I Will Teach You to Be Rich

if you’re getting a new credit card, don’t close the account on your old one. That can negatively affect your credit score. As long as there are no fees, keep it open and use it occasionally, because some credit card companies will cancel your account after a certain period of inactivity. To avoid having your account shut down, set up an automatic

To help me manage all my accounts, I set up a free PBwiki (www.pbwiki.com) to store my account numbers and passwords on a private page. It’s like an online notepad that you can keep private or public, and you can access it from wherever you can get on the web. My own wiki has a page to store my passwords, another to store future blog posts, and an

almost nothing makes people feel guiltier than having credit card debt. Seventy-five percent of Americans claim they don’t make major purchases on their credit card unless they can pay it off immediately. Yet from looking at actual spending behaviors, 70 percent of Americans carry a balance and fewer than half are willing to reveal their credit car

“Since you cannot successfully time the market or select individual stocks, asset allocation should be the major focus of your investment strategy, because it is the only factor affecting your investment risk and return that you can control.” —WILLIAM BERNSTEIN, THE FOUR PILLARS OF INVESTING: LESSONS FOR BUILDING A WINNING PORTFOLIO

As with a 401(k), you’re expected to treat a Roth IRA as a long-term investment vehicle, and you’re penalized if you withdraw your earnings before you’re 59½ years old. Exception: Most people don’t know this, but you can withdraw your principal, the amount you actually invested from your pocket, at any time, penalty-free. There are also exceptions

On average, millionaires invest 20 percent of their household income each year. Their wealth isn’t measured by the amount they make each year, but by how much they’ve saved and invested over time. In other words, a project manager could earn $50,000 per year and be richer than a doctor earning $250,000 per year—if the project manager has a higher n

the number one financial concern Americans have is not having enough money for retirement. “Even a majority of Americans in upper-income households say they are ‘very’ or ‘moderately’ worried about their retirement income,” says Lydia Saad of the Gallup News Service. To bring this close to home, ask your parents what they worry about most. I’ll bet

Your investment plan is more important than your actual investments.

Even high-income earners don’t handle their money well: 34 percent of those who earned $250,000 or more said the need to pay everyday bills was the top reason why they weren’t saving more. One in ten said they weren’t making enough to make ends meet, according to an HSBC Bank report in 2007.

Forget budgeting. Instead, let’s create a Conscious Spending Plan. What if you could make sure you were saving and investing enough money each month, and then use the rest of your money guilt-free for whatever you want? Well, you can—with some work. The only catch is that you have to plan where you want your money to go ahead of time (even if it’s