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    vii

    Preface

    Rich, adjective: having wealth or great possessions; abundantlysupplied with resources, means, or funds; wealthy: a rich man; arich nation.

    Thats Websters definition of the word. Whats yours?To many people, the word immediately brings up thoughts of

    people such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Steven Spielberg, andOprah Winfrey. On the other end of the spectrum, to someonelike the mountainous client of mine Ill refer to as Chicago Hank,the word has nothing to do with money but everything to do withmoments spent cradling his tiny granddaughter in one hand whilereading Green Eggs and Hamfrom the other.

    Given that everyone will have his or her own definition of theword, I believe it is most efficient to define richas: having an abun-dance of whatever it takes to provide one with inner peace. Whateverit takes could mean lots of money or, in Chicago Hanks mind, itcould have virtually nothing to do with the subject of money.

    However, given my role as an investment advisor, the title of thisbook, and my sacred oath to the publisher, Id certainly disappointmany if I spent the next several hundred pages discussing the rich-

    ness of spending time with those you adore, early-morning walks,or any of lifes other simplistic pleasures that no amount of moneycould ever buy.

    Keeping this in mind, youll have to excuse me while for theremainder of this book I turn my attention to Websters more capi-talistic and materialistic definition of the word. After all, enjoyinglifes most simplistic, no-cost pleasures would be a bit challenging ifone was dirt broke.

    With our journey about to begin, its also important to under-stand that I hardly place the value of my life, or any one elses for thatmatter, on the amount of money they have. In fact, of the seemingly

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    viii Preface

    thousands of people I have spoken to about their finances, I canhonestly say the ones Ive met who seem to enjoy life the most rarely,

    if ever, find deep inner peace, happiness, and fulfillment from theamount of money they have in their checking accounts.I hope the pages that follow will in one form or another assist you in

    realizing bothWebster and Chicago Hanks view of the word: acquiringwhatever amount of money it takes for you to feel true inner peace sothat you can best enjoy special moments reading Green Eggs and Hamor

    whatever else ones peaceful heart desires.ALAN HAFT

    Newport Coast, CaliforniaSeptember 2007

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    I N T R O D U C T I O N

    Hollywood and the

    Art of Investing

    A s an investment advisor, speaker, and columnist, I share onefundamental goal with my many clients, audiences, and readers: thegoal of creating simple, efficient, and powerful investment strategies.Everyone wants them. Everyone needs them. But where does one start?

    For me, after spending years as a child helping family in aninvestment advisory business, my official start was surprisingly in noneother than the world of Hollywood. It was within the powerhouse stu-dios of Disney, Universal, and Warner Brothers that I played an inte-gral role in some of the largest movie productions around, workingalongside actors, directors, and producers such as Tom Cruise, TomHanks, Oliver Stone, Dolly Parton, Barry Levinson, Michael J. Fox,and many others.

    What I clearly found was that beneath the power of creativitythere was a strong foundation of highly efficient financial strategies.Nowhere was this more apparent than when I later partnered withmy lifelong close friend, the indomitable Oscar-nominated actor

    James Woods, to launch a successful production company at UniversalStudios.

    Those were transformative years, the years where I sharply honeda wide variety of highly efficient financial strategies.

    Like a great movie with powerful legs, the financial experienceI had in Hollywood propelled me to launch a multinational corpora-tion, which I helped take public on the international stock exchanges.

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    2 You Can Never Be Too Rich

    The experience in Hollywood also taught me the importance of notonly making financial strategies as efficient and riskless as possible,

    but also making them understandable and simple. Having preachedinvesting strategies in front of thousands of people all across the coun-try in places such as Donald Trumps Mara Largo and countless other

    venues, thanks to Hollywood, my message remains concise, to thepoint, understandable, andIm confidentquite effective.

    Hollywood taught me not only about the absolute critical impor-tance of meticulous and hard-core planning, but also quite a bit aboutthe power of the written word. My work has frequently attracted theattention of the national media, with requests for interviews by mediaoutlets including BusinessWeek, Forbes, Money Magazine, the ChicagoTribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, and many others.

    The more interviews I did, the more questions I answered, andthe more investment engines I tuned up, the more I realized onething remained constant: Many people were in need of assistance,and I passionately and genuinely enjoyed helping them out.

