Bodo Schaefer path to financial freedom. Bodo Schäfer Path to Financial Freedom First Million in 7 Years pdf

Learn the basic rules of financial literacy. Get simple and affordable models for dealing with the money that comes into your life. See if your behavior patterns contribute to the creation of lasting wealth and life satisfaction.
The author sincerely hopes that this book will not only help you become rich, but will also touch you in the most profound way. If you hold this book in your hands, then you must be a very special person. A person who is not ready to be satisfied with what circumstances offer him, who wants to write the story of his life himself, to earn a million dollars. Such people create their future as an artist creates a work of art, and the author wishes from the bottom of his heart that his book will contribute to the creation of your masterpiece.

You will find out why your overall efficiency decreases by 50% in case of financial problems
You will ask yourself 7 "painful" questions that will allow you to take a critical look at your financial condition
You will listen to the exercise "500 euros" to build a "bridge of friendship" between you and your earning potential
You can take a giant step towards your financial freedom with the help of the 25 Reasons exercise.
You will learn 4 ways to keep high motivation to earn money
You will receive recommendations on 3 groups of people who can professionally help you make money
You will be able to competently choose a mentor based on the size of your and his income.
You will see in which of the 5 areas of your life you need drastic changes
You will be able to ask yourself 3 questions that will allow you to be more optimistic about your financial future
You will learn how to manage money professionally as your income grows. Also, you will learn why, in most cases, increasing your income does not lead to an improvement in your well-being.
You will have a reason to think about 4 unpopular money postulates that, in fact, give a significant increase in your income
You will learn about the previously secret recipe for making money from US billionaire Warren Buffett
You will receive a formula on how to fit the purchase of a car and its expenses into your family budget
You will get acquainted with a huge list of consumption habits of millionaires based on statistical data
You will learn the difference between smart debt and stupid debt. Learn the creepy details of how consumer loans break your character every hour
You will receive 13 tips on how to get rid of your debts as quickly as possible.
You will learn 14 tips on how to increase your income by 20% in 3 months
You will be able to write a resume about yourself or your product that will give a stunning positive result.
You will feel the power of long-term investments on the example of $100
You will draw up 3 unique financial plans and be able to choose them flexibly
At your disposal will be 5 criteria for reliable investments and new methods on how to turn any risky investment into risk-free
You will receive at your disposal 10 selective rules for competent investment
You will receive the guarantee of true peace of mind of owning a significant fortune and will be able to truly enjoy your money.
And finally, you will listen to 10 points of a short summary of the entire audio training, which will inspire you to follow the basic laws of money every day for your bright financial well-being.

Distribution with bitrate: 128 kbps

Bodo Schaefer

The path to financial freedom

Translated from German by S.E. Borich according to the publication: DER WEG ZUR FINANZIELLEN FREIHEIT / Bodo Schäfer. - Actualisierte Neuausgabe. – München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, 2003.

© 1998 Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main

© Translation. Registration. OOO Potpourri, 2006

Preface to the new edition

For many people, there is a gap between dreams and a sense of reality. And they think it's completely normal. To put an end to this misconception, in 1997 I wrote the book Path to Financial Freedom.

I wanted this book to touch the hearts of readers and show them the way to the riches that our life is fraught with, including money. I wanted to demonstrate in it that wealth is a right given to us from birth. A decent life in an environment of financial freedom is our natural destiny. In this new edition, I want to reinforce your belief in this possibility. Two major developments have taken place since the publication of the first edition.

First, we have witnessed another exchange cycle. The stock price collapsed, and then went up sharply, only to collapse again. This is a completely normal course of things, and such events have happened more than once. However, in the course of them, many people lose money because they are not familiar with the basic financial laws.

To better prepare people for future stock cycles, I have rewritten chapters 10 and 11. First, I showed in them how important it is to prepare in time for unfavorable years. It would be wrong to believe that only good times await us all the time. Secondly, I provide a list of basic principles that investors need to know. Third, I challenge you to make important decisions that precede successful investment. Of course, handling money and securities is not difficult when the entire economy and stock markets are booming. But in life everything happens differently. Therefore, my advice is: learn to see the chances and opportunities not only in good times, but also in bad times. This book will help you with this. It is designed not only for periods of good weather and will accompany you all your life. Follow the truths in it, many of which are thousands of years old, and money will become a force that will keep you alive.

