Be Your Own Financial Adviser, Get a Prenup, Teach Kids About Money
Book: How to Get Rich
Author: Donald J. Trump (with Meredith McIver)
ISBN: 1-58836-410-0
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Before Trump gets back into deal stories, he spends a chapter on money in your personal life. Financial advisers. Investing. Prenups. Lawyers. Kids.
Be your own best financial adviser
Trump has seen advisers destroy people. Athletes make millions young. Bad managers blow it. By their thirties they are working regular jobs.
He names Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who lost much of his wealth to bad advice after twenty-plus years in the NBA.
Herschel Walker wanted to invest in a fast-food franchise. Trump told him: if you do that, I will not speak to you again. Herschel skipped it. The company went bankrupt two years later.
Read The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Fortune. Pick up the rhythm over time. Stay with winners who repeat success. Beware the friend of a rich guy with no track record. Trust your own common sense first.
Invest simply
Study long-term charts, not one lucky year. Use major firms for serious savings. Do not gamble money you need.
Warren Buffett and Alan Ace Greenberg succeed through common sense. Buffett’s letters reduce complex ideas to plain terms.
Wall Street can dazzle you with hedge funds and options. Trump is blunt: a lot of that is roulette with better suits.
Invest only in what you understand, with people you trust. Sometimes the best investment is the one you do not make.
Get a prenuptial agreement
A prenup does not mean you lack love. It means life is complicated where love and business meet. If you own a business and divorce without one, employees can get hurt.
His divorce from Ivana was a legal circus. The prenup held. A friend on his fifth marriage skipped a prenup because he was “so in love.” Trump thought: loser. A year later the marriage ended and the guy looked terrified.
Cut out the middleman
Wayne Newton called Trump after bankruptcy. His lawyers were eating him alive. Three banks, not ninety-nine like Trump had faced.
Trump’s advice: call the real decision makers yourself. Meet them. Dinner with families if you can. Banks control money, not fame. Forget the lawyers for settlement talks. They profit from dragging cases.
Three weeks later Wayne had dinner with all three bankers and settled. Lawyers did not get richer.
For regular people, the lesson is the same. Go to the top yourself when it matters. Lawyers help against scoundrels. But settle when you can.
Teach your children the value of a dollar
Trump’s kids learned from watching. They see him work hard. He turns off office lights. He likes a good deal on shaving cream at Duane Reade.
His parents were frugal without being cheap. Education mattered. His children have budgets and credit limits. Don Jr. and Eric did landscaping as kids. Ivanka trained at the School of American Ballet.
Kids watch. If you are careless with money, they assume that is normal. Not teaching kids about money is like not caring if they eat. First apartment, security deposits, saving incentives. If you do not teach them, who will?
My take
The investing section is dated in firm names, but the core holds: understand what you own, think long term, do not chase magic returns. The prenup and Wayne Newton stories are very Trump. The kids section is softer than you might expect. Read enough to think for yourself, protect what you built, show your kids how you treat money.