    Now, more than ever before, I find people are on their own, swim-ming against a vicious tide where nasty creatures often lurk in the

    murky sea of investments. No longer is big business or the governmenttaking care of us. If youre like most people, swimming in theseunfamiliar, uncharted waters can be a frightening experience, bring-ing up such questions as: Is there an easier way? Will I ever haveenough to retire? Will I outlive my money? How can I understandall this complicated stuff ? How can I possibly find the time to makeit all work? And one of the most common questions, Who can I trustto keep my money safe while making sure its growing?

    Whether it is baby boomers with several hundred thousand dol-lars, movie stars with a kings ransom, top executives of large corpo-rations, members of a professional sports team, people with only afew thousand dollars to their names, or dedicated parents workingreal hard to make ends meet, the many people Ive met may be fromdifferent walks of life, but the questions they ask and the concernsthey share are often very much the same.

    Not only do people need assistance, but those needing help fre-

    quently turn to advisors, and quite frankly, many of those advisorsneed help as well. I often find that many people, self-starters andprofessionals alike, make things just so darn overcomplicated.

    In fact, as Ill show you during the course of this book, it reallydoesnt have to be that way. When it comes to making money inthe markets and ensuring consistentand sustainablesuccess, with rare

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    Introduction: Hollywood and the Art of Investing 3

    exception, I find it does not have to be complicated for it to beefficient.

    And when I remind myself of how Wall Street wants you to thinkof it, I often hear Kevin Spaceys voice whispering in my mind theclassic line from The Usual Suspects, The greatest trick the devil everpulled off was convincing the world he doesnt exist.

    When it comes to Wall Street, heres the greatest trick thatplaceever pulled off: making you believe that not only does it need to becomplicated for it to be effective, but the professionals can do it farbetter than you.

    The truth, however, is that with rare exception, very few can everconsistentlyoutperform the market. What does beating the marketmean? It means trying to pick individual stocks that will outper-form the market, which is typically defined as an index, or basket, ofuntraded stocks representing various industries bundled together ina neat little package such as the Standard & Poors 500, the Dow

    Jones Industrial Average, or the NASDAQ-100.Have you ever heard of Leonard the Monkey? Hes an orangu-

    tan that randomly picks individual stocks, and a web site out there

    compares his stock-picking performance to that of Jim Cramer, hostof CNBCs Mad Money. Whos winning?, you may ask. Not surpris-ingly, the orangutan is.

    Im not saying Cramer is not a sharp guy. Quite the contrary.When it comes to picking individual stocks, hands down hes one ofthe smartest guys around. But even that guy, who seemingly has stocksin his blood, has trouble beating the monkey, let alone the market.

    Then theres a reporter from the Wall Street Journal who ran-

    domly throws darts at pages of stocks and compares the returns topicks from various professionals around the country. Guess who winsthat game? You guessed itthe darts.

    See a pattern? As far as Im concerned, there is only one way to con-sistently beat the market, and thats to bethe market. But how can you dothat? How can you possiblybethe market whereby youll end up outper-forming most professionals at their own game and at the same time makethings so much easier and rewarding for yourself ? Its much simpler than

    you may think, and youll soon find out exactly how to do it.In this book, youll also find out things such as:

    A simple investment strategy that is statistically proven tooutperform most of Wall Streets top fund managers.

    The insiders secret to buying low and selling high.

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    All about what we refer to as the Private Pensiona simplestrategy that can likely better than double your income at

    retirement, with a guarantee that you wont outlive it. An effortless way to automatically lock in your highest stockmarket value and later draw income from itfor the rest of your life.

    How to identify and sell valuable hidden assets in your estateassets that most people dont even know exist.

    How your parent(s) can potentially leave you a free milliondollars at no cost to you or them.

    Five key secrets of investing that Wall Street, brokers, andmany advisors would prefer you didnt know about.

    Hard-to-find resources that reveal hidden fees on the mostpopular investments.

    Certificates of deposit (CDs) that can potentially providedouble-digitreturns.

    How to potentially leave the value of your taxable individualretirement account (IRA) tax-freeto heirs.

    How to invest in real estate without any of the headaches (anduse your IRA money to do it).

    The biggest mistake most estate plans fail to include. And many other simple and effective tips that many people can

    use right away, including how shopping at Bloomingdalescan teach us valuable lessons about successful investing.