Something else has happened since the book was written. Obviously, in the first edition, I really managed to reach the hearts of many people. To date, more than 2.5 million copies of the book have been sold, it has been translated into about 20 languages ​​and has become one of the world's bestsellers of the last 50 years. However, for me, more than 36 thousand (!) Letters received from readers are of much greater importance. The success stories of these people are simply amazing. Since they took up the topic of money, amazing changes have taken place in their lives.

Most of these letters can be reduced to a simple and at the same time amazing thought. When the movement of money begins in your life, they often come to you so quickly and in such quantity that you involuntarily ask yourself: “Where were they before that?” I want this story to be repeated with you, and I will be glad to receive your letters.

Sincerely, Bodo Schaefer

Introduction

Do you know what stops most people from living the life they dream of? Money, and only money. After all, money is a symbol of a certain attitude to life, a measure of the way of thinking. They do not appear in our lives by accident. Here we are talking, rather, about some form of energy. The more energy we invest in some really important things, the more money we have. Truly successful people have the ability to make money. Some keep them for themselves, others use them for the benefit of people. But they all know how to attract money to themselves.

Do you know when money is of particular importance? When they are not enough. If a person has problems with money, then he thinks too much about them. It is necessary to thoroughly understand this topic, and then money will be a good help to you in all life endeavors.

Each of us dreams of something. Everyone has ideas about how to live and what he deserves in this life. At the bottom of our hearts, we all believe that great things await us that will improve this world. But too often one has to watch how dreams wither away under the influence of everyday routine and life realities. Many people forget that a place under the sun was originally intended for them, believing that they do not have the strength to free themselves from everyday worries.

We often put ourselves in the position of the victim. We make compromises, and before we know it, life passes us by. Often people blame their financial situation for not being able to live the life they want.

For more than 10 years I have been dealing with the problems of money, success and happiness. During this time, I learned to look at money with different eyes. They can prevent us from reaching our full potential, or they can help us to do so.

There are several opportunities to earn your first million. They fit into the four strategies described in this book:

1. You save a certain percentage of your earnings.

2. You invest the money you save.

3. You increase your income.

4. You save a certain percentage of the increased income.

If you do this, then depending on where you are in your financial situation at the moment, in 15 to 20 years you will have one or two million. And it's not a miracle. If you want to make your first million faster (say, in seven years), then you will need to put more of the strategies in this book into practice. Each strategy you master will get you closer to your goal faster.

How to become a wealthy person in seven years? You obviously already guess that in this case we are not talking about some specific amount of money that you would like to have, but about the person that you should become.

Of course, the path to financial freedom will not always be easy. However, living in financial dependence is even more difficult. If you follow the recommendations in this book, you will surely reach your goal. In my seminars, I have led thousands of people on this path and constantly observe how the knowledge gained literally changes their lives.

Please do not think that just purchasing this book will help you achieve prosperity. Even if you read it, it does not mean that you will get rich. You must work hard on this book and assimilate its content deeply. Only in this case, it will help to discover the treasure that is hidden inside you.

Let's hit the road together. First, decide on your current financial situation. The following pages are devoted to introspection. Please read the book only after you have determined exactly what your financial situation is.

I sincerely hope that this book will not only make you rich, but also touch other deep and important strings in your soul. I do not know you personally, but I know that if you hold this book in your hands, then you are a very special person who is not content with the status quo. You are a person who wants to write his own story. You want to build your own future and get more out of life. I sincerely wish that this book will help you in this.

Greetings, friends!

First of all, I want to thank you for your trust.

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And I would like you and I to make a deal from the very beginning: I put all my energy into this DVD set, into the audio seminars and into the advisory letters. I have done and am doing everything in my power. If you work on this program with the same enthusiasm, you will undoubtedly achieve your goals. So my suggestion is to do the best you can with this package.

