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Cash Money

Avoid being the 70-year-old trainee at Hardee's.

Every guy has a few vices that go against common knowledge. Fending off a hangover with a Burger King Quad Stacker does not make for healthy algebra, but it probably won’t kill you. But if you piss in the face of your financial health, we can guarantee that you will end up in a van down by the river. Check this 12-step money-minting program and cure your chronic case of broke-ass.

Your Early 20s: Drink Less, Save More
Start young and you’ll retire before you need Viagra.

Step 1
Timing is everything

Expert: Suze Orman, author of The Road to Wealth, host of The Suze Orman Show
“Time is the most important ingredient in any financial-freedom recipe. If you put $100 a month into a Roth IRA or a no-load mutual fund from the age of 25 to 65, with the average rate of return, you’ll have roughly one million bucks when you retire. If you wait until 35 to start making those $100 payments, you’ll have only $300,000. Those 10 years of waiting just cost you $700K. If you put money away in your Roth IRA from the age of 18 to 28 and never saved another penny, you would have more at the age of 65 than if you started at 28 and put the same amount of cash away every single year until you were 65.”

Step 2
Slaughter your debt

Expert: Maria Bartiromo, anchor of CNBC’s Closing Bell
“You can’t under any circumstance maintain an outstanding credit card balance every month. You have to get out of debt, that is priority one. As a general rule, look at what you owe and pay it down as opposed to signing contracts to consolidate. Why bring new lenders into your life? If you have to get a credit card, get an AmEx, because you have to pay it off every month.”

Step 3
Beer-goggle your first house

Expert: Michael Corbett, author of Find It, Fix It, Flip It!
“Buy a house that’s completely perfect and you’re buying at the top of the market. Bad idea. Look for a place that is downright ugly. As long as the home has good bones and a decent layout, you can build value into it. That way you control the market versus the market controlling you. Start small and stay away from interest-only loans, because the market’s going down.”

Step 4
Make your money work

Expert: David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire
“Whether you work at a coffee shop or an investment bank, you need to save at least one hour of your income per day, which works out to 12.5 percent of your annual income. And that’s for a middle-class guy. If you want to get rich, you’ve got to put away at least two hours a day of salary. Don’t let your cash languish in a checking account. Take it a step further and open a savings account with an online bank, like emigrantdirect.com or ingdirect.com. They offer up to five times the interest rates of traditional bank accounts. There are two ways to get rich. It’s really simple. Keep some of what you make, make more, and keep some of what you make.”

More Tips Cash Money Lite Bogus Bling if you don't have the jack to flaunt it, fake it. Faux Rolex Submariner, $199 There's no strip club on Earth bright enough to spot this fake. Throw it on the stage as a tip on your way out; it probably won't work tomorrow, anyhow. ReplicaHause Turbo Power Function Irons, $193 Don't want to shell out a grand for Callaways? Rip up the course with a set of clones. They're cheap enough to break an entire set. Golfknockoff Chanel knockoff handbag, $215 She'll never know the difference between the real deal and the "discount import" version, but you'll look like her sugar daddy just the same. BasicReplica Comped Cash Filthy Free Lucre Money maven Matthew Lesko wants to give you a meal ticket. What do you say to people who call bullshit on your guides to getting free Cash? It is for a lot of people because they don't do anything. It's like diet books. Americans spend billions on diet books, and people get fatter. My stuff is the same. it takes effort, and it doesn't work 100 percent of the time. Nothing does. What's one of the biggest sources of free money? Training money. You can go to your local state office of labor and get around $10K to learn Excel or take any course. How many of those suits do you own? I'm sorry to say I have 17. I just feel naked without thern now.

25–30: Start Raking It In
Train yourself to become a money mercenary.

Step 5
Get the right gig

Expert: David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire
“Don’t get stuck in a career where you’re underpaid. You need to be extremely aggressive through your 20s about your income and quite candid about asking for raises. If the average raise is about four percent, then you’re just going to stay even with inflation, which means you’re going to be broke. Shoot for a 20 percent raise each year. At that rate you more than double your income every five years. But first make sure you’re on the right boat. I have a lot of friends who have been working for 15 years in the wrong place, and they are poor. The sector that people make the most money in is money. Financial services are a guaranteed growth industry.”