    Bloomingdales?Precisely. Investment concepts can often be a tedious read, so Im

    certainly going to try to put an interesting twist on all of this. One of

    the biggest problems many people have about trying to understandsuccessful investing is that many of the books out there are eitherfar too simplistic or just plain complicated, difficult, or downrightboring. Ive read scores of them, and if theyre too simplistic, com-plicated, confusing, or boring to me, then presumably theyre evenmore painful for you.

    Recognizing this, Im going to try and make otherwise compli-cated or boring concepts a bit more interesting. After all, has there

    ever been a book on investing that finds a connection between IRAsand your first kiss? Or what the neighborhood bully and his foulballs can teach us about diversification? Has there ever been a bookon investing that shows us why the New York Yankees are similar tosome of the biggest blunders many people make with their money?

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    Introduction: Hollywood and the Art of Investing 5

    And what about the valuable lessons television shows such as GreysAnatomycan teach us?

    If I can make it interesting, then maybe this book will have achance at being one of the few investment books someone actu-ally reads cover to cover. If I can achieve my goal of making thingssomewhat interesting, then maybe well both get luckyyoullfinish my book, and along the way, if theres just one idea thatmakes your life a bit more successful, then at least Ill have earnedan honest days pay.

    Besides, when it comes to trying to make otherwise difficultconcepts interesting and easy to understand, remember: I have alittle Hollywood left in me. After all, I still spend time in that placequite often, creating and tuning up all sorts of investment enginesfor many people out there. And while Im there, Im constantlyreminded of how my experience in that town taught me many thingsabout successful and efficient investing.

    Having helped raise money, plan productions, and obsess overevery last detail to ensure profitability, I found that the road to suc-cess in Hollywood in many ways mirrors the prudent principles of

    successful investing.The programs and movies we watch on TV and in theaters are

    examples of either prudent decisions based on proven principlesor short-lived failures hastily born of poor planning. Ironically, allit takes is a little creative insight to realize that the movies, studioexecutives, and high-profile actors can teach the public an awful lotabout the universal laws of successful investing.

    So, as a little warm-up to the concepts Ill be covering through-

    out the rest of the book, I figure Ill have a little fun and use a fewHollywood anecdotes as a preview of whats to come.

    Turn down the lights.Grab a box of Junior Mints.Turn off those cell phones.

    And make one last trip to the rest room.Still with me?Good. Then let the previews begin.

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    1C H A P T E R

    The Top 10 Lessons Hollywood

    Teaches Us about Investing

    A s youre now likely seated in the comfort of your own privatetheater awaiting the feature presentation, I bring to you The Top 10Lessons Hollywood Teaches Us about Investing with an extra bonusthrown in at the end.

    So, raise the curtain and start the projector, because here we go.

    Lesson 1: Diversification Is the Key to Success

    Hollywood. The typical Hollywood studio releases somewherearound 20 films per year. Does Paramount release 20 horror filmseach year? Not quite; the studios are much smarter than that. Moststudios cover all genresromantic comedy, science fiction, drama,

    action, teenage comedy, and so on. Why? They know its impossibleto predict which genre will be hot at any given time. Some will winand some will lose, but only one thing remains certain: Reducing riskthrough diversification always provides the best recipe for success.

    Investors. Forget the line Oliver Stone wrote for Michael Douglasin Wall Street. Greed is notgood. Greed can kill you. If you need proof,ask anyone who was too heavily invested in technology during thelate 1990s.

    Lesson Learned. Whether its the lineup for this years releasesor a decision on where to invest, diversification among the standardasset classes is the first rule of consistent and successful investing.

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    Lesson 2: It Doesnt Have to Be Complicatedfor It to Be Effective

    Hollywood. Years ago, I pitched many film projects to studios andlearned the hard way that if you cant tell your story in a few minutesor less, youll never make it through the pitch, let alone get a moviemade. Every classic movie can be summarized in a single, simple sen-tence. If you make it any more complicated than that, forget it; youllnever get the film made. Learn from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Its astory about a bunch of kids who help a stranded alien get back home.One sentence, $756 million . . . just the way Hollywood likes it.

    Investors. Heres a simple sentence: The S&P 500 index typically out-performs most managed mutual funds. Period. Statistically, those whoinvest in the S&P 500 and nowhere else have a better chance ofconsist-entlymaking more money than those who invest in a phone book of indi-

    vidual stocks, which are typically complicated and quite difficult to keeptrack of. For those who think trading individual stocks by themselves orthrough professionals earns more dollars, I offer a humbling fact: Thereare over ten thousand mutual funds in the country. Each fund has one or

    more professional money managers who trade stocks all day long, tryingto pick the winners. Of those managers, guess how many have success-fully outperformed the static, untraded, mindless S&P 500 more than10 years in a row? Answer: just onethe legendary Bill Miller from fundcompany Legg Mason.

