Ask HN: What piece of financial advice made the greatest impact on your life?

Good try Mr. Financial officer. Never ever you will know how I cheat hahaha

Spend less, save more. The rest will come.

Spend considerably less than you earn. Invest the difference.

Stop trading stocks.

Use index funds.

Ignore the ups and downs and make sure you add a set amount monthly.

Pay yourself first by making your monthly investment before any other bills.

Do it now and for the rest of your life.

Don't sell until you retire.

Increase my voluntary retirement fund (called superannuation in Australia) to the annual maximum before I was 40. ($27,000 p.a out of pre-tax income)

1. The only way you can get really wealthy is by owning some sort of business. If you earn your company 20k more this year than last year you would be lucky to get even 5k of that. When you work for yourself that is an extra 80k plus to an acquirer, if not more.

2. Alpha is overrated vs beta. It should've been obvious after seeing baby boomers become rich by simply owning homes, but I only really got it during the last 3 years of low interest rates after a more senior trader explained this idea to me (who was around during the 2000s). It really is as simple as riding the trend till it doesn't work, and once stuff starts changing you can afford to sit it out because of hard you outperform.

3.Optimize taxes(i.e pay less).