Real estate investor Grant Cardone says these 3 money lessons will bring you real wealth. Which ones do you follow?

2. Don’t lose money

Cardone echoed a famous quote from investing legend Warren Buffett: “The first rule of an investment is don't lose [money]. And the second rule of an investment is: don't forget the first rule. And that’s all the rules there are.”

Losing money while investing is difficult to recover from. For instance, if you lose 20% on a $1,000 investment, you’ll need a 25% gain in order to get back to $1,000.

Meanwhile, any dollars you lose in investing reduces your ability to take advantage of opportunities that come along. Losing $200 on a bad investment is $200 less than what could have been better spent growing elsewhere.

Read more: Warren Buffett used 8 solid, repeatable money rules to turn $9,800 into a $150B fortune. Start using them today to get rich (and stay rich)’

If you want to avoid bad investments, opting for safe investment vehicles, like a certificate of deposit, is one way you can grow your money with peace of mind.

You don’t always have to put away large sums to move toward your savings goals. Ten dollars a week could make a difference – if you’re smart about what to do with your spare change.

One of the easiest ways to invest is to open a self-directed trade account with SoFi. This DIY approach allows you to invest with no commission fees, plus, for a limited time, you can get up to $3,000 in stock when you fund a new account.

SoFi is designed to help you learn investing as you go, with real-time investing news, curated content and the data you need to make smart decisions about the stocks that matter most to you.

3. Invest with risk in mind

“If you get 7% or 8% on your money every year, you’ll be so rich when you need it,” Cardone said. “If you don’t lose it.”

Investors need to balance risk and reward; however, they’re often susceptible to chasing rewards while exposing themselves to too much risk.

Another study published in Nature revealed that the probability of an investor’s bankruptcy increases with the frequency of their leveraged trades.

Unfortunately, investors have accumulated more than $809.431 billion in margin debt to trade stocks as of May 2024, according to FINRA.

Active investors also tend to seek out other relatively risky investments, such as leveraged exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies. Yet, they also know that a diversified portfolio ensures reduced risk of over-indexing on any one asset class.

For instance, you could use Moby, an investment research platform launched by former hedge fund analysts, providing easy-to-understand investment advice. Every week, Moby rounds up their top three stock picks and delivers them straight to you — and without too much financial jargon.

So far, the platform has already helped over five million users uncover stocks before they deliver multibagger returns.

Moby’s success speaks for itself. The platform’s stock picks have outperformed the S&P 500 index by an average of 11.95% over the past four years. And that’s on top of the S&P’s already consistent annualized returns — about 10% a year, on average, since the index’s 1957 inception.