Credit to Morgan Housel, the Motley Fool
1. The single largest expense you’ll pay in life is interest. You’ll spend more money on interest than food, vacations, cars, school, clothes, dinners out, and all forms of entertainment. You do this because you don’t save enough and demand a lifestyle you can’t actually afford.
2. You’re thrilled that the credit card you’re paying 22% interest on offers 1% cash back on all purchases.
3. You work so hard trying to make money that you don’t have time to think about, or plan, your finances. This is the equivalent to spending so much time buying exercise equipment that you have no time to exercise.
4. You don’t realize that when you say you want to be a millionaire, what you probably mean is that you want to spend a million dollars, which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire.
5. You think $1 million is a glamorously large amount money when it’s what most people will need to cover their definition of a pretty mediocre retirement.
6. When planning for retirement, you don’t realize that your life expectancy might be 90 years or more. Retire at 65, and you could spend more thanone-third of your life living off your investments.
7. You think you’re too young to start saving for retirement when every day that passes makes compound interest a little bit less effective.
8. You think of the stock market as numbers that go up and down rather thanan ownership stake in real businesses with real assets.
9. You think the stock market is too risky because it’s volatile, without realizing that the biggest risk you face isn’t volatility–it’s not growing your assets by enough over the next several decades to fund retirement.
10. You spent the last five years arguing why markets are rigged and buy-and-hold investing is dead. The S&P 500 spent the last five years rallying to all-time highs.
11. You’re willing to work hard for $20 an hour, but too lazy to spend ten minutes to fill-out your company’s 401(k) paperwork that could result inthousands of dollars of free money from matching contributions.
12. You spend a month researching the best washing machine, then invest twice as much money in a stock based solely on a tip from a person who you barely know.
13. You say you’ll be greedy when others are fearful, then seek the fetal position when the market falls 2%–failing to realize how insignificant one day is when you’re investing over 50 years.
14. You’re unable to realize that a 10% return for 20 years generates more money than a 20% return for 10 years. Time is more important than return in building wealth–and it’s the one thing you have direct control over.
15. You hire a doctor to manage your health, an accountant to do your taxes, a lawyer to manage your legal problems, a plumber to fix your plumbing, a contractor to build your house, a trainer to help you exercise, a dentist to fix your teeth, and a pilot to fly when you travel. Then, with no experience, you invest by yourself without the help of a professional.