice and went down as a great day.

Sorry this went longer than expected so I will have 3,4,5 for you guys tomorrow!

Day 5

Ok so lets get right into it.

3. Choose friends carefully- Ok so this is a tough one. Kiyosaki was not saying to just get rid of current friends. He is just saying to try and seek friends that will pursue these same monetary desires. If you surround yourself with others striving to pursue similar interests it will be easier to stay on task and you will get much farther.

4. Master a formula then learn a new one- AKA the power of learning quickly. So, learning different ways of making money can be seen as mastering formulas. For example the standard formula for money making is Work = receiving money. What he is proposing is find different ways to replace work. Another example could be Owning stock = Dividends = receiving money. 

5. Pay yourself first- this concept is very well explained in the other book I have talked about. When you get your paycheck never forget a percentage of what you make is yours to keep. Now the most basic way of doing this is just saving a percentage of what you make and let it waste away in a savings account, a step up from that could be putting your money into a 401k or 403b to grow in the plans offered to you, the next way is finding other ways to invest such as in real estate or in the stock market or whatever you can come up with, good luck. Just remember save first budget after.

Day 6

Hey welcome back, today I want to just talk about what I have been seeing and thinking about when it comes to the stock market. Now I am under 30 and my main expenses include Hulu, Spotify, and Crunchyroll (gotta have that anime). So with a full time job I am doing well saving and I am willing to take riskier approaches to the market than most, and maybe more than I should. MSFG is not one of my riskier, but I am still excited about its prospects. It is a new fund created by MFS and is an actively managed growth ETF. They started it mid- December 2024 so it is still super cheap bouncing around the $25 mark. Another stock I am very interested in, but is very risky, is NLY. This companies actual name is Annaly Capital, they are technically seen as a REIT. However about 60% of their assets are in Agency CMBS and MBS. About 20% of their assets are in non- agency MBS, and the last 20% is put into being a third party that facilitates loans changing hands. For example if company A owns a loan and Company B wants to buy it then NLY has the ability to take the loan from A and give it to B while taking their cut of the profits. As of now NLY actually has a DIV yield of 12.5% and its P/E is 12.77. With how I am guessing interest rates to fall they should do very well in the coming couple of years. 

Day 7

Sorry guys, so I haven't been posting as much here as I would like I have been busy getting the site to work a little better. I will be getting back to my daily updates as of now though. A lot has happened recently with the market, one of the biggest is the launch of Deepseek. When they came out with their new approach to AI (R1) it rocked the current AI superpowers. The main being Nvidia who's stock actually hit lows it hasn't seen since October. Now with watching the big market changes every day and knowing the seat of power that Nvidia currently sits upon I saw this as a great time for me to put some cash into Nvidia. They currently dominate the U.S. market and we actually don't let the sale of their higher tech to be sold in foreign markets. Knowing this I am sure other nations will do the same to us if they have groundbreaking tech. Thus the big name in America will still be Nvidia. So far my purchase of Nvidia on Jan 27th has had a return of 8%... and that is in less than a week. Something to remember, you become what you surround yourself with. If you start looking and thinking about the market you will start to see opportunities to make your money work for you.

Day 8

Ok, so I know that in the past couple of posts it seems like I am just investing in the stock market and not actually pursuing all the avenues open to wealth creation. For the most part this is true, the beauty of stocks is you can start with any amount and that is why i am there now. Still, I am not closing my mind to other opportunities. I have been scouring the web looking for different real estate deals. I have found searching for foreclosure homes does show promise, they are listed well below market price and I have my eyes on one that if it sits for a few months I'll give them an offer. I am slightly worried about getting into real estate right now because I feel the market will most likely crash this year. Warren Buffet has dropped quite a bit of his stock back into the market apparently believing the same. I have also been trying to find a mid sized plot of land with a lake or pond on it that I could stock and create a pay lake with. I have always loved to fish and so I decided to look into this as a way to own and work on something I love while also creating a new income stream. If you want to make money you might as well do it in a way that you can enjoy every step of. 

Day 9

Now today I will share what I have gathered about finding stocks that will show promise. This is not fool proof and you should definitely look deeper into each company before you invest.

• Look for P/E Ratios that fall between 1-20. Do this to make sure that they are actually worth the price they are being sold at.

• Look for Div. yields of 3+%. I really like dividend stock, they just make more sense to invest in for me. I want them to have a 3% or higher yield in order to beat inflation and still grow on their own.

• Check future prospects. Knowing how global changes could effect the company is important. Different things to watch for can include war, technology innovations, and tax changes. Any of these could change how most stock will perform. 

Day 10

Do not be dissuaded, sense beginning my journey into financial literacy many family members have become somewhat concerned. They believe I may be focusing to much on ideas such as passive income to worry about my job or how I should build a better career. I know this may sound a bit hypocritical due to my earlier statements when reviewing Robert Kiyosakis book, but I don't believe that staying at a poorly paying job is a good idea. Yes, there are ways out there to give you a large boost in cash fast but what are the chances of an everyday Joe to find them? Probably very low. In order to build a better life for yourself and loved ones it is important to bring in enough capital, at least in the beginning. Currently I am looking into other career paths in order to increase my income and by doing so be able to put more money into my passive income providers. Right now I am able to invest about 40% of my earnings due to my fantastic support system (AKA Family). It would be higher but I want to be able to move out in a few years and am saving for a small starter house on the side. If my income was higher I would be able to invest a much greater percentage while still meeting my shorter savings goals. 

Day 11

Alright, so today I want to talk about two different benchmarks created by retirement planners and which I like more. One is the 1X by 30 rule, and the other is the 4% rule. 1X by 30 is not a bad idea, its a good starting point in essence it is saying that by the age of 30 you should have saved at least one times your yearly income already. Sounds great on paper right? Its main flaws are how it doesn't take into account inflation by your retirement age and the fact that if you start saving at 25 hopefully by 30 you have had a raise or a different higher paying job and that can be hard to factor into your savings goals. Truly a safer and more realistic goal with retirement in mind would be closer to 2x by 30 if you start at 25. Now, the 4% rule is actually an amazing if also slightly flawed idea. Its great in its simplicity, the reasoning behind this rule is have enough money invested where you can survive each year by taking only 4% out of it. If your money is properly invested then during bad years by the end you should have the same amount and during good years the total amount should increase. An example would be at retirement if you can cover all your expense with $40,000 then you should have $1 Million invested. Hopefully by retirement you no longer have a house payment and a car that should last for a couple of years so $40,000 should keep you in relative comfort. My recommendation is to use one of the amazing resources available to us and have AI run some numbers. I myself like to plan for worse case scenarios when it comes to money, if the worst doesn't happen then I will just be up in money and thus have more freedom to do what I want. Think about how much money you would need to have your current lifestyle a year and ask copilot to take the number (we will call it Z here) and have Z increase at a rate of 3.5% a year for however many years it will take you to retire. This is a rough estimate of how much money you would need a year with inflation factored in. Then ask the AI what number is that 4% of and that should be your savings goal for retirement. From here you can do a multitude of things. Such as telling the AI how much you currently have saved, how much you plan to save a month, and what rate of return you expect yearly. If by the year you expect to retire your savings is over the goal or equal to it then you can be content. If you are ambitious you will save that and then create a separate savings for now and have it put towards other ways to create passive income and increase your overall standard of life. Thanks for reading today I know it was a lot and I hope it made sense if there are any questions feel free to ask!