Best Advice

One thing my dad always said was “It is not how much money you make; it is how you spend it!” I always remember this advice and it has served me well. We may gain much from simple advice from successful people. The following is a collection of truisms from some highly successful people that were collected by Money magazine and published in their August 2008 issue.

Stocks build wealth - with no work

Bill Miller. Manager, Legg Mason Value Trust

Miller talks about, as a child, seeing his father reading the financial pages and asking him what they were. His father said, "These are stocks." so Miller asked, "What's a stock?" His father said, "This symbol represents a company and this 'plus .25' means that if you owned one share of this company yesterday, today you have 25¢ more than you had yesterday." Miller says that what he earned from the lesson was that he could go to sleep, wake up, and have 25¢ more without having done any work. Miller says he has since learned that while you may earn the market rate of return by doing no work, to earn an excess rate of return you certainly have to do some work.