    Lesson Learned. While it makes little sense to put all of your moneyin one place such as the S&P 500, the concept prevails: You dont need acomplicated portfolio for it to be effective. Some of the most successful

    and rewarding investment engines I have ever witnessed, built or tunedup are extremely simple to understand, easy to monitor, and morerewarding than most people can possibly imagine.

    Lesson 3: Its the Details That Count

    Hollywood. James Woods once told me that while shooting theepic Once Upon a Time in America, legendary director Sergio Leone

    shot a few dozen takes of a dinner scene just to get a spoon inthe right place. Screenwriter Peter Shaffer wrote a few dozen full-length drafts of his masterpiece Amadeus, then another dozen or soto refine it. Writer/director Cameron Crowe once said he spent wellover a year doing absolutely nothing but writing one of the trulygreat screenplays in modern yearsJerry Maguire.

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    The Top 10 Lessons Hollywood Teaches Us about Investing 9

    Investors. A financial advisor touts an appealing investment. Itsounds decent, so without checking the facts, you agree to move money

    in, only to realize a month later that its an illiquid limited partnershipmanaged out of Estonia that cant be sold for another 18 years.Lesson Learned. The fine print of any investment is more impor-

    tant than the window dressing itself. Ask questions and be sure to readthe details; and if the spoon isnt in the right place, take your time toget it right.

    Lesson 4: Costs Are Critical

    Hollywood. An actors most recent movie made more than thegross domestic product of Norway. He pitches his pet project andthe studio green-lights it. While everyone works hard for it to be ahit, the budget skyrockets out of control and the movie is $250 mil-lion in the hole before anyone ever lays eyes on it.

    Investors. A star money manager with a fantastic track recordtakes over the reins at a popular mutual fund. The offices are filled

    with expensive furniture, great food, a couple of espresso machines,

    fine art, and a magnificent pool table. Who is paying for all this stuff?You arewhether you realize it or not, the fund is taking it right outof your pocket. It doesnt matter whether the money manager makesor loses you money; its you whos funding salaries and overhead,and thats not very efficient.

    Lesson Learned. Fees kill returns. The less they take, the more you makea simple, yet extremely important rule for investmentsuccess. Take, for example, an investor I recently met who couldnt

    understand why he wasnt making much money. A review of his hold-ings revealed he was paying a whopping 6 percent in annual feesand taxes on an investment portfolio worth just over $600,000. Overthe seven years hes been in it, thats over $250,000 in fees and taxesalone. Ouch.

    Lesson 5: Planning Is Key

    Hollywood. Once green-lit into production, a screenplay is bro-ken down into extremely precise, line-item moviemaking elements:costs, schedules, camera shots, makeup, hair, costumes, props, scenery,stunts, transportation, and a thousand other things. On the set, minutescan cost tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. Regardless of howgood or bad the script is, a well-planned production is an incredible,

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    10 You Can Never Be Too Rich

    well-oiled machine of intelligent efficiency, with thousands of peoplewho often know exactly what they are doing every moment of the day

    all building toward one definitive, concrete goalthe date of release.Investors. A few years from retirement, you suddenly wake upwondering how you are going to generate enough income off yoursavings to support the lifestyle you always wanted. After a few lastminute calculations, your advisor realizes youre not going to makeit. In a last ditch effort to save you, the advisor moves your moneyinto the risky stuff and starts rolling the dice. Throwing for a highreturn, unlucky 7 comes up and you unfortunately find yourselfcrapped out. Dejected, you realize that your working life is going todrag on a few years longer than you anticipated.

    Lesson Learned. Most movies take many years to plan. The smartguys realize that success rarely has shortcuts and cant be rushed;it has to be nurtured. If your investments are to end up with an Oscar,hard-core planning provides the greatest chance for success. Remem-ber, this is your lifewere talking about, not some trashy two-hourdrive-in movie.

