Achieving TRUE financial freedom starts with this investing discipline! Know more about it here.

Wednesday: The Independent Investor FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: Hi, everyone! We’re excited to share with you another great investing insight in today’s article. Personally, I believe investing is an important activity that we must learn regardless of our careers. This is a great vehicle that will help us grow our wealth and achieve financial stability in the long run. Today, let’s talk about an important discipline that many of the world’s investing giants have applied in their investments. There are actually 7 disciplines, but we’ll focus on the first one for now. Read the article below to know this characteristic and learn how you can apply it in your personal investment strategies. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

Achieving TRUE financial freedom starts with this investing discipline! Know more about it here. What do you think is the goal of successful investing? To make money? To fund a wide range of goals you hope to achieve? To save for the “rainy days?” All these are part of the things successful investing can accomplish for you. However, there’s a lot more to gain and experience from this activity aside from the abovementioned stuff. According to Professor Joel Litman, Chairman and CEO of Valens Research, successful investing can create true financial freedom for individuals and families. By “true financial freedom,” we mean not simply making money or saving for the rainy days but also building a financially stable future. In fact, many of the world’s investing giants have experienced this with the help of various investment strategies that enabled them to achieve billion-dollar successes. … and what’s amazing about these strategies? They are actually disciplines―habits and characteristics that are common in the written and spoken advice of great investors! We call this the Investing Disciplines of the Giants. Today, let’s focus on Investing Discipline #1: Commit to maximize your investment wealth. Professor Litman said this first discipline demonstrates the simple yet powerful plans of great investors. This manifests in their written thoughts, spoken words, and actual investments. Some billionaire investors started with little of what they have. Despite that, they committed themselves to this simple rule: Spend less money than what you make―as much as possible. There’s no doubt that these investors were careful with their spending when they first set out to build their wealth. Then, when they became wealthy, they realized they had so much money that aside from funding their investments, they became major philanthropists. One of the things that helped these investors generate such wealth and fund their investing activities? Their careers. We’ve also talked about this in a past “The Independent Investor” article. Many of the world’s great investors invested in themselves and their careers because they believe these tools are above others. As Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said: “Ultimately, there’s one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself. Nobody can take away what you’ve got in yourself, and everybody has potential they haven’t used yet.” So, if you want to achieve investing success as the world’s billionaire investors did, you have to: Focus on your career. Spend less money than what you make. Do the right things with those savings to maximize your returns. By making, saving, and investing more money than what you spend, you’ll successfully maximize your investment wealth and achieve true financial freedom. Here are a few more tips to maximize your investments: Stay consistent. One of the easiest ways to create and maximize wealth is to automate it. While it’s true that you can’t control or predict how the stock markets will perform, what you can do is control your actions. This means making regular contributions to your investment accounts. The more you save and invest, the higher your chance to grow your investment portfolio. A popular method for making regular contributions is the dollar cost averaging (DCA). Here, you invest the same amount each month regardless of how the markets are doing. This also lets you buy more shares when prices are lower and fewer shares when prices are higher. Avoid overreacting to changing market conditions. As an investor, you must have a written IPS (investment policy statement) that includes: Your investment goals and timelines How you will invest (asset allocation, asset classes, types of investments) When you will rebalance your portfolio Your IPS doesn’t have to be too detailed―just a few sentences will help you do the trick. The reason why you need this is so that you have a written guide to refer to when the markets become volatile. Instead of letting the markets dictate your actions, refer to your IPS. This will help you separate your emotions from your financial decision-making. Professor Litman also has a few more reasons why you shouldn’t easily panic when the stock market changes. We wrote about this in another “The Independent Investor” article. Mind your taxes. Taxes are a part of your life, whether you’re working as a full-time employee or as an independent professional. … but did you know that the US Internal Revenue Code has sections that help investors minimize their taxes on investments? A dollar saved is another dollar that remains in your portfolio and can be invested for additional returns. Below are some of the valuable tax advantages for investors: Employer-sponsored retirement accounts Small business retirement accounts Traditional and Roth IRAs (individual retirement accounts) 529 college savings plans Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) Lower taxes on long-term capital gains 1031 exchanges for real estate investors Among the accounts on the list above, pay most attention to the HSA because it has a triple tax benefit. HSA account owners can take a tax deduction when they make a deposit, experience tax-free investment growth, and make tax-exempt withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. We hope you gained a lot of great investing insights from these tips! By: Investing in yourself and your career Spending less money than what you make Doing the right things with your savings a.k.a. staying consistent in your investments, avoiding overreacting to market changes, and minding your taxes … you’ll maximize your investment wealth, which will eventually help you achieve true financial freedom. “The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.” - Benjamin Graham, the Father of Value Investing Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s The Independent Investor! In our previous “The Independent Investor” article, we talked about the first discipline employed by some of the world’s greatest investors in their personal investment strategies: Learn more about another important aspect of committing to maximize your investment wealth in next week’s article!