Step 6
Upgrade every two years

Expert: Michael Corbett, author of Find It, Fix It, Flip It!
“If you buy a home for $700K and you have a $600K mortgage, by the end of the 30- year term of your loan you have paid out $1.2 million. Instead, take advantage of the primary resident tax break, which allows you to take up to $250K in profit, capital-gains-tax-free, on the sale of your home as long as you live in it for at least two years. Then roll the profits into the next one.”

Step 7
Build your bankroll

Expert: Dylan Ratigan, anchor of CNBC’s On the Money
“You have to get into the market. Open an online brokerage account and set up an automatic monthly deposit from your paycheck. During your early 20s you need to put away at least as much as you’re spending at the bar on Fridays. For each year after you hit 25, multiply it. So by the time you’re 30, you should be depositing five times your happy hour tab.”

Step 8
Stop paying for the ladies

Expert: Suze Orman, author of The Road to Wealth, host of The Suze Orman Show
“One of the worst habits men suffer from is this perception that they always have to pay for everything. It’s not like 50 years ago when only men worked. Men also think they’ve got to impress people with a gift. They’re all junk. Women don’t care. If you’re only paying the minimum credit card payments or failing to pay into your 401(k) at least up to your employer match, write the lady a letter and tell her how much you love her and screw the gift. I ran a survey of 1,400 people on what matters most to men and women. Men care about how a woman kisses. Women care about what men do with their money.”

Your 30s: Earn It, Don’t Burn It
Time to add another wing to your house.

A gold Slinky screams, "I'm wealthy!" The vendors of this 14K-gold-plated Slinky invite captains of industry to "move the Slinky back and forth between your hands while you contemplate a big business decision, talk to a coworker, or sit in a meeting." Doing any of these things will either have people believing you are deranged or stupid, and no one will want you on their team. Way to go! Take a long lunch, pal!

Step 9
Know why you buy

Expert: Dylan Ratigan, anchor of CNBC’s On the Money
“Know why you believe what you believe. If someone asks you why you like a stock and you can’t answer, don’t buy it. You generally shouldn’t buy individual stocks. Only buy individual stock if you actually know something about the company, which is almost never. Instead, buy ETFs, exchange traded funds, which are basically baskets of stocks or mutual funds that trade just like stocks. If you like oil, the ETF ticker for oil is USO. You want to buy Chinese companies because you think China is the future, it’s FXI. Want to buy the Dow? It’s DIA. If you randomly buy stocks based on the ticker or because somebody told you it was hot, you will lose your money.”

Step 10
Hedge your biggest bet

Expert: David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire
“Divorce is probably the single biggest thing that hurts guys in their 30s and 40s. If you’re wealthy or make a significantly greater amount of money than the woman you are dating, do not get married without a prenup, and do not get talked into a prenup that expires in five to 10 years. Sign an ironclad agreement with no expiration date. And don’t marry strippers.”

Step 11
Use the Starbucks effect

Expert: Michael Corbett, author of Find It, Fix It, Flip It!
“If you’re looking to pick up investment properties, buy in a transitional neighborhood. To tell the difference between a truly bad area and a neighborhood on the upswing, look for a new Starbucks. They spend enormous amounts of money researching developing areas. If they think they can sell $5 lattes, I can promise you that neighborhood is on its way up.”

Step 12
Never, ever buy a bar

Expert: Larry Bennett, professor of entrepreneurial practice, Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management
“If you want to buy or start your own business, pick up any trade magazine or look for opportunities on sites like StartupJournal and Inc.. For anyone with romantic aspirations, buying a bar is one of the worst investments you can make. Their 70 percent failure rate made the restaurant equipment channel one of eBay’s first dedicated subdivisions. I’m not a big fan of franchises, either. You can clear $50,000 to $60,000, but that’s not real wealth creation. Instead, focus on servicing other small- and medium-size businesses. You can make a lot more money that way.”

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