    Lesson 6: Cut the Losers, Ride the Winners

    Hollywood. By 7 P.M. on opening night, movie studios can predictwith incredible accuracy the revenue a film will likely generate. Evenmore startling is the DVD market. Due to sales tracking systems at

    Wal-Mart, its possible for the studio to accurately predict how muchrevenue it will earn by 3 P.M. the day of release. What will the stu-dio do if the film is looking like a loser? Do executives pour endless

    money into advertising, hoping everyone will start loving it as muchas they once did? No way. Advertising and marketing expenses areimmediately cut, and in some cases, they are completely eliminated.

    Investors. You buy a stock because you just love the company. Fora while, it climbs. But then the downward spiral begins and it dips,and dips, and dips even more. You sit back and watch the stock donothing but drop some more. You just love that company, though.

    Your broker reinforces your emotions and keeps telling you it will

    come back, but it rarely does.Lesson Learned. As much as the studio execs might love a film,they rarely let emotions get the best of them. If something isnt

    working, they just cut their losses and move on. When it comes toyour investments, you need to do the same. A stock doesnt know

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    The Top 10 Lessons Hollywood Teaches Us about Investing 11

    who you are; it couldnt care less about you, and it certainly has noemotional bond with you. Only you do. And as soon as you let your

    own emotions get in the way, bad things typically happen.

    Lesson 7: Experts Focus on Reducing Risk;Novices Focus on Return

    Hollywood. Many films have nearly bankrupted their creators.Hudson Hawk, The Last Action Hero, and Cutthroat Islandare just a fewexamples that come to mind. As a result, partnerships on expensive

    features are now the norm. Take Titanic, for example. James Cameronwakes up one day with an idea to make a film about two people thatfall in love on a sinking ship. One short sentence, over $200 million toproduce. So what does Fox do? It partners with Paramount to reducethe risk. Its easy to look back and say Fox should have taken allthe riskso it could have received allthe return, but who would have thoughtTitanicwould go on to become the most successful film ever made?

    Investors. A few years back, the New York Timesran a feature articlereporting where retired Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan

    invests his money. He stated that he invests 95 percent of his moneyin U.S. Treasuries. In another interview, Suze Orman said most of hermoney is tucked away in AAA-rated insured government municipalbonds. Both are focused on only one thing: keeping their money, notlosing it.

    Lesson Learned. Its simple: If you dont need thepotentialreturn,why take the risk? Dont ever forget that. It could be one of the mostimportant lessons youll ever learn.

    Lesson 8: Dont Reinvent the Wheel

    Hollywood. In 1949, writer and scholar Joseph Campbell wrotea legendary thesis entitled The Hero with a Thousand Faces(PrincetonUniversity Press). His exhaustive study concluded that regardless ofplot, all great stories throughout history share a very distinct andcommon structural foundation: The hero is introduced in his ordi-

    nary world; he receives a call to action; he refuses the call; a mentorconvinces him to cross over the first threshold into the unknown;and so forth. Whether the story is out of the Bible, Star Wars, BeverlyHills Cop, or The Lion King, Campbells handful of common elementscan be found in virtually every timeless story.

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    12 You Can Never Be Too Rich

    Investors. Warren Buffett, along with many others, including myself,considers Benjamin Grahams timeless, early 20th century book The

    Intelligent Investorto be the bible of investing. In it, Graham teaches usto invest not to maximize profit but rather to minimize loss; to use disci-pline, research, and analytics to make unpopular but sound investmentsin undervalued stocks. These principles have stood the test of time andcreated significant wealth for Buffett and many others who avoid thefrenzy and stick to Grahams most basic, timeless fundamentals.

    Lesson Learned. The foundations of movie magic and intelligentinvesting were developed a very long time ago. Whether its yournext screenplay or stock pick, following the tried-and-true principles

    while avoiding the get-rich-quick schemes hands down gives you thebest chance for consistent and efficient investment success.

    Lesson 9: Complacency Is the Mother of All Disasters

    Hollywood. The studio and production team can easily take a year just to plan the shoot. However, when it comes to filming on loca-tion, anything can happen. My personal experience on a film I once

    produced included: stolen cameras, violent weather, an actor nearlyoverdosing on diet pills, an angry mob wielding machetes, a generatorfalling off a cliff, food poisoning, stray horses, and a misplaced ward-robe truck a light-year from civilization. Some of the sharpest peopleIve ever worked with have saved entire productions by anticipating,thinking ahead, taking action, and making rapid-fire decisions.

