Excuses are BS

STUDENT WRITES TO MONEY PROF:

"Thank you so much for recomending this book. I bought it online for a $5.00 and it should be here within a few days. It'll be good reading material while I'm on spring break. I'm very interested in learning more about the art of investing. I have a lot to learn."

MONEYPROF responds:

If ok with you will CC your Mom at this point. Why I'd like to do that is I don't have the time for the needed follow ups, and the detailed help that might be needed. What this will do for example, is she will call to ask you a question from the book. You might come up with an excuse of why you didn't do the say 30 min. reading over 2 days. Hopefully she will say "excuses are BS". Which will piss you off in the beginning.

But.................. my goal is you will say it to yourself in time.

At this point you might be saying " what the heck does this have to do with investing". So trust me on this one for now, it does.

Please do however email me questions you have.

At some later date if you don't want to do that just let me know.

( the Mom part not the excuses are BS part. :)


Really don't want to teach you "the art of investing". I'd rather teach you an easy way to invest, that can be automated. Which will serve you well over the long term. But it won't do you any good if you don't have the discipline to follow it.

So lets start with this: if you invest zero $ at 2% earnings, you have ZERO.

but......... if you learn how to invest and you can average 8%, the problem is zero $ @ 8% is still zero.

What to invest in is the easy part to learn. The hard part to learn is the thinking process. The discipline etc.

For example, I thought you ordered the book 2 weeks ago, so why is it not delivered yet???

Spring break?????? This book can be read in a few hours.

You don't find the time.......... you make the time.

My suggestion is to start with some things like this below first.

Then get into the investing part.

I've been working with a few other people on "investing". Having quite a bit of success with two of them. And some with the others.

I'll send you some of my emails to them.

BTW: a couple of them are close to your age, early 20's. Won't use their names or yours.


This email is to address one of the BS excuses that this young woman used ( she had a BS excuse for EVERYTHING):

"Deal is a deal" and the payments will be on time.

This is to address her excuses for being short of money and making a payment late. In her mind it was OK because of...........................X.


I had already emailed her the "hard ass" BS excuses email. This email is after she backed off and agreed to make future payments on time.

Great. Glad to hear that.

Save this email, and reread it often. This is NOT the type thing that can be mastered by a read through. It will take a while to totally change a thinking process that is further justified by almost everyone you know also thinking that same way.

I can't tell you enough how much it will help you in life if you can be in the few % of people that really believe in your heart "is it done or not" and all excuses are BS.

Remember this:

The good part about this is most people really believe that it was OK to not get X done BECAUSE of ........... fill in blank. There will always be a" blank" to use.

If you can ever beat this it will give you a major advantage over all of them. In other words, what if everyone "got this'??? can you imagine how hard it would be to get ahead in life?? But................ I'm telling you it is a VERY small %.

So start with things like the 10th means the 10th. etc. Don't lie to yourself with excuses. Being broke today has nothing to do with eating 13 cent soup today, it has to do with shopping last yr. or 2 yrs ago, etc.

Let me give you an example of the next level when you really believe "is it done or not", ALL excuses are BS:

In my starting years there were 5 stores in [town], when I started we were the lowest in sales, on COD deliveries etc. ( BTW: #1 now) At that time on holidays warehouse suppliers quite often ran out of high demand holiday only items. All 4 of my competitors thought: The excuse: Hey it's not my fault, I ordered it and the warehouse ran out. The beauty part about this is they REALLY believed that.

We ran out too as my supplier ran out of stock.

My thinking" did it get done or not" the answer to myself : was NO.

So if I'm in the all excuses are BS mode;

I make a list for the same holiday the next year and order those items just a little early in advance and I have them to sell when the others run out.

Don't confuse this with being smart, nothing to do with that. A low level person in retail could come up with the answer. But................ they couldn't even think that way because " it was OK". Why was it OK?? Not my fault BECAUSE of .............. the blank.

On a positive note:

The following month she made the payment early!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippie. :)