CAREER&MONEY
As chief Market Strategist, Managing Director,
and Senior Transportating Analyst for Avondale Partners, Donald is a frequent guest on
CNBC and Fox. He has been recognized as a
top stock picker by the Wall Street Journal,
Fortune, Zacks and Starmine.
The $
DIET
Center photo courtesy of ProPhotoSTL
BY
DONALD BROUGHTON
’ve been told “The $ Diet” was a bad title.
“Are you crazy? An investment analyst can’t write an article
about dieting for a women’s magazine,” I was told. “Why not?” I
asked. “The initial stages of creating wealth, and the ongoing
process of maintaining wealth are exactly the same as dieting.
The only difference is you are counting dollars instead of calories.”
Everyone wants the end result, but most don’t have the daily discipline necessary to reach their goals. There is no magic pill! Just as you
can’t change your body without changing your daily habits, you can’t
change your financial wealth without doing the same.
I admit it. I learned how to financially diet long
before I needed to physically diet. I run, ride my
mountain bike, play squash, lift weights, and I am
blessed with a healthy metabolism. I was also
blessed with a family that fixed fairly healthy meals
long before it was fashionable, and I grew up with
a palate that enjoyed salads and vegetables.
Not that I haven’t eaten some fast food along
the way. I still love a little Taco Bell or Imo’s on occasion, and Carl’s… well greasy hamburgers just
don’t get any better, do they? But for the most
part, I eat a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables,
nuts, yogurt, brown rice or squash, with a little
lean meat thrown in, and I avoid processed foods
as if they were the plague.
Despite all that, after I turned forty, I began to
understand the axiom, “No one gets to be fifty and
thin without a lot of work and discipline.” A life
saver for me has been the calorie-counting app on
my IPhone. Before exercise, it tells me I have 1,600
calories to consume per day if I want to lose a
pound a month. I enter everything I eat and all the
exercise I do, and it tells me whether I burned
more calories than I consumed, or consumed more than I burned - every
day. If every day I consume more than I burn, guess what? I gain weight.
On the other hand, if every day I burn more than I consume, that number on the scale starts to go down. For me this was an epiphany; dieting
is just like investing!
Take your entire budget for all your monthly expenses (house, car,
insurance, phone, groceries, etc.) and reduce them to a daily amount
(divide by thirty). Take your monthly after-tax paycheck and do the
same. Subtract your expenses from your income, and that’s your calo-
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GAZELLE STL
rie-per-day amount. I understand that for most of us starting out, it’s
only a few dollars a day, but my first car wasn’t a Mercedes, and my first
house wasn’t in Ladue. If you don’t want a fat butt in the future, you eat
less and exercise more today. If you want a nice house or nice car in the
future, you don’t spend more today than you earned. Just like dieting,
it is an ongoing daily process of self-discipline.
I’m not saying don’t occasionally spend more than you take in. It’s
OK to have a splurge or feast once in a while. It is OK to reward yourself
for being good. In fact, just as it’s healthy to treat yourself to your favorite
high-calorie food once in a while, it’s OK to spend more than you are
taking in once in a while. Just know it is a reward for
your hard work, and don’t let it become a change in
your ongoing daily habits.
Eliminate the food that is really bad for you! Once
you have the daily incoming versus outgoing under
control, lay out a plan to eliminate all debt on depreciating assets (cars, clothes, etc.) over time. Ins \