While the readers of the happyrichinvestor.com blog would certainly know the answer to this one (Hint: The HappyRich Way), Benjamin Graham, who is also known as Warren Buffett’s mentor has provided a perfect answer to this in his book “The Intelligent Investor”.

I like it so much that I have mentioned it in my book, “The Only Financial Planning Book that You Will Ever Need”, too.

 “I once interviewed a group of retirees in Boca Raton, one of Florida’s wealthiest retirement communities. I asked these people mostly in their seventies – if they had beaten the market over their investing lifetimes. Some said yes, some said no; most weren’t sure. Then one man said, “Who cares? All I know is that my investments earned enough for me to end up in Boca”. Could there be a more perfect answer? After all, the whole point of investing is not to earn more money than average, but to earn enough money to meet your own needs. 

As Ben Graham says, “The best way to measure your financial success is not by whether you are beating the market but by whether you have put together a Financial Plan and a Behavioural Discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go”.

Well in that case, are you well positioned to achieve financial success? 

Most importantly do you have the Behavioural Discipline to do what needs to be done in the environment that we are in.