My Top 10 Money Rules¶
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This is my response to Morgan Housel's Top 10 Money Rules and Barry Ritholtz's Top 10 Money Rules.
1. Earn More. Spend less.¶
"A PENNY SAVED IS 1.4 PENNIES EARNED IF YOU CONSIDER TAXES" -FROM THE INTERNET
（节省1分钱，实际上就是赚 1.4 分钱，如果你考虑税收， penny 便士或分，1英镑 = 100便士）
This sounds like a "duh"（咄） rule but it's not. The two concepts work against each other and require different soft skills.
To increase your earning potential you need to free your time for activities that make more money- this often requires spending money (e.g. eating out to save time, paying to have your shirts pressed（压平，熨烫）, etc). Reducing your expenses requires the elimination of excess（消除多余）, or being conservative with your existing resources... this also has a cost. It's a mindset（心态） that will keep you from making more money.
To put this another way: High earners（赚钱者） are usually big spenders（挥霍者）, and fiscally（财务上） conservative people often have difficulty increasing how much they earn（难以增加收入）.
If there was only one rule to wealth creation: you need more coming in than going out.
Being good at both is a paradox（悖论） that you must master（掌握）.
2. Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe¶
My grandfather is friends with a billionaire. I'm not sure what he's driving these days but for ~15 years his daily commuter（通勤） was a beat-up Ford P.O.S.（破旧车，老爷车） Most days he wears jeans and a flannel（绒布） shirt/work shirt. He has no problem going to the grocery store（杂货店）, gas station, or sandwich shop. He can do these things because, like several other wealthy people I know, he hides his wealth/money intentionally（故意地）.
Wealth, and having money, are about freedom or having options（拥有选择权）. When you display(展示) wealth publicly (cars, houses, clothes, consumables（消耗品）, etc), you trade your options（你交易你的期权）. For some people, this is desirable（值得拥有的） (such as celebrities，名人) but for most people, especially those with REAL money, this is a nightmare. You lose your humanity（人性） (not to mention it's dangerous，更不用说). So if you start accumulating wealth, keep it to yourself（你自己留着）. You will be thankful you did. As Morgan Housel says: "Wealth is everything you don't see" (paraphrased，释义).
3. "Enough" is Hard. Very Hard.¶
There's a famous quote by Coco Channel（加布里埃·香奈儿）: "The best things in life are free, the second-best things are very very expensive." What Coco is talking about is something that we all inherently（固有地） know: it gets progressively（逐步地） harder to deliver higher and higher quality, and so the cost to do so increases as well (or put into mathematical terms: quality is logarithmic, cost is exponential). 质量是对数的，付出是指数的。
For most people, this experience is why they can never get out of the rat race- a better human experience always costs more, takes more time, requires more knowledge, and is often compared to others around you (i.e. "Man's reach exceeds his grasp"). （v 抓住；n 能力，掌握）
This is why having "enough" is hard. It requires that you decrease your expectations, appreciate what you have, and find the middle road with these concepts in your culture/ community. With that said having "enough" is incredibly（难以置信地） powerful. It's a form of freedom（一种自由） and something that should be strived for.（努力争取）
4. Most Pop-Financial Advice is Useless or Bullshit（胡说）¶
Financial gurus (大师，Tony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, Ramit Sethi, Money Moustache, etc) are trying to sell you content（推销内容） and build their audience（观众）. "Famous investors" can neither relate to your financial world nor do they want you educated on theirs（想让你接受他们的教育）. Financial advisors provide a service... they need you coming back and spending money to stay in business（经商）. In short（总之）, just know that you're swimming in a pool of sharks - you generally have to form your own opinions the hard way（以艰难的方式）: research and experimentation.
5. Be Wary of Consensus（警惕共识）¶
"WHENEVER YOU FIND YOURSELF ON THE SIDE OF THE MAJORITY, IT IS TIME TO PAUSE AND REFLECT（反射，这里时停下来反思）."
- MARK TWAIN
My "first investment" was a mutual fund（共同基金） in the 90s. Of course, it wasn't really my investment- my parents picked it out because mutual funds were "the thing" at the time（共同基金是当时的热门）. I used my birthday card money to buy half - my parents covered the other half. If I remember correctly it was a $1200 minimum for the mutual fund (a LOT at the time 当时很多). ~12 years later when I went to college it was worth $1500 (in a good market). My story of course wasn't unique. For a period in the late 80s to the 90s mutual funds picked by rockstar managers（摇滚明星经理人） were the consensus（共识） advice to retail investors（零售投资者，散户）. No one was paying attention to expense ratio/ fees（费用比率/费用） and "survivorship bias"（幸存者偏差） just wasn't talked about like it is today. And for that short period, the mutual fund industry made a lot of money.
In financial history "the 90's mutual fund" period isn't the only time this has happened. These financial movements aren't just about "bubbles" either（金融运动不仅仅是泡沫）. Any time there is a "consensus" among investors, opportunists take advantage, because they know those investors aren't paying attention.（每当投资者之间达成“共识”时，机会主义者就会利用这一机会，因为他们知道这些投资者并不在意。） I don't care if it's 2000's real estate（房地产） or a 2020 total stock market index fund（全面股票市场指数基金） - it's fitness. When everyone is doing something and not paying attention - cookies are about to get stolen（饼干将被偷了）.
