There's a lot of financial advice out there. Not all of it is necessarily good. 1. Pay off your mortgage Not smart, especially if you have a mortgage that costs you 3-4% and you can make more that in other relatively safe investments. 2. Never use credit cards Bad advice. Use credit cards, but always pay off the balance at the end of the month. You need this to build a credit history. With no credit history lenders will not give you a loan as they have no way of determining whether you're good or not with credit. 3. Diversify your investments, but only in the stock market All stocks are pretty well correlated to each other. Diversifying past a point won't matter much. The "diversity" of those 500+ stocks in the S&P 500 didn't help much when it collectively lost 51% during the financial crisis. This is generally just self-serving advice for financial advisors who sell products. The stock market is only one form of investment. Look to real estate, bonds, real assets, etc. Don't delegate without supervising. If you have investments, you need to spend the time to study about investing and watch what you have. Have at least a basic understanding 4. When you are in retirement, you need lots of bonds Not really. Bonds are a not a great investment in a low-interest environment and when interest rates go up, you lose principal value, unless you plan on holding the bond to maturity and can handle the price swings. You should have balance from multiple investments in different asset classes, not just owning a bunch of bonds. 5. Never lease a car Why? Maybe the lease costs you less than buying and financing it. If you want a new car every couple of years, maybe leasing makes the most sense. Just don’t overspend. 6. Buy and hold beats trading I agree that you should not move in and out of the market trying to time and buy what's supposedly hot. But never fall in love with any investment. Challenge yourself as to why you own a stock or mutual fund at least every six months. If you don't know much about the companies you invest in beyond a superficial level, you should strongly consider solid, cheap ETFs like $SPY $EEM $VOO $VIG and the like over individual stock and bond investments. The world changes. Some companies are just speculative bets with a lot of PR behind them that are selling dreams, not actual earnings. Think $UBER $LYFT $TSLA. For all the "coolness" of these companies, they all burn a lot of money and have shaky economic models. If you're going to take the plunge on stocks like this, don't make it a big part of your portfolio. 7. Growth beats dividends I like the old saying “show me the money.” Does this company produce real, steady earnings? Have they proven that they can do this over a sustained period? It doesn't have to have a dividend, but companies that produce them are generally telling you that that amount of earnings is guaranteed. (Not in reality, but that's the implication.) I want investments that at least return some tangible reward on a regular basis. I want to buy earnings, not just a vision or a dream that may be feasible or might simply be BS. You don't have to be a math genius, but you need to be numeric and not just trust the narratives of people who have their own self-interests. A lot of companies in the public markets these days exist because of cheap capital flowing as a function of low interest rates, not because they have a real business model that would survive in a more normal environment. Too many investors chase the dream of capital appreciation, hoping to buy the next $AAPL $FB or $GOOG that grows a lot and produces a lot of cash. Sorry, but I’m not that smart or lucky. Growth is also very expensive in comparison to value.