This article describes James Altucher’s book “The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth”. James Altucher is a dangerous man, because he states the following things:
– Don’t go to college
– Don’t buy a car
– Don’t buy a house
– Don’t put too much money in the stock market
– Quit your job
Why is a mentor like him saying all of these things? Because for a certain segment of the population it’s the right approach. The thing about books like this is that it’s not for everybody and this is where the dangerous part comes in. If the wrong people take all this advice, they’re going to ruin their lifes, because if you do not follow through these advices, you will not succeed. It is the same thing with gym memberships and diets.
The author believes that the American dream has harmed a great number of people and made a few people wealthy along the way out of that suffering. Because at every level of the dream, you’re being robbed. There are fees associated, that you don’t understand and they are just taking the money away from you never to return. At the heart of his argument is the principle that this concept of the ladder that you have to climb to success is gone, if it was ever there.
This book opens your eyes with some cold hard facts, like housing, college and medical care have soared beyond the rate of inflation, making it deadly for the common people to participate in these things. College tuition in America has gone up four hundred fifty percent in the last thirty years, medical care increased by two hundred fifty percent in the last thirty years and the average family income has gone up maybe a hundred and forty percent. A salary won’t keep you afloat and probably even two salaries won’t. If you want to play that game – and the point is to play the new game – this requires that you see how everything in life is connected and it’s physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and financial and you don’t chase money and status anymore. You chase a better life.
It is strongly recommended to go the entrepreneurial path, not working for anybody else. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail and the ability to have ideas and to sell those ideas, the courage to execute on those ideas and to be persistent. So even if you fail you learn and move on to the next adventure but of course not everybody wants to do that. In other words: If somebody insists they need to be in prison, even though the doors are unlocked, who is he to argue to be successful. All you need is ideas. Lots of ideas, now that we are in a culture and economy of ideas.
James Altucher has a daily practice, that he talks about. Write ten ideas a day and you don’t need to focus on them being good. You need to do this to build up this idea muscle. Also practice doesn’t make perfect, but practice makes permanent. You write down these and you also write down what’s the first step towards doing the idea. I’ve been doing it now for a couple of weeks and it’s not simple but powerful and it gets your brain thinking in a different way. In the book it offers up some types of lists you can make: ten types of blog posts you could create, ten ways to improve Amazon, things you learned yesterday, etc. This idea is very helpful and one of the core.
The book is not just about entrepreneurs. Altucher has a long history in the financial sector and he offers some great advice about investing in the book. One of the last things he says to do is to look at trends. There are pillars of trend, but all things end. There will always be replacements and innovation takes place nonstop. So always look for innovation.