When 40 finance greats are asked for the best finan­cial lessons they ever learned, you’re sure to learn some­thing. But who wants to trawl through 40 sep­a­rate pages to get to all that advice (apart from me)?

  1. Stocks build wealth — with no work
  2. Don’t fol­low the herd
  3. Do what you love
  4. Know where your money goes
  5. Shift from think­ing about a pay­check to think­ing about build­ing equity and long-term wealth
  6. Study War­ren Buffett
  7. Leave your money alone
  8. Be fru­gal but not stingy
  9. Use small bills
  10. Swear off debt
  11. To excel at some­thing, immerse yourself
  12. Cre­ate your own opportunities
  13. Ignore the noise
  14. Don’t buy any­thing you don’t want or sell any­thing you ain’t got
  15. Money doesn’t make you happy
  16. Asset allo­ca­tion is the most impor­tant deci­sion investors must make
  17. Stay the course through thick and thin
  18. Don’t get too good at the wrong stuff
  19. Live within your means
  20. You can’t reli­ably beat the market
  21. Take risks when you can
  22. Tap the power of compounding
  23. You can’t fight the mar­ket, so join it
  24. Don’t save too much
  25. Buy low, sell high
  26. It’s hard to exploit a trend
  27. Know what risk you are taking
  28. Per­for­mance is random
  29. Stick with what you know
  30. You don’t know more than the mar­ket knows
  31. The less you pay, the more you keep
  32. The future is uncer­tain. Because the future is uncer­tain, there’s a need for cau­tion. Try to fig­ure out the intrin­sic value of a business
  33. Always get it in writing
  34. Be hum­ble about what you don’t know
  35. Develop a healthy scepticism
  36. Ignore short-term mar­ket swings
  37. Sell for the right reason
  38. Care­ful of peo­ple you trust
  39. It is char­ac­ter, not assets, that counts most
  40. No one has ever invented a way to get some­thing for nothing
  41. Invest­ing isn’t only about stocks and bonds but rather is a mind-set for mak­ing sense of all of the trans­ac­tions a con­sumer engages in