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I don't know what your current situation is. Maybe you have already achieved a lot in life and become quite a wealthy person. Maybe you are at the very beginning of the path. Or maybe your finances are generally in the freezing stage. But from any position you can rise to a higher level.

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This is the essence of our program. It should help you to constantly learn and grow so that you become exactly the person you want and can become, so that you can become the best you can be. First of all, this refers to your financial situation.

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For this I am ready to become your mentor. The purpose of this letter is to support you and help you achieve your goals. If you recognize me as a mentor, this letter will be especially effective.

True well-being is our inalienable right.

Bodo Schaefer

Bodo Schaefer's "First Million in Seven Years" program includes:

• DVD1 "What Millionaires Really Think About Money"
• DVD2 "How to save, plan and invest for your first million"
• DVD3 "How to double your income in 5 tricks"
• Bonus 1: DVD "Top secrets of investing money that no bank will reveal to you"
• Bonus 2: CD with materials and documents for the seminar, tips for doubling your income
• Bonus 3: 4CD Audio Seminar "First Million in 7 Years"
• Bonus 4: 4CD Audio Seminar "Successful Thinking"

The first half of the book is so focused on reader motivation and abstract reasoning (Is a million a miracle? What do you really think about money? etc.) that I had to force myself not to stop reading altogether. The author of the book became financially independent at 30 (Kiyosaki only at 47) and obviously has the right to give advice - but not everyone is given to do it in an accessible form. In an interesting way, a number of tips are very similar to the same Kiyosaki. Compare:

Schaefer: If we ask ourselves: “Can I handle it?”, then we do not exclude the possibility of failure. Only because of such a formulation of the question remains, at least, doubt in one's own abilities. A better question would be, “How can I deal with this?” This question excludes failure.

Kiyosaki: Rich dad forbade us from saying, "I can't afford it." Instead, we had to ask, "How can I afford it?"

Schaefer: There is an alternative in applying our energy: we can work on a long-term solution to a problem, or on a short-term - imaginary - solution to it.

Kiyosaki: Rich dad said that a job is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

Schaefer: No one becomes rich just because they earn a lot. Wealth arises if you save money. Too many people hope in vain, "If I make enough money, things will get better." In fact, however, the standard of living always rises with the rise in income.

Kiyosaki: Poor people have more liabilities as their income increases.

Schaefer: The average German works for himself until July 20, and from July 21 all his earnings go to the state (which uses most of this money to pay interest on the public debt).

Kiyosaki: Working for the state from January to May is too high a price.

Etc. However, if Kiyosaki has his own “brands” - a look at assets and liabilities, rich dad (who has long lived a rich posthumous life in all new variations of Kiyosaki) and the cash flow quadrant, then Schaefer does not have such vivid images of his own. He does, however, give simple drawings in the form of a table (lid - opinion, legs - experience) or an explanation of how an increasing target becomes visible with the same size of the problem.

but these drawings did not become "classic". Having given the above similar quotes from these people, I will also talk about the differences. Rich dad Kiyosaki might well be considered a mentor, but Kiyosaki himself, in his book on the role of a mentor for the reader, is generally silent about the need for a good financial education. Schaefer, on the other hand, sees the need for a mentor, as in a specific person, from whom one can learn all the rich experience in a short time. Schaefer himself found such a mentor (or rather, even many), but it is clear that for an ordinary reader it will be a big problem to ask for a student to a millionaire.

Kiyosaki is a fan of real estate, because he made a fortune on transactions with it - Schaefer does not mention real estate at all. Kiyosaki, in his first book, gives advice by retelling his dialogues with rich and poor dads - Schaefer, on the other hand, manages to place on 136 pages of the electronic version, probably more than a hundred key ideas, tests and tips, which is why the value of each of them drops sharply and their I just want to scroll through.

