Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MICHAEL MASTERSON has been making money for himself and others for almost four decades. At one time or another, he's owned and run companies that were public/private,onshore/overseas, local/international, service-/product-oriented, retail/wholesale/direct mail, and even profit/not-for-profit. Masterson is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Automatic Wealth: The Six Steps to Financial Independence; Power and Persuasion: How to Command Success in Business and Your Personal Life; and Confessions of a Self-Made Millionaire.

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"Michael Masterson has personally helped more people achieve financial independence than anyone else I know. He has been a valuable mentor in my own life. Michael's credentials go far beyond the fact that he is an extremely successful businessman. (There are thousands of those.) He has a unique gift for discerning and explaining in easily accessible terms what it really takes to succeed. Automatic Wealth for Grads will give any young person a tremendous headstart for achieving their financial and professional goals at a very young age."
Justin Ford, author of Seeds of Wealth: An Incredible Wealth-Building Plan for Your Children and Editor of Main Street Millionaire

"Only time will tell whether you will have the guts and honor to follow Masterson's masterful plan. Good luck!"
From the foreword by Mark Skousen, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University, 2004-05 and Benjamin Franklin Chair of Management, Grantham University

Organized around proven wealth-creating principles, this invaluable guide reveals powerful techniques and strategies that have personally worked for Michael Masterson as well as for the many people he's helped become wealthy and successful.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, Automatic Wealth for Grads will show you how to:

• Choose a great career, get your first job, and rise to the top of your field
• Continuously increase your income on a fast-track basis, and get the biggest raises of your life
• Profit from the real estate market even in today's uncertain market
• Start or gain equity in a business that will provide an automatic future income stream
• Invest in the stock market, save money on taxes, make purchases that appreciate, reduce your credit costs, and achieve financial independence while you are still young enough to enjoy your money

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Automatic Wealth for Grads is like getting your master's in financial independence―but without the midterms and textbooks. Filled with real-life examples and practical advice, this single book will teach you the secrets to getting wealthy sooner than you ever imagined . . . for many, even before the age of thirty.

Most grads discover pretty quickly that making a lot of money is not as easy as depicted in movies or on infomercials. Getting wealthy is a serious business that requires ambition, intelligent choices, and follow-through. The good news is that it doesn't matter whether you majored in English or economics, you can use these "money tested" techniques to make wealth-building not only probable but automatic. And when your cash flow balloons, you'll have more time, energy, and peace of mind to enjoy the things that really matter to you―whether it's traveling to Italy, playing the guitar, or just hanging out with friends and family.

In Automatic Wealth for Grads, self-made multimillionaire Michael Masterson becomes your personal mentor, drawing upon his own experiences and those of experts in the fields of investing, real estate, and business to offer you a complete program for achieving financial independence in record time. Organized around proven wealth-creating principles, he will show you how to quickly master the powerful moneymaking skills that will transform you into a dynamic, automatic wealth-builder, no matter what career path you choose.

The best part is that you don't need a fortune―or anything in the bank―to get started right now, whether it's finding a high-paying job, getting a huge raise, or even investing in real estate.

Special Report

Become a Millionaire Before You Turn 25!

You want to drink champagne instead of beer, sail the Caribbean rather than swim in a pond. You've just finished Automatic Wealth for Grads and you're ready to get rich, starting today! Learn the secrets to automatic wealth from self-made millionaire Michael Masterson―sign up for a free trial subscription to his daily e-newsletter, Early to Rise, www.earlytorise.com and receive a Special Report filled with 28 ideas for generating wealth eight times faster than you ever imagined. Sign up now at http://www.earlytorise.com/ForGrads to get going and retire in your early 20s!

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Automatic Wealth for Grads ... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Making money is not the most important thing in life. And Getting rich shouldn't be your number one goal.

But as a recent college graduate (or young person embarking on a career), wealth building should be on your agenda. Because-like it or not-your financial situation will affect your ability to enjoy every other aspect in your life.

They say the three most important questions a young person must answer are:

1. What shall I do with my life?

2. Where shall I do it?

3. And with whom?

In answering those questions, it makes sense to consider your finances because they will determine the choices you have in developing a career, selecting a place to live, and taking care of yourself and your family.

This book is based on the wealth-building principles outlined in my best-selling book, Automatic Wealth. But the ideas presented here are tailored specifically to you. As a recent graduate (and young person starting out), you have an advantage that I don't have. It is an amazingly powerful advantage that makes it absolutely easy to get rich.

When you have 60 years of life ahead of you, becoming wealthy is not just easy, it can be automatic. And that's the purpose of this book: to give you a blueprint for automatic wealth.