    Investors. Check out Morningstars fund rankings at www.morningstar.com. Take a look at the list of last years top-performing funds; then

    where they are today. With some exceptions, yesterdays top perform-ers are often this years Reservoir Dogs. Like a good film crew, the sharpinvestor understands that monitoring, rebalancing, and updating aportfolio is essential for continued and rewarding success.

    Lesson Learned. Stray horses and misplaced wardrobe truckswont kill you, but complacency will. Whether its producing a movieor investing to make money, anticipation, quick decisions, and actionare the golden keys to anyones success.

    Lesson 10: Defy Conventional Wisdom andTake Smart Risks

    Hollywood. Many of the most critically or commercially successfulfilms ever made have been the ones that crack the mold of conformity,

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    The Top 10 Lessons Hollywood Teaches Us about Investing 13

    think outside the box, and go against the grain of conventional wisdom.Pulp Fiction turned the standard three-act narrative structure inside

    out; Mementoingeniously told the story backwards; and Unforgivenwasone of the few films to successfully pull off making the villain the hero.Time and again, Hollywood has taught us that to stand out from therest, you sometimes have to defy conventional wisdom, follow your gut,and have the courage to stop thinking like everyone else.

    Investors. Emotions typically get the best of us. When the marketis crashing, many people sell their stocks, but guess what? For everystock that gets sold, there has to be someone on the other side tobuy it. Who are those beings buying your stock when the marketis crashing? Aliens from another planet? Not quite. They are inves-tors clearly going against the grain of popular wisdom, defying themasses, and, for better or worse, thinking outside the box. Likewise,there are many alternative investments that fly high above main-stream thought and could be a tremendous addition to a diversifiedportfolio; yet many people shy away from them simply because theyare not traditional; the guy at the pool never heard of the invest-ment, the accountant laughed at it, or a bunch of people over at the

    club said bad things about it.Lesson Learned. If you enjoyed unconventional films such as

    Unforgiven, Pulp Fiction, and Memento, then you have a distinct appreci-ation for a willingness to take educated and intelligent risks. When itcomes to investing, some of the very best opportunities out there defymainstream thinking. Often, riches are made when thinking outsidethe box and educating yourself on ideas that are not otherwise in themass mind-set of conformity. Having guts is not about taking unnec-

    essary risk; its about educating yourself and occasionally investing inthings that sometimes your neighbor doesnt care about.

    And One More for the Road: If Theres a Will,Theres a Way

    Hollywood. While making Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppolaovercame a civil war, Martin Sheens heart attack, personal bank-

    ruptcy, unimaginable shooting conditions, and a potentially dis-tracting thing called death. He defied mass adversity and somehowmanaged to get his classic film done. Then theres Spike Lee, who

    was literally dirt broke when he made his breakout film, Shes GottaHave It. Lees book on the making of that film is a lifelong lesson in

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    14 You Can Never Be Too Rich

    intense perseverance, fearless courage, and laser focus. With only afew pennies in his pocket, Lees intrepid tenacity amazingly found

    a way to get actors, a crew, film, cameras, locations, costumes, sets,music, editing, and a truly fantastic finished product. End result: astellar career filled with an extremely impressive body of work.

    Investors. Some of the most successful investors Ive ever metstarted out with nothing. Im not talking about Trump the billion-aire; Im talking about some truly incredible people such as Henrythe electrician, Kyle the cop, Debbie the single mom, Lou the bar-ber, Stan the piano teacher, and countless others. Although theybasically started with nothing, year in and year out they somehowfound a way to stash a little money away, taking one tiny baby step ata time by investing in smart, tax-efficient, and low-cost investments.End result: a fantastic retirement overflowing with an impressivestandard of living most people would be extremely satisfied with.

    Lesson Learned. Like most great film directors, Spike Leeenvisioned his completed film long before it was finished, andnothing stopped him from getting it done. Likewise, envision yourmovie the way you want it to play out. Recognize there are no short-

    cuts. With the lessons in this chapter and the knowledge youll getfrom this book, do whatever it takes to make sure your road towardor through retirement leads to a happy ending.

    Fade lights . . .With the previews over, its now time to sit back and enjoy the

    feature presentation of this book. In the next handful of chapters,together well explore the above concepts in greater detail so that

    you, too, can end up with a few Oscars of your very own.

    So, lets get going here. Theres no time to waste and lots of moneyto make.

    Close doors!Lock set!Roll sound!Lights! Camera! Action!. . . And let the show begin.

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