Thoughts On Role Models

I was briefly looking at a copy of Larry Winget’s book “You’re Broke Because You Want to Be” last night before going to sleep. On reflection, we DINKs have been blogging for a couple of years now, and we’ve plowed through a lot of personal finance literature. Like many of you we want to get the best advice possible, and sometimes there’s so much information available that its hard to separate the good from the bad.

This brings up an important question: How should you judge the quality of the person who is offering you financial advice? I’m not expert, but here are criteria you might consider.

1) They should be wealthy and self made. Its better if the people who are advising you have proven they can attain wealth using their own skills and talent. Some popular authors like Donald Trump owe much of their position to the money their parents generated. In these cases, its harder to determine if their advice really works.

2) Its better if they’re dead. I’ve blogged about this before, but dead role models have the advantage of having their full records available for posterity. For example, you know how millionaires like John Jacob Astor and Andrew Carnegie turned out. On the other hand, you don’t know whether Bob Kiyosaki or Trump will be indicted for some future shenanigans. -I’m not saying they will – just that the quality of their advice is still an open question.

Of course there are other criteria you might consider, such as ethics or market conditions. You probably would not take advice from someone who is a convicted criminal. Similarly, you would not want to uncritically apply someones advice if how they made their money is inappropriate for your current market environment. For example, fur trading today isn’t the hot industry it was back in Astor’s time.

Best,

James