MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom)

by Anthony Robbins

It’s probably hard for you to imagine that there’s a structure available today that can deliver for you: • 100% principal protection, meaning that you can’t lose your investment. • The returns in your account are directly linked to the upside of the stock market (for example, the S&P 500). So if the stock market goes up, you get to participate in the gains. But if the market goes down, you don’t lose! • You also have the ability to convert your account balance to a guaranteed income that you’ll never outlive. You can stop imagining—it’s here! It’s one of the opportunities that’s now available for investors like you. (And you will find out about it in chapter 5.3.)

Nearly half of all individuals who earn $750,000 per year or more say they will never retire, or if they do, the earliest they would consider it is age 70.

Or think of business moguls like Steve Wynn at 72. Warren Buffett at 84. Rupert Murdoch at 83. Sumner Redstone at 91.

With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day and the ratio of old to young getting more and more lopsided, it may not even be around, at least as we know it.

In 1950 there were 16.5 workers paying into the Social Security system to support one person getting benefits. Now

No person is free who is not master of himself. —EPICTETUS

And remember, more than a third of workers have less than $1,000 saved up for retirement (not including pensions and the price of their home), while 60% have less than $25,000.

the average American household spends $1,000 a year on lotteries. Now,

“What don’t I know?”

If you know your limitations, you can adapt and succeed. If you don’t know them, you’re going to get hurt.

complexity is the enemy of execution.

a powerful new smart phone app, completely free, to guide you through them. You can download it right now by going to www.tonyrobbins.com/masterthegame

After your plan is in place, you’ll have to spend only an hour or so once or twice a year to make sure you’re on course.

we’re drowning in information, but we’re starving for wisdom.

But true mastery requires three levels. The first is cognitive understanding. It’s your ability to understand the concept. Any of us can get it. And many of us already have a cognitive understanding of personal finance and investing. But that and $3 will almost buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks! What I mean is that information by itself is not valuable. It’s only the first step. You start getting real value when you reach the second step: emotional mastery. That’s where you have heard something with enough repetition, and it’s stimulated enough feelings inside you—desires, hungers, fears, concerns—that now you become conscious and capable of consistently using what you’ve learned. But the ultimate mastery is physical mastery. That means you don’t have to think about what you do; your actions are second nature. And the only way to get it is through consistent repetition. My great teacher, Jim Rohn, taught me that repetition is the mother of skill.

There will be a lot of exclamation points! This isn’t an editing mistake! It’s a technique designed to mark out key ideas and to build knowledge into your mind, body, and spirit so that action becomes automatic.

this is not just a book, it’s a blueprint. Each section is designed to help you understand exactly where you are in financial terms and help you close the gap between where you are now and where you truly want to be.

You’ll learn how to build your own automated “money machine,” a system that will generate income for you for a lifetime while you sleep.

“When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with the experience ends up with the money, and the man with the money ends up with the experience.”

You may be blessed with a long life, but it may not feel like a blessing if you run out of money.

3-D printers that will transform your personal computer into a manufacturing plant, self-driving cars, exoskeletons that enable paraplegics to walk, artificial limbs grown from single cells—innovations that will dramatically change our lives for the better in the very near future.

Compound interest is such a powerful tool that Albert Einstein once called it the most important invention in all of human history.

The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there. —VINCE LOMBARDI

Have you ever noticed that no matter how much you earn, you find a way to spend it?

Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. —WILLIAM A. WARD

You have to move from just working for money to a world where money works for you.

Freedom Fund,

your savings automatic.

you find the bargains at the point of maximum pessimism,”

when there’s a meltdown, people run for the hills. They’ll give away their homes, their stocks, their businesses for next to nothing. By going against the grain, John, a man who started with practically nothing, became a multibillionaire.

that night is not forever.

We saw the same kind of growth happen as the stock market soared from the lows of March 2009 to more than 142% growth by the end of 2013. But most people missed it. Why? When things are going down, we think they’re going to go down forever—pessimism takes over.

It’s in these short, volatile periods that astronomical returns really become available.

learning to invest when everyone else is afraid.

It’s amazing what research, faith, and action can do if you don’t let everybody else’s fears paralyze you.

History proves that those “down and scary times” are the times of greatest opportunities to invest and win.

10%? 12%? 15%? 20%?

www.tonyrobbins.com/masterthegame. It’s

set up an automatic transfer from your checking account.

You can check out this link with lots of choices to help you locate one that’s a good fit for you (www.tdameritrade.com or www.schwab.com), or you can find one on our app.

your financial future will flow from your ability to save systematically.

it. Contrary to popular wisdom, knowledge is not power—it’s potential power.

Execution will trump knowledge every day of the week.

George Samuel Clason’s classic 1926 book The Richest Man in Babylon,

‘A part of all I earn is mine to keep.’

No one would have remembered the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well. —MARGARET THATCHER

Money is one of the ways we can turn the dreams we have into the reality we live.

Money can’t change who we are. All it does is magnify our true natures.

If you’re mean and selfish, you have more to be mean and selfish with. If you’re grateful and loving, you have more to appreciate and give.

Take a moment and think back to the financial meltdown of 2008. Trillions of dollars of stock and home va...