I was reading an article today where various people were surveyed on how much money they believe that they would have to save in order to be able to retire comfortably and the figure was close to $1,000,000. Unless I read it wrong, from what I gathered that didn’t account the current assets that people would have such as a house which made me think that everyone must have some pretty high standards when it comes to retirement.

I would think the average person would need about $300,000 or so to live comfortable with anything over that being more of a luxury lifestyle. While I usually try to avoid the borderline way of planning finances to avoid the just getting by mentality, one million in pure savings seems like a lot to consider as a type of necessity to retire.

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This was the final chapter in the book and of course it was titled “Think big and kick ass in business in life”. For the most part it was mostly a re-affirmation of what has been said with different stories.

One thing that I thought was odd was that there were a lot of pages near the beginning of this chapter where Trump talks about how many women he has been with as well as diving into topics such as what attracts women and so fourth. It felt completely off topic especially with lines such as “So guys, be cocky, confident, smart, and humorous and you will be able to get all the women you want”. Felt more like reading a book of “How to be a player 101”.

Although, I believe the intent in writing those parts was to demonstrate how in life attitude plays a large role on how others perceive you. He then talks about how if you are thinking big in life that you should say also own expensive and high end clothing to project to the world that you value quality.

I can easily see people interpreting that in a surface level way though which usually causes people to kill themselves financially. Speaking for myself, everyone who I have personally met who does that usually aren’t too well off financially with the ones who can speak for themselves are usually the ones who are better off financially.

The rest of it talks about having the right will, courage and determination to see things through to the end. At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of how if you want to succeed then you need to surround yourself and make friends with like-minded people as oppose to say people who are always negative and complaining to others about problems. He even says that you should discontinue contact with negative people as they will only drain you.

He then wraps it up by re-emphasizing that in the world there will always be obstacles forced upon you in your journey to success such as greedy professionals who will want to take all of your money or people who are willing to lie, cheat and steal from you. You just have to be prepared to find ways to keep going.

That does it for this book. I’ll be writing my final thoughts on it overall.

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Someone was recently telling me that his finance in strategy in life was to work very hard to save a lot of money and then move to a different country where his dollar would go a lot further. For example, make $100,000 here in Canada and then move to India where he would be like a millionaire.

I personally would rather focus more the culture and living environment. Simple reason for that is that if I am happier in a certain place then there is no amount of money that can buy that. It’s always better to focus on the things that are important to you as oppose to just focusing on getting more for your dollar.

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Yesterday there was a lottery jackpot here for about $37 million. As usual, I got to see people who immediately began to buy tickets in hopes to win. Some people were then debating with each other on what they would do with the money if they won. For example, some say that they would splurge it within reason and save the rest while another group said that they will spend some and give the rest to a charity.

Then an interesting comment was made on how while everyone says that now, chances are you will become a completely different person if you actually won and will probably do something different. An example was that one person has a friend that said if she won the lottery she would give some away to her friends. She actually did win, but did not end up giving her friends anything. Of course, some people said no way as they will always be the same person.

I was then asked what I would do if I won that much money. I always like to help people and so I personally have the mindset of if there is some kind of good cause to help and I have ample resources to do so, I would want to try and build/establish something that will then provide a continuous stream of resources/income for it as oppose to say a one time happening.

Would I personally think that amount of money would change me to the point where I wouldn’t do that? I can confidently say no as regardless if I fortunately won or earned my way to that type of situation that is a goal in life that I have anyways. In my opinion, life must be pretty boring if one just sat there by themselves with their wealth.

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Today I was having a discussion with a person on the amount of times that people change careers as some people usually want to learn more in life while others want more money. We were just comparing some answers from say young adults to people who have already been doing something for say 5+ years.

The answers we saw was that as one gets older, in terms of money it’s more about being able to sustain a lifestyle as oppose to say making millions. I guess that isn’t too surprising of an answer. There were also some other examples of people changing careers specifically for money. Overall, they didn’t seem too happy as a result.

Of course everyone is different and I’m positive most people have had to make this type of decision at some point in their life. In my opinion, it should be more about growth if you plan to change careers.

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