Automatic Wealth. What does that mean?

You understand the meaning of automatic: having the ability to develop independently, that is, without conscious effort. The wealth-building skills that you will learn in this book are easy. If you start practicing them now (I'll show you how), then before you know it you will be doing them without conscious effort. At that stage you will be an automatic wealth maker.

That's what I mean by automatic. Now let's deal with the tougher word: wealth. What does it mean to be wealthy?

Your idea of what it means is probably different from mine. This point, though obvious, was underlined for me recently when we asked the 450,000 readers of my daily e-zine Early to Rise (EarlytoRise.com), to define wealth. Here are a few of the hundreds of answers we received:

Having everything you want

Having more than you need

A million dollars in the bank

Ten million dollars in savings

Making a million bucks a year

Making a hundred thousand dollars a year

Living the life of a rock star

Even experts disagree on what it takes to be wealthy.

To Blanche Lark Christerson, director of the Wealth Planning Group at Deutsche Bank, wealthy is a net worth of $15 million. Christerson figures that for married couples with two young kids, today's "pricey lifestyle" costs about $375,000 a year. If you are single with no dependents, Christerson says $10 million will do. (She's assuming that you'd have 45 years ahead of you and that you'd want to preserve capital and leave it to your heirs or charities. She's calculating a conservative 3.5 percent return on investments.) To certified financial planner Jon Duncan, it's a net worth of $7.5 million. Duncan is making the same assumptions as Christerson in terms of kids and life span, but he thinks it only takes about $200,000 a year to live rich. And because the stock market has historically yielded about 10 percent, he's figuring on your getting a much better return on your savings. (From Jeanne Sahadi, "How Rich Is Rich?", July 24, 2003, accessed at http://www.cnn.com, September, 2005.)

Yes, wealth is a relative concept. But in order to talk about it productively, we must agree on a single definition. For the purposes of this book, then, I'm going to ask you to accept this one:

Wealth is a store of something valuable, something you can use or enjoy later. Financial wealth, therefore, is the net savings you have put aside for spending in the future.

Note the phrase "net savings." That means the money you have saved that doesn't need to be used for any current needs or any current debts. That is to say, your financial wealth is the amount of money you have put aside that is free and clear for future use.

Some financial experts (such as Christerson and Duncan) classify wealth as your net worth. Net worth is the total of all your financial assets minus all your debts. My definition-net savings-is a little more stringent. I'm not letting you count the financial value of your house, your car, or any other key possessions that you wouldn't be willing to get rid of someday.

The reason for this stricter definition is simple: You are always going to need a house and a car, so you can't really count them as part of your wealth. (This is an oversimplification. If you figure your wealth this way, you will be erring on the side of conservativeness. That's a good thing. It means you will always be richer than your numbers say you are.)

If you accept this definition-or even if you would rather count your wealth using the standard net worth formula-you must still recognize one important fact: You need more than a high income to be wealthy. It's amazing how many young people (and lots of older people) don't understand this. Too many folks equate making "mucho dinero" with being rich.

A good example:the cable TV show Entourage. In Entourage, the main character is a fictionalized version of Mark Wahlberg after he became famous as a Hollywood actor. Mark's character and his friends spend all their time and money buying toys and chasing girls, while their accountant sits in his office and screams at them. The entourage is hell-bent on spending every cent of the multimillion-dollar income their buddy is earning. And that makes them feel rich. The truth is, however, that they are just as broke as they were when they were living in Brooklyn. The only difference is that they are spending more.

To be rich, you need lots of money in the bank. A big income can give you a great lifestyle-but if you are spending it as fast as you are making it, when you stop working, or when a financial emergency arises, you'll very quickly find out how un-rich you really are.

Mike Tyson made more than $300 million during his boxing career. But today, he's in debt. Big debt. If Don King, his manager and promoter, had helped Mike learn to save his money (instead of spending it on $3 million rings), Mike would be wealthy. Instead, he's probably one of the poorest men on earth.

If you want to become wealthy-in terms of having lots of money put away for a rainy day ... or money to spend after you stop working for it-then you are going to have to learn how to save and invest a significant portion of your income.

But here's the good news. You are young, so this is a really good time for you to start saving money. If you get yourself into the habit of doing so now, you'll be rich before you know it.

In Chapter 2, I'll tell you exactly why being young gives you such a great advantage when it comes to building wealth. I'll explain why every dollar you save is worth $5 or $10 more than every dollar your parents saved. You'll discover the true power of compound interest and find out how to make it work for you.

But let's get back to this idea of stored value, which-in financial...