Author of the Rich Dad book series, Robert Kiyosaki, says his “rich dad” swore that investing is not rocket science. Rich Dad suggested it was simply a matter of using common sense. But we all know that sound judgment is not, in fact, terribly wide-spread.
According to Kiyosaki, the lowest levels of investors are individuals who have simply not studied the things that produce positive results. They adopt the viewpoint that investing is either too risky or a scam. Others skip their do-diligence and wind up losing money.
The wisest advice anyone can give you concerning buying investment property is simply to educate yourself. If, in your hurry to make money, you take action without that education, you’ll be doing yourself a great disservice. One of your most valuable resources is time and if you waste that, you’ll usually find that your money will follow - money you have in hand that you wind up squandering, equity you could have earned if you had simply taken the time to study the steps to successful investing.
“That’s great,” you may say. You presumably will agree that education is always a good thing. At the end of the day, knowledge is power. But “what kind of training do I need?” may be your first question. Your second question is probably going to be, “Where do I get it?”
The 1st thing you should do is study some fundamental accounting, which is not as nebulous as it appears to be. Accounting is the language of business. If you’re going to invest in a company or a piece of property (or whatever), you’ll want to be able to check in on it and see whether it will be a benefit (earn you income) or a burden (lose your money). It sounds like common wisdom when you ponder it, doesn't it? But in order to be able to ascertain those things, you’ll need to be able to read balance sheets.
There are four common types of financial statements: balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, and statements of changes in share-holder equity. The latter is pretty self explanatory, and deals with the characteristics that lie surrounded by equity at 2 different points in time. Shareholder equity is it’s total assets minus it’s total liabilities, basically the net worth of a company.
Your cash flow statement is a certificate that depicts the cash needed to make a company function properly, along with where that money came from. Wikipedia equates a business to a large kettle of H20 that catches more of the water and also has pipes running from within to the outside of it - into the investor’s pockets and others to whom the company is in debt. The cash flow statement attempts to explain the movement of that water – or in other words the movement of the cash.
The income (or profit-and-loss statement) keeps track of a businesses income and expenses over a period of time, as the balance sheet provides a description the same thing for a particular moment in time and addresses assets and liabilities.
It all seems very straightforward until you consider Kiyosaki's words on telling your assets and liabilities apart. He said that your bank, for example, will list your house as an asset. It sounds reasonable. After all, it is something you own, correct? Yet as stated by Kiyosaki's rich dad's statement of assets and liabilities, your house is actually a liability. It’s a financial obligation because it ultimately costs you money in dues and updates. It undoubtedly isn't making income for you, and until it begins doing that (say, you buy another house and are able to rent the first property out to make a profit), at this point the property still is not an asset.
The bank is not really lying to you outright. A house is an asset on their balance sheet because it is making money for them.
That is the type of thing you can decide for yourself and determine whether you are making or losing money on an investment, if you make the time to educate yourself education. Don’t forget: Knowledge is POWER.
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