6.Invest in Yourself and Things That You Know¶
Pound for pound reading books（一磅一磅地读书，指的是读很多书）, courses, training, seminars（研讨会）, tutoring et al. is one of the best investments you can make. In growing industries, you can readily add +30% to +40% to your income every 16-18 months. Almost no other investments out there can keep up with that kind of return.
...BUT the knowledge you gain can give you more than just a bigger paycheck（薪金）. It also gives you a deeper understanding of an industry, relevant（相关的，有意义的） technologies, and upcoming trends（未来趋势）. You can use this knowledge to choose investments that will also have higher returns than laypersons will（选择回报率高于非专业人士的投资）. Just be sure to make those bets（下注） when you get there.
7. Be Aware of "Shadow" Financial Decisions¶
Some decisions impact you a lot more than you expect. Some decisions are structured（结构化的） so you can't easily quantify（量化） how it will financially impact you（它将如何在财务上影响你）. I call these "shadow" financial decisions. Outsized impact(巨大的影响) on your finances, but hard to understand or predict（理解或预测）.
As an example, your marriage will probably impact your financial life (for better or worse) more than any other decision you make, except maybe your career. Being in good physical shape is probably the most underrated（低估） financial investment - it impacts earning potential, healthcare spending, energy levels, and much much more. Moving, travel, friends, networking, hobbies, are all examples of "shadow" financial decisions. So don't forget to think through these decisions as actual financial decisions（实际财务决策） and how they might impact you before you make them.
8. Avoid Taxes like the Plague（像瘟疫一样避税）¶
Tax avoidance (NOT evasion，避税不是逃税) can make a massive difference in your financial situation (think millions over a lifetime). I can't recommend enough spending some time to learn how the system works and how to take advantage of ways to avoid paying taxes（我不能建议你花足够的时间来学习这个系统是如何工作的，以及如何利用各种方式来避免纳税） (I'm still learning, but it's been very valuable).
(Note: I also would heavily recommend reading up on where our government spends our money（了解我们的政府在哪里花钱）. It's very sobering（让人清醒的） how little regard our elected officials have for our tax dollars.)（我们的民选官员对我们的税收漠不关心。）
9. Creativity Starts When You Remove Two Zeros from the Budget¶
（当你从预算中去掉两个零时，创造就开始了）
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." (Oscar Wilde，任何量入为出的人都缺乏想象力)
Generally speaking, I like money. Not because of the things I can use it for, but because the lack of money creates conditions where better solutions can be found... and sometimes better problems. Rory Sutherland provides a great example in this video, where he discusses a different approach to fixing a transportation problem（运输问题）. His approach reduces the money needed to 10% of the original budget（原预算） - but comes up with better results. This is why I think capitalism（资本主义） is more fun - because money doesn't do that much to make things better - people do. People make things better through creativity.
10. The narrative（叙述；故事） isn't reality.¶
Early in my career, I worked for a tiny little billion-dollar company（价值数十亿美元的小公司） that you've never heard of. It was a great business that was bootstrapped by a solo founder（由一位独创创始人发起的） and grown for 20 years from a mall kiosk（购物亭）, to roughly（大约） ~10,000 employees and something like $3 billion today. The founder was self-made（白手起家） and achieved all of this through hustle and grit（通过喧嚣和磨难实现的）.
It's a great story. It's an especially（尤其） good story for a bunch of（一群） mid-20s salespeople hungry for success. The problem is the narrative（叙述） is missing some details.
The sole founder wasn't solo, he wasn't even the majority owner of the business. The majority owner of the business was actually his wife, who had plunged her life savings into that business to get it off the ground（她把毕生的积蓄都投入到这项事业中去了）. Her current occupation is "homemaker"（家庭主妇） ... which is probably less inspiring（这可能就没那么鼓舞人心了） if you're trying to get a sales guy to work 80 hrs a week for you.
There are a lot of narratives out there, but don't confuse a good story for reality（不要把好故事和现实混为一谈）. Warren Buffet's returns（沃伦·巴菲特的回归） have pretty much been the same as the S&P total return（标准普尔总回报） for the last 10+ years. A Rockstar that signs a Million dollar record deal（签下一笔价值百万的创纪录交易） might take home $45,000 that year.
But its not just about other people. We also tell ourselves stories that don't match reality: When you start a business you should be working 80 hours a week and never sleeping. If you want to have a successful career you don't have time to be a good parent. These are all false narratives.（这些都是虚假的叙述。）
Bonus Answer!¶
I asked my wife what her top Money Rules were... and she answered:
"FIND A HUSBAND WHO LIKES THIS STUFF AND OFFLOAD IT ON TO HIM!"
找一个喜欢这个东西的丈夫，然后把它交给他！
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理财的核心原则，就是两句话："增加收入，减少开支"。
但是，这两句话相互矛盾，需要不同的技能。增加收入通常需要花钱，提高获利潜力。减少开支意味着对于投资新事物持有保守态度，这种心态会阻止你赚更多的钱。
PS：最近几年没有阅读社科类英文文章，现在英语阅读能力严重下降，需要不断学习。