16 best-ever money tips from the world’s most successful people

For most people, finding exactly what they love and monetising it is one of life’s biggest challenges. Those money tips are exactly what tycoon Warren Buffet says drove him to success in investing and finding great deals. “Being successful in almost anything means having a passion for it,” he told Market Watch. “If you see someone with even reasonable intelligence and a terrific passion for what they do, and [they] get people around them to march even when those people can’t see over the top of the next hill, things are gonna happen.”

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Business magnate Richard Branson has on many occasions said he makes lists of all kinds. “I have always lived my life by making lists,” he wrote in a blog post. “These vary from lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. I also have lists of topics to blog about, lists of tweets to send, and lists of upcoming plans.” He advises to write down every single idea you have, no matter how big or small, and then to challenge yourself to follow through. Lists are a great way to set financial priorities.

It’s easy to credit your success to being in the right place at the right time, but in the end, no real achievement can come without hard work. That’s a lesson hip-hop mogul Sean Combs learned early on, and it’s driven the money tips he follows. Combs told Forbes that at the age of 12, he learned that if he gives customers his best and services them differently, whether it’s with music, clothing or vodka, he’ll get a return on his efforts.

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“Success is a lousy teacher,” says Microsoft founder Bill Gates. “It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” Don’t stop hustling. Don’t stop learning. Past success doesn’t ensure future success. Even the smartest, most connected, most talented people can lose.

This applies to all areas of life. Shark Tank‘s Mark Cuban points to a good test: can you cut up your credit cards? “If you use a credit card, you don’t want to be rich,” he wrote in a blog post. “The first step to getting rich requires discipline. If you really want to be rich, you need to find the discipline – can you?” He goes on to explain that if you’re looking to make money, you always need cash available. “You aren’t saving for retirement. You are saving for the moment you need cash. Buy and hold is a sucker’s game.” Ultimately, he says the first step to becoming rich is being a smart shopper. “Yeah, you have to give things up and that doesn’t work for everyone, particularly if you have a family. That is reality. But whatever you can save, save it. As much as you possibly can. Then put it in six-month CDs in the bank.”

Many successful people find making lists to be very helpful, but you have to honour what works for you. Uber’s chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John, for example, goes so far as to say that lists would have kept her from getting as far as she has. “It’s very personal to me and doesn’t work for everybody, but what I have found in my experience is that when I make pro and con lists, it’s usually because I am trying to talk myself out of a good idea or talk myself into a really bad one,” she said on an episode of The Tim Ferris Show. “There has been time and time again where I have been right and I couldn’t have explained it to myself or anyone else, so the pro and con list has gone by the wayside.”

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once recounted a time when one of his friends hired a handstand coach: “In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. Most people think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” This ties into Bezos’ belief that people underestimate how hard following through with goals will be. If you want to make a big purchase, like a house, don’t be discouraged by the long road.

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Suze Orman told Oprah her money tips include going through your monthly budget, highlighting all the expenses that are non-essentials, and cutting those costs by 10 per cent until you’re left with $100 extra. She also suggested checking for discounts before you make a purchase and don’t forget to always check sites that give you cash back for your purchases

Shark Tank’s Daymond John told CNN that he realised “almost every single time I have had some level of success, money was never ever a part of it […] and if anybody out there knows entrepreneurship, they know entrepreneurs don’t just go ‘succeed, succeed, succeed, succeed.’ They go ‘succeed, succeed, fail, succeed.’”

“It is the little things that can and will wreck your credit,” writes Sophia Amoruso, the founder of online retail empire Nasty Gal and GirlBoss Media, in her book, #GIRLBOSS.  “Because I moved so much, I rarely had a steady address, causing bills to miss me as I jumped from state to state. By the time my $28 lingerie charge caught up with me, my credit was wrecked, and I had learned the hard way that you can ruin your credit in one seemingly responsible afternoon, but rebuilding it takes years.”

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