An Investment You Can Never Lose

Welcome I Will Teach You to Be Rich readers. Thanks for stopping by from my guest article, How to apply the 80/20 rule to earn more, work less, and dominate. Today’s my birthday, so I’m jumping out of an airplane. I hope you have big plans, too.

It’s no secret that I like to talk about not wasting money on unimportant things that won’t get you closer to what you really want. Sometimes I even question my own college education.

I have a pretty critical eye towards spending because I used to do it just to satisfy an immediate want that would come back as soon as I bought whatever it was that had my attention.

Overall, I’m much happier now that I’m not buying junk I don’t need and, instead, investing my money and making it work for me – even if it means passing up trinkets at the store that I’d enjoy for 2 weeks before giving them to Goodwill.

Of course, investing always brings up another concern. You can lose it. Actually, losing money doesn’t really concern me all that much because:

I’m young and have lots of time to make it back, and
I just look at losing money as a lesson learned and move on.

As long as I don’t lose consistently and go broke, I just accept the fact that I’ll be trading some of my money for a lesson at the school of hard knocks. Such is life.

I realize not everyone is comfortable with that, though. Not everyone has the same risk tolerance that I do. Not everyone is interested in trading stocks and buying investments. That’s why, recently, I’ve grown more and more interested in a different kind of investment – one I’ve made many, many times over the years without really even thinking twice about, and I’ve never lost a dime:

An Investment in Myself

Time and time again, I’ve spent my hard earned money to learn things I want to do and the value I get from those have far surpassed any object I’ve blown my cash on. In terms of happiness, I’d say they’re investments that have outperformed any stocks I’ve ever owned.

I think when most people hear “invest in yourself,” they think of things like college, seminars, classes, and other things that they expect will help them to make more money, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

When you pay an expert to teach you to do something important – something that you’ll use over and over again in your life – it doesn’t really matter if it makes you more money or not. Most of the time, learning a new skill just for the fun of it actually can add money to your life; you just don’t see it until much later. Here are a few of my own examples.

80,000 Frequent Flyer Miles in 20 Minutes

Just a few months ago, I had no idea how I was going to pay for all of the travel that I’ll be doing over the next few years to reach some of my really big goals. I was kind of sweating it.

To be honest, I still am. I’m going to a lot of far away and expensive places. But, by investing in myself, I was able to learn how to quickly and easily earn huge piles of frequent flyer miles to get me where I need to go.

Last week, 80,000 frequent flyer miles that I can transfer to nearly any airline will be posting in my Starwood American Express account. It took me about 20 minutes to do the work to get these, and when I combine the miles with a few other offers, I’ll be able to head out to climb two of the tallest mountains in the world on a plane ticket that would cost about $12,000 if I had to buy it.

Building an Empire

When I was laid off in February, I sort of knew how to write, but I had damn near no idea how to run a business. I’d tried to figure it out myself with another blog I used to write, but as my friend Everett not-so-subtly puts it, I sucked at it.

I knew I had to get some more knowledge on the subject, and I had to do it fast. So even though I’d just gotten laid off and had no money coming in at the time, I was prepared to plop down $250 on Chris Guillebeau’s course that would teach me how to “build an empire” in a year by doing one thing for my business each day. Even though I’m a complete miser, I didn’t even think twice about it because I know how good he is at what he does.

I was ready to hit the “add to cart” button, but you know what? I ended up getting the course for free. Know why? Because I’d already invested in myself.

I’d bought a few of Chris’s lower priced guides and, over time, built a relationship with him by asking questions about how to use some of the things he teaches.

When I mentioned I was going to buy a copy of his Empire Building Kit, he remembered our conversations and offered it to me for free because he knew I would actually use it.

And I did. It’s how I learned to turn Riskology.co, a website I would write for free anyway, into a profitable business.

Forget the Money Game

Investing in yourself doesn’t have to have anything to do with money. I just gave the examples I did because they’re a compelling testament to what I’m talking about: you can’t lose when you pay for something that helps you live a better life.

If you want to learn to crochet because you’ll get a lifetime of enjoyment out of making hats and scarves for your friends, then buy a crocheting guide, take a class, or pay an expert to teach you.

If you want to be the best softball player in your town league, then pay whatever it takes to spend a few hours at the batting cages every day or hire a hitting coach and enroll in a fitness class.

If you want to learn how to fly places for free like I did, buy a guide about how to do it.

If you want to learn how to build a sustainable business, pay someone who’s already done it to teach you.

No banker can squander your money and no natural disaster can destroy your investment. You’re the only one in charge. The only way you can lose your investment is if you don’t act on the knowledge.

So don’t do that!

Are you investing in yourself? Are you getting something out of it? Let me know in the comments.

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Image by: pjchmiel