The Rules of Wealth, 4th Edition

RULE 105

Take responsibility before you take advice

This is a follow-on from the previous Rule. If you are going to take advice you need to know in advance:

• what you expect to get
• why you are asking
• your exact position – if you don’t know, how can they advise you of anything?
• what you want to happen next
• what role the adviser will play in that
• what action you can take if their advice is wrong/out of date/ harmful
• what further advice you might need.

And before you can do any of these you need to take responsibility.

We all start out – or at least I did, and so did most people I’ve ever talked to about it – somehow expecting that we would end up rich. It was/is an assumed process, sort of by osmosis. As you get older and add years to your life, ...