The Most Important Investment You Can Make (now and always)

Invest in yourself...

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realisation for many people…… Just imagine you’re 16 and I was going to give you a car of your choice today, any car you wanted to pick. But there was one catch. It was the only car you were able to have for the rest of your life. You had to make it last. So how would you treat it?

Well, of course you’d read the owners’ manual about five times before you turn the key in the ignition. You would keep it garaged; any little rust would get taken care of immediately; you’d change the oil twice as often as you were supposed to – because you would know it had to last a lifetime….

Then I tell the students you get one body and one mind. And it’s going to have to last you a lifetime so you’d better treat it the same way. You’d better start doing it right now because it doesn’t do any good if you start working on it when you are 50 or 60 and the little speck of rust has turned into something big… The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be.”

- Warren Buffett

That quote was true when Warren Buffett said it and it’s still true today.  In these tough economic times, there is still an investment that has as close as you’ll get to ‘guaranteed’ returns.  Yourself.

Start a blog on a topic you’re passionate about.  Take free classes from MIT! or free online classes from HP.  Learn a foreign language or how to play an instrument.  Learn digital photography.  Learn how to design web pages.  Edit a Wikipedia entry. Learn how to cook your favorite dish from your favorite restaurant.   Help cure poverty in the developing world.

There has never been a better time in history to do any of these things.  It will expand your mind and your marketable skills.

And the best part is, other than some investment of your own time, you can do any of the things above for FREE………which makes the return on the investment all but guaranteed.