A Riqueza da Vida Simples - Gustavo Cerbasi

As we become more knowledgeable about financial education, one of the first things you think about is that we should cut all "unnecessary" spending. In this summary of "The Wealth of Simple Life", Gustavo Cerbasi teaches techniques to optimize your spending and dominate your money.

But will cut all your spending makes you happy? Saving needs to be pleasurable, and for that Gustavo Cerbasi will show you that you don't have to make drastic decisions in your financial life.

In this book, you will see that saving also means having a quality of life, so it is not recommended for cutting everything. You will learn to have a simple and enjoyable life!

In the end, you'll find that simplicity can free you from overdraft and reduce your bill.

About the book "A Riqueza da Vida Simples"

In "A Riqueza da Vida Simples", "The Wealth of Simple Life" in a free translate to English, Gustavo Cerbasi makes us understand that the way we think may be closely linked to our standard of living. This book raises important aspects of creating wealth as a long-term goal, outlining strategies in the present for your dreams to come true.

About the author Gustavo Cerbasi

Gustavo Cerbasi holds a master's degree in Business Administration from Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Author of several books on financial education, such as:

• "Smart Couples Get Rich Together";
• "Smart Investments".

Selling more than 2 million copies, having extensive experience in business finance and family planning, lecturer, and being a consultant and lecturer of his online course Financial Intelligence.

To whom is this book indicated?

People who feel suffocated by their standard of living, who want to change, but do not know what should be done or where to start.

It is a guide to motivate you to change your life. Suitable for those who want to learn how to analyze spending that no longer makes sense and focus on the essentials.

Main ideas of the book "A Riqueza da Vida Simples"

• Your standard of living reflects your spending;
• Status prevents you from changing;
• Organize your financial life;
• Have more satisfaction in living the simple;
• Prepare your financial future.

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Overview: How to prosper?

Reducing your standard of living can be a challenge when you are so attached to it. After all, you consider it to be good even if you feel suffocated by its cost.

And then you realize that and start jotting it down, researching all the bills and putting everything at the tip of the pencil. Huge wear, isn't it? Finally, he leaves him. He realized that small daily joys are giving way to an unfortunate economy.

This is an inefficient method because nothing that consumes your happiness will be maintained in the long run. But if you still managed to go through this sacrifice with unharmed happiness, the next step is to invest.

But how to invest if you are a layman on the subject? First, you need to study and practice so as not to fall into traps.

And to make investments a habit, Cerbasi points out that it is necessary to reduce your future income, that is, the typical idea that "oh, pass the credit card that we pay at the end of the month" because you need to think beyond the present!

Overview: Traditional Methods

This second part of the book begins by presenting how you should work through your objections: turning them into questions. Here are some examples:

Source: The Wealth of a Simple Life - Page 29

"The Wealth of a Simple Life" also shows that you must be prepared to deal with problems and unforeseen events by strengthening your plans by regularly reviewing them.

But beware: If you made a plan that aimed to achieve a goal within five years and that plan was exactly what happened, it was probably done wrong. The plan was too conservative and therefore you have evolved little.

Thus, to adjust your plans, you need to be resilient, understand what mishaps exist, and not be overwhelmed by them. And in order for your plans not to be impacted by unforeseen expenses, you need two things:

• Maintain your emergency reserve;
• Reduce the proportion of fixed budget expenditures.

Overview: Reset your route

So far you have learned what can make your plans unfeasible. Now we have to look ahead: change your standard of living!

For this, two aspects must be very clear:

• Quality of life: these are spent on leisure, personal care, and routine decompression-related bills;
• Standard of living: unavoidable expenses.

Cerbasi suggests that you prioritize your future goals and thereby reducing your standard of living. You need to feel uncomfortable because it is the discomfort that generates change.

While all the above helps you save money, it's interesting to know that you don't need a boundless sacrifice. You need to get organized to optimize your financial life to realize your dreams without losing the glow of enjoying life.

Overview: Options

So, did you get organized? If you still find it difficult to cut back on spending to achieve your goals, your problem may lie with what you boast about. Thus, it is essential to start by cutting this type of expense.

After all, it is necessary to make tough decisions to get rich, make choices that generate losses now to increase future earnings.

To this end, Cerbasi teaches that choices should not be made based solely on numerical data, but also on what you want to extract from them for your life. And to help you make decisions, the book presents some ideas:

• Have a household budget;
• Make a SWOT analysis of your financial life for clarity;
• Have a plan B;
• Discuss and review choices.
• End prejudice and start over.

Overview: Long live the simple

Financial education is the art of living cheaper. So in this fifth part, you learn to set aside status for a fuller, more economic life: making your dreams come true.

