A Harvard MBA graduate Camilo Maldonado shares several life lessons and wise insights into personal finance. People can leverage stock market investments and 401(k) and other individual retirement accounts to optimize their own net worth and wealth accumulation. Living within our means is a primary strength in the long run. It might be even better for us to live below our means with frugal habits. Instead of overspending on high rent and overhead expenditures, we should save enough to invest in blue-chip stocks with steady cash dividends and long-term capital gains.

Further, tax-sensitive investors should maintain a multi-year time horizon for wise stock investment decisions. In this light, long-run stock investors can exponentially compound multiple streams of passive income over many years. For instance, if the investor saves $100,000 to buy stocks with 11% average equity market return performance over 30 years, the eventual wealth accumulation amounts to almost 23 times the initial outlay (i.e. $2.29 million in total). It is therefore important for us to learn the fact that we cannot buy happiness sooner rather than later. On balance, we should invest patiently in our skill sets and money matters by learning to delay immediate gratification over time. Patience pays well.