First-Time Investor Grow and Protect your Money Autor Paul A. Merriman and Richard Buck

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THE FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS
1. Be different: Save money regularly. 
This is so obvious that I shouldn’t have to write it and you 
shouldn’t have to read it. But if you look around and seriously 
observe your peers, you’ll see plenty of people who either don’t 
know this or don’t care: To be an investor, you have to save 
money. 
Unless you come into a windfall inheritance, if you want to be an 
investor you will have to save money from your income. You will 
need to do this every payday, every month, every year. Get in this 
habit and you’re on your way. Ignore this, and the rest of what you 
read in this book won’t matter very much. 

2. Be even more different: Live below your means.
I hate to saddle you with two pieces of bad news right off the bat, 
but you can’t follow my first piece of advice unless you spend less 
than you earn. The good news is that you can make this a habit, 
and eventually it will become second nature.
Your friends may spend all the money they have and rack up big 
debts in order to spend even more, all in order to live a lifestyle 
they can’t afford. They will likely wind up with finances so fragile 
that when a need comes along, they will have to either borrow 
more money or sell the investments that are supposed to be 
growing for the long term. 
3. Make your money work for you.
There’s a terrible trend afoot in the land lately: Many young people, 
rightly observing the damage to their parents’ and grandparents’ 
fortunes from what’s being called the Great Recession, have vowed 
to avoid that fate by shunning stocks and seeking guaranteed 
returns. 
This happened after the stock market’s crash of 1929 and also after 
1932, 1974 and 1987. After each of these crashes, many investors 
were unwilling to trust the market again for decades. During those 
decades, those spooked investors missed out on some of the most 
productive years in the market.
So my advice to you is simple: Once you have saved money, don’t 
just put it in the bank. Invest it is something that can grow over 
time. That means owning something – most likely stocks of public 
companies. When you put money in the bank or buy bonds or 

First-Time Investor Grow and Protect your Money Autor Paul A. Merriman and Richard Buck