Lucky 13: Thirteen Foundation Stones for Building Wealth

By Mat Murphy

Are you looking for easy to implement yet powerful advice on how to create wealth? Then get Lucky!
Lucky 13 details thirteen important building blocks in your wealth creation plan - your 13 Foundation Stones.
Building on basics such as the recommendations in 'The Richest Man In Babylon' about saving, budgeting and getting out of debt, Lucky 13 then explores more sophisticated concepts such as investing, asset ownership, self-education, income and tax strategies as well as making money through the internet.
This book is for people who want to deeply understand the important factors that will make a difference between a life of money worries and the life of wealth and financial mastery that everyone wants and deserves!
So Get Lucky! And watch the brilliant life you desire unfold before you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mat Murphy
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311212856

Mat Murphy

Mat Murphy is a writer, finance pro, sports nut and keen traveler. Apart from finance and writing, Mat enjoys travel with his wonderful wife Kim, epic bushwalk adventures, hanging with his tribe of kids and playing soccer.

Book preview

Lucky 13

Thirteen Foundation Stones for Building Wealth

Published by Mat Murphy

Copyright © 2014 Mat Murphy

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The Lucky 13 Sections

Babylon's 10% & the Rule of 72

Boring Budget

Bad Debt is Like Bad Medicine

Owning Your Own Home

Shares & Managed Funds

Insurance

Tax

Education & Advice

Superannuation Retirement Savings

Leveraging Equity

Investment Property

Option Strategies

Online Business

Summary

About Mat Murphy

Connect with Mat Murphy

Introduction

Are you sick of the financial struggle of modern life? Had enough of scraping by?

If you are wondering how it is that some people seem to be able to afford to live the sort of relaxed, enjoyable life that constantly eludes you, then you need to understand what they have been doing for years.

This guide lays out for you the simple steps that will supercharge your finances and allow you to live the sort of life you have been dreaming of.

This is no ‘get-rich quick’ scheme. It isn’t going to tell you the miraculous secret product that you can sell or a new system that lets you get rich without making changes.

What it will do for you is give you the building blocks for a solid financial future, by bringing together years of personal financial planning expertise into one easy to follow and simple to implement course.

Some of these steps are so simple, you will wonder how they can make a difference. Yet by following the Lucky 13 system, I assure you of a brilliant future of calmness, joy and a myriad of lifestyle choices.

The base of the financial pyramid is built on the simple, solid foundations of saving, removing debt and owning your own home. Progressively, the concepts become more sophisticated yet they are complementary steps on your path to riches, a natural evolution as you become your own financial guru.

Good luck on your journey. Be brave enough to want more.

Take that first step towards a better future!

Let’s get started…

Babylon’s 10% and The Rule of 72

In 1926, George S. Clason, an enterprising businessman and writer from Louisiana in the USA, wove a series of parables around the setting of ancient Babylon. These parables focused on the teachings of the wealthy Arkad, the so-called Richest Man in Babylon. The lessons in the book are simple to understand, so much so that they can be overlooked as being too basic to make a difference. Yet this book has become a classic finance book, its story of how to build wealth thousands of years ago, as relevant today as it was when written nearly 100 hundred years ago.

And it’s core lesson?

A part of all you earn is yours to keep.

That simple! Clason, through his characters, implores that the keystone of building your financial future is to effectively pay yourself first by ensuring that at least 10% of all you earn is saved for your future wealth. Come hell or high water, this 10% being saved is not to be touched, but to be left in a high earning bank account to build up. It cannot be touched to get you out of a financial hole in the last days before payday. It should not be dipped into for that special dress on sale or for a bottle of wine.

It is yours, but it is not yours to use. Yet!

I can attest to the simplicity of the lesson. At the age of 32, after 15 years in the workforce, I found myself struggling to pay bills, behind on credit card payments and in debt, with barely enough funds to buy food for the family. It disgusted me. I considered myself fairly clever, hard-working and I assumed that financial security should have been achieved by then.

I had read the Richest Man in Babylon in high school, but by the time I started earning a wage, the lessons were washed away in a hedonistic flood of drinking, partying, gambling and good times. Bad decisions kept me tied to the weekly wage, never too far from financial calamity. While the early days created great memories, the later feeling of insecurity was a desperate, unhappy place. I sensed how close to the grim sewers of life I was, knowing that if the car broke down or I needed time off work because of illness or injury, there was no safety net. That type of desperation eats at you.

Familiar, anyone?

In thinking of how to get on top of my money, I was led fortuitously back to The Richest Man in Babylon. The lights came on and I made the decision – the commitment – to put aside 10% of everything I earned. I began to pay myself first!

If there was a bill due that week, it was secondary to my savings plan. If my family had to eat beans on toast on the night before payday, we got by. I had to be unswerving, despite the difficulties of the new regime.

Within months, the benefits were obvious. I had adjusted to the lower available cashflow, the family had a budget to ensure everything was being provided for, debts were reducing and the feeling of having a few hundred dollars saved towards my future was simply glorious. It wasn’t the amount in my bank, but the knowledge and certainty of my future freedom. I felt rich!

Start this now! It is daunting, because you wonder where you are going to eke out another $100 from your pay, because as it stands now, that payday is fully accounted for. Don’t flinch, just do it. Pay yourself first, and then build everything else around what’s left. There will be adjustments and you will think you can’t do it, but you can. And you should!

Some weeks it might seem like the most difficult thing you have ever done. You will feel like you are living on the absolute bones of your existence, that you are destitute. But you have to hold strong, for this is the basis of your future – the very core of your wealth. You have to fight through those weeks when you are scraping to put food on the table, when you have to deny yourself that barista-made coffee, knock back that invitation to go for beers and dodge the easy path of a takeaway dinner. This is the discipline you must foster.

The reward for this discipline is immense. It is not simply the dollars you have put away, but in the feeling of well-being you gain in having a fallback position. You have control over your life and your finances. And if you maintain that discipline you