What is the idea behind Schaefer's book? Nothing unusual - in the words of the author himself:

1. You save a certain percentage of your income.

2. You invest the money you save.

3. You increase your income.

4. You save a certain percentage of each revenue increase achieved.

At the same time, the author, using overly optimistic calculations (more on that later), is trying to prove that this scheme can give 1 million marks (euro) over a period of 7 to 20 years. Schaefer advises saving and directing to growth at least 10% of the salary and half of free money, while giving a good motivating example:

When a friend of mine decided to give pocket money to his eight-year-old daughter, he gave her 10 marks and put her in a car. He said he had to explain something very important to her.

He drove with her through the poorest quarters of the city in which they lived. Everything looks gray in gray there. No greenery, instead dirt and concrete. He asked her if she would like to live here, or if she preferred a nice place where their family had their home.

He explained to her that for the next 10-15 years she would still live with her parents, but then she would have to answer for herself. Then she will live either in this ugly neighborhood or in a beautiful house. And he said that she already now can choose.

He spent half a day explaining to his daughter the concepts of saving and paying himself. He got out of the car with his daughter in this disgusting area, and they wandered around. They had lunch there in a shabby restaurant. And since the girl felt very uncomfortable here, he said: “People live here who always spent all 10 marks.”

When they returned home, they developed a savings plan: the daughter wanted to save 5 marks out of 10. Since for every mark saved, the father decided to invest another 50 marks in her name, it turned out to be only 250 marks per month.

From here, it is quite logical to advise not to make consumer debts - and if they already exist, then no more than half of free income should be used to pay for them. There is another story in this part of the book worthy of a full quotation:

According to the descriptions of ancient historians, for example, Herodotus, the walls of Babylon made a strong impression and belonged to the seven wonders of the world. Erected under King Nebuchadnezzar, the walls were more than 50 meters high, about 18 kilometers long and so wide that six horses could walk along the top of the wall.

These walls were built by slaves. The work was incredibly hard. The sun mercilessly burned the builders dragging bricks to the top. The average life span of a slave was three years. If he fell from exhaustion, the overseer beat him with a whip. If, despite the beatings, he could no longer get up, he was pushed off the wall, and he was smashed below on the rocks. At night the corpses were taken away.

These scenes were observed by the Babylonians every day. Working slaves were a constant and ubiquitous reality that every inhabitant of the city was aware of. But it is interesting that at the same time, two-thirds of all slaves at the wall were not prisoners of war converted into slavery, but townspeople who lost their freedom for debts.

This story vividly speaks of how hard it is to resist the temptation of a loan at all times. However, a loan is not a universal evil - it can be taken for really necessary purposes with a low interest rate and a stable financial position (including with an airbag, which also - and rightly - writes Schaefer). For the majority, however, the situation is reversed: a loan is taken for luxury goods (at least not essentials), while the loan interest is quite high, and the financial situation is not the most reliable. Turning to the actual investment, Schaefer does not seem convincing to me. Here is his definition of investment and speculation:

Investments are aimed at generating annual income. Speculation has a different nature. Here you buy something in order to later sell at a profit. But before the sale, investing in speculation does not bring you any profit.

I do not fully agree with this definition. A bank deposit is also aimed at obtaining a regular income - but the interest on it is on average slightly lower than inflation, so it is difficult to call such a deposit an investment. Rather, it is savings, the preservation of capital. On the other hand, a smart buyer of shares also expects to sell them at a profit - see stock markets. However, he is not a speculator, even if he does not receive regular dividend income, which is not guaranteed on ordinary shares. He receives the same income from the business, which was converted into growth in quotes.

So, in my opinion, what is more important is whose money you want to receive - speculators with an opposite view of the market or from the operation of the business, as far as possible free from the speculative influence of market players (which is achieved by a long asset retention period). Buffett, for example, in order to limit the influence of speculators, has two types of shares in his fund, which are incomparably different in price. It can be said that the long-term investor "cleanses" his income from the influence of speculators, although he certainly has the right to use the speculative wave to his advantage by selling the entire asset at a relatively high price. However, then he will be forced to look for a new asset for the contribution ...