For this, Cerbasi points out that it is necessary to increase your motivation and not require of yourself an excessive time of sacrifice, because we need to slow down when looking at our routine, aiming to find which expenses create value and which represent nothing.

Overview: Be authentic

Do not live the dreams of others! This sixth part of "The Wealth of a Simple Life" shows you that living what others expect from you generates no lasting satisfaction. Living this way gets you into the wheel of consumption and never stops spinning it, becoming increasingly dissatisfied.

To get away from it, Cerbasi teaches you to ask three questions before you buy something:

• "Do I really want this?"
• "Do I really need this?"
• "Can I?"

The author points out that you need to know yourself, because only then will you make concise choices and slow down your consumption, increasing your joy and becoming an authentic person.

Overview: The essence

In this seventh part of "The Wealth of a Simple Life", the author states that we need to be full of what is important to us.

To do this, we need to understand our needs and keep in mind that, more is less, that you need your housing and food expenses, but they can be reduced.

You have to live in minimalism, analyze your potential purchases by separating what is essential from what is not so that the relationship with money changes.

And to make your life even more practical and economical, Cerbasi raises eight tips to reduce your spending:

1. Borrow what you need;
2. Buy wholesale, this can yield great discounts;
3. Collectively buy and share product use;
4. Only buy if you really need it;
5. Reform or repair your equipment;
6. Make an exchange;
7. Always follow how are the prices of products you already use;
8. Always keep an emergency reserve.

Overview: The future

Our habits are changing. In this eighth chapter, Gustavo Cerbasi shows us that today we have a very different lifestyle from the past generation.

We no longer worry excessively about housing and focus more on connectivity: the new dream now is to have a smartphone.

Linked to this, the learning experiences have also changed, we study what is interesting to work towards accumulating more.

And retirement doesn't even appear on the radar, because as experiences have changed, people today are reconciling rest and practice, and it's likely that our vision of retirement is out of date.

Opportunities are then distributed and spending decreases, as fewer possessions translate into more experience and thus greater financial reserves.

Overview: The intelligent house

In this ninth chapter, Gustavo Cerbasi talks about his smart home in São Roque, a city an hour from São Paulo, and how he turned it into a sustainable residence.

Thus, it was necessary to find out whether spending on the solar heating system and electricity generation were viable or not, looking at the financial side of consumption.

Then, the author points out that even if you do not have many resources, it is possible to have a smart home when you do this collectively, such as shared housing.

Overview: Retirement

One of the points raised in this chapter is that usually we only worry about retirement when they have a child, or are getting older.

And so, in his book, "The Wealth of a Simple Life", Cerbasi emphasizes the importance of making consistent investments, the possibility of creating extra income and reducing personal and family spending.

Thus, the book shows that homeownership should not be considered as an investment, after all, it is not able to generate income when we are older.

In the end, teachings such as the concept of shared living (Co-living) and how to make our plans more flexible increase our possibilities, because as the author himself says,

"Nothing defines the concept of wealth better than freedom of choice."

Overview: Essential wealth

The more we understand the concept of wealth, we see that to have it does not require much money. We need to optimize our experiences so that they give us the most satisfaction with the lowest possible expense.

For this, good financial planning is essential, either to make that trip so dreamed, or save for your child to study in a good college.

To achieve its goals, the last chapter of this book leaves five steps:

1. Exclude what does not generate results;
2. "Simplify your standard of living";
3. You need to prioritize your dreams;
4. Improve your plans as they are built;
5. "Self-assess to understand if your priorities have changed"

Finally, the final message from "The Wealth of a Simple Life" is:

"Try more. Idealize less."

What do other authors say about it?

In the book "Essentialism", author Greg Mckeown says that when we try to do everything and have everything, we make decisions that take us away from our goal. If we don't decide where we should focus our time and energy, other people - bosses, colleagues, customers, and even family - decide for us, and soon we lose sight of everything that is significant.

According to the author, Lynda Gratton, from the book "The 100-Year Life", for longer life, people must escape life in 3 stages - education, work, and retirement - for life with multiple stages. To have a life with varying stages requires flexibility and change in the way time is used.

Long-term financial planning, with a belief in your skills and self-control, is required for a savings and investment plan.

For Robert Kiyosaki, bestselling author of "Rich Dad Poor Dad", the journey to enrichment should begin as early as possible, and it involves assessing your finances, setting personal goals, and seeking the knowledge you need to achieve your goals.

Okay, but how can I apply this to my life?

• Reduce your standard of living;
• Be prepared to deal with unforeseen events;
• Standard of living and quality of life are not the same;
• Analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your financial life;
• Always ask yourself if the purchase is really necessary;
• You do not have to sacrifice what gives you satisfaction;
• Share and borrow what you need;
• Emergency reservations are important;
• Live simple optimizing what really matters to you.

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