Investing in stocks and their funds

New section - Schaefer moves on to raising capital with shares. What did he come from? For my reasons, I read Peter Lynch's "Outplay Wall Street" (it came out about 5 years earlier than Schaefer's book) and largely retold it in the form of theses, passing off my experience as someone else's. Kiyosaki also mentions Lynch, but in any case he honestly writes that he is simply studying his way of valuing stocks. I have serious doubts that Schaefer was able to make significant capital on investments in shares.

What does the reader see next? Schaefer states bluntly: "Let me start with examples from such high interest rates as 12% and 20%". Looking at the historical profitability of the markets, I want to say: "let me not allow it." In the US, the rate of 20% has never been at all, the maximum was about 14% in 1980. But it is precisely these rates that allow, armed with compound interest and a considerable initial amount, to calculate an income of 1 million in 7 years.

In general, writing specific figures for future profitability without tying them to is, in my opinion, bad manners. What is an income of 12% per annum, if the yard has inflation of 15%, as happened in the 70s in the USA during the oil crises? During hyperinflation, all Russians were millionaires in 1992-93. Well, probably - the inhabitants of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Fast forward to today, expecting 12% a year (not to mention 20%) from the US market over the next 10 years is only a crazy optimist. Bogle expects three times less - about 4%. Schaefer himself, to justify such numbers, mentions the profitability of three (out of many hundreds!) Mutual funds, including Fidelity Magellan managed by Lynch. The book does not directly say to invest in them - but it is difficult to imagine another option with this information. And if Schaefer looks at how much the fund has earned since Lynch's departure (early 90s) to the present day and compares the result with his 12% per annum, then he must be a little uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

Still, advice on stocks (since taken from a professional) is generally not bad, although it is worth clarifying some points. The least important is the clarification to the phrase "since 1948 there have never been more than two bad years in a row." Bad - probably unprofitable; two years after the book was written, a three-year unprofitable segment will occur in 2000-2002. More significant is that the author considers an adequate period of investment in shares from 2 to 5 years. I will not delve into examples that will clearly show the insufficiency of this period - history says that you need to invest in stocks for at least 10 years. Better - by 20 or 30. Schaefer also does not take into account the possibility of strong inflation, as a result of which the high profitability of the market only compensates for the rise in prices - as was the case in 1966-1981 in the United States.

Then he talks about, but advises not to take more than 10 shares, because otherwise it becomes difficult to observe them (as far as I remember, again a literal quote from Lynch). How about an index mutual fund, Bodo? The purchase of the whole market by Schaefer is not even mentioned, since Lynch does not write anything about indices either. Meanwhile, Vanguard's first index fund is over 20 years old at the time Schaefer's book was published, Armstrong's book on portfolio theory came out five years ago...but who cares when a much more entertaining dot-com is already hyped up in 1998?

My opinion

For me, Schaefer is bad both as a motivator and as a mentor for an investor. The general principle: save, do not take ruinous loans and invest in assets is an axiom of many authors. Schaefer, on the other hand, loads his book with an abundance of advice, but practical examples next to them are rare.

I have no idea how exactly Schaefer made his capital. Information about him is intermittent: he was fat, hated running, had a cheap car with a broken handle; heard complaints about poverty from his lawyer father, moved to the USA as a teenager, found mentors, attended some expensive seminars that paid off ... Kiyosaki paints his real estate transactions indicating the place, time and price of buying and selling a house.

Shares in Schaefer's book are essentially the only universal method of increasing capital, but Schaefer himself uses the experience of others and most likely did not make money on shares (like Kiyosaki). But he actively teaches to invest in them and operates with a huge profitability, entering a million in the period specified by him. Reasonable: the name "million in 7 years" will be sold much better than a million in seventy. The author is well done for changing his life and earning money - but as a mentor he did not impress me at all.

Other than a couple of interesting examples, I didn't get anything out of this book. But this does not mean that you cannot bear it - each book can be effective at a certain point in time, for a certain level of knowledge. If you are not repelled by an abundance of advice, key ideas, and you need more emotional charge than a clear plan for exactly where to invest your money, then maybe this book is for you.