The 48 Laws of Money by Victor O. Carl is the first book I'm writing up from my notes. It's split into 48 short laws, and rather than skim all of them in one go, I've grouped them into seven themes and I'm going to work through them one at a time. This first part covers the seven laws about mindset, because everything else in the book depends on them. You can have the best strategy in the world, and if your head isn't right, you'll find a way to ruin it.
These aren't summaries of the book. If you want that, read the book. What each law means for money is a given, and the book covers it well. What I want to write about is what each law means to me, in money and far beyond it: what it has actually cost me, taught me or given me, with the parts I'm not proud of left exactly where they are.
Not financial adviceThis is my own experience and how I think about money, not a recommendation to buy, sell or trade anything. Trading, especially futures, is high risk, and with leverage you can lose more than you put in. If you're making real financial decisions, speak to a qualified adviser.
- Money is a token, not the end. What it really buys is freedom: to do what you want, when you want, how you want. Chase a figure for its own sake and you'll never arrive.
- Don't compare. Your finish line isn't even in the same place, so why judge yourself from the same start?
- Set your rules when you're calm, follow them when you're not. In the market and everywhere else. Don't shop when you're hungry.
- Separate the luck from the skill. You'll always have the process. You won't always have the right person at the right time.
- Don't get complacent. Keep doing what you know, and multiply it. Ask what ten times would take, then reverse engineer it.
- Control your inputs, with direction and conviction. Step forward with a big stride.
- The losses build you. The wins define you.
01Law 7: your mindset is your greatest asset
For a long time, I thought money was the end in itself. Not a means to anything. The thing.
I don't think anyone told me that. I just absorbed it, and it quietly shaped everything. Because when money is the end, you're not chasing financial freedom any more. You're just chasing wealth. Your mindset turns materialistic, and you never arrive anywhere, because there is always more money. Always a bigger number, always someone with more.
So what are you actually chasing?
That question is where the doubt creeps in. You start questioning things. You realise that if you're honest, you don't even have a purpose for what you're building. You're chasing a figure. You want your bank account to look good. You want people to see that you're doing well. And none of that ever feels like enough, because it was never the point.
Money is a token. It's a token for the thing you actually want, a token for your purpose. It's what lets you get places, travel, spoil your family, watch the people you love be happy, donate, give back to your community, see everything for yourself and experience life to the fullest. And above all of that, money buys you freedom. Every one of those things falls under it.
Money buys you freedom: the ability to do what you want, when you want, how you want.
That's the most important thing to understand about money: the more of it you have, the more freedom you have in this life to do the things you actually want to do, the things that genuinely fulfil you.
That's what it's for. The moment you see it that way, every decision you make about money finally has a reason behind it.
02Law 10: avoid the trap of comparison
I've written about this in Keep moving, and I'll keep saying it until it sticks: don't ever compare yourself to other people.
There might be another 21-year-old out there running a huge business. You'll open LinkedIn and it'll feel like everyone is posting a new role, a new raise, a new milestone. But those are a select few people who've already figured something out, and you're only seeing the part they chose to show you.
Yes, time is money, and time does run out. But everyone's start is relative. Your journey might be quicker. You might end up somewhere completely different.
Your finish line isn't even in the same place as theirs.
So why are you judging yourself from the same starting point?
03Law 14: control your emotions in the market
Fear and greed make you buy high and sell low. Everyone knows it. And emotions have still got the better of me more times than I'd like to count.
I've back-tested a strategy over and over again, watched it work, trusted it completely, and then the moment I put it into full throttle with real money, it stopped working. And instead of stepping back, I revenge traded. I tried to win it back. It's the same story everyone has, and it never ends any other way.
You will never switch your emotions off. What you can do is set your rules when you're calm, and follow them when you're not. Always. Because the version of you in the middle of a losing trade is not the version of you who should be making decisions.
That's what this law means for money, and it's what the book is about. But to me, it reaches far beyond the market. It applies to everything.
Think about the advice everyone has heard about the supermarket: don't go shopping when you're hungry, because you'll come home with far more than you needed. It's exactly the same principle. The hunger makes the decision for you, and you only notice once you're unpacking the bags.
So don't ever make a choice at the moment your emotions are pulling hardest on it: when they're at their most heightened, when you're not in the right frame of mind, when you can't think straight. This isn't about regret, because you shouldn't carry regret around with you. It's simply that you can't make a sound decision when you're not in the headspace where the best decision would actually be chosen. Wait until you are. Then decide.
04Law 22: don't confuse luck with skill
A good outcome doesn't prove it was a good decision. You see this more clearly in trading than anywhere else.
When something works for the wrong reasons, it doesn't just make you money. It reinforces a setup that was never there. It plants the idea that you can make money outside your setup, outside your zone. And that is exactly what leads to something much worse in the long term.
So stick to what you know. A setup you know, sized the way you planned. If you get lucky once or twice, don't get overexcited about it, because it feeds straight back into your emotions. It was luck. Blame it on luck. Then take back control of the things you actually can control.
The same is true far beyond a trading screen. Say you get your first big breakthrough: at work, in your business, the day you're finally selling what you always wanted to sell, the day your product is finally on a shelf. Whatever it is, the key is not to confuse the luck with the skill. You have to separate them.
Be honest about which part of it was the hard work and the volume, and which part was knowing the right people and being in the right place at the right time. Both played a part, and there's no shame in either. But only one of them is guaranteed to be there next time.
What you will always have is the process, and what you put into it.
What you won't always have is the right person at the right time.
Once you can separate the two, you know which one you can work on, and which one might come and might not. You can't rely on it. What you can rely on is everything you control, and that's exactly where law 29 comes in.
05Law 26: stay humble in victory
I could tell this one through trading, but the lesson that really taught me it was my online personal training business.
My first £1,000 came from three clients, and all three already trusted me. They were people from my own audience, people who knew me, people who knew I'd been in the gym for five years and had seen what I'd built. I went on to make over £1,200 in that first month. It felt like I'd made it.
I hadn't. And I knew I couldn't get complacent.
Getting a customer on top of those first three didn't compare. It was so much harder. Now I needed someone who had only just come across me to trust me enough to pay for a high-ticket programme, based on nothing but the knowledge I'd shared. That takes skill. It takes real sales skill, which I built with my mentor. It takes marketing skill: knowing exactly who you're selling to, paying for adverts, learning hooks, making videos that stop people scrolling. And more than anything, it takes dedication, perseverance and hope, when you're sending out a hundred messages every single day without a single reply.
Don't get careless. Don't get complacent. Keep doing what you know, and multiply it.
That's the truth, and it's simpler than it sounds. Look at what you've been doing so far. Then ask what ten times that would look like. If I had to charge ten times this price, what would I have to offer? If I wanted ten times the results, what would I have to put in?
There will be an answer. There always is. Your job is to find it, reverse engineer it back to what you'd have to do today, and then ask yourself the hardest question of all: why aren't you doing it now?
06Law 29: beware the illusion of control
You can't control the outcome. You can control your inputs. You can decide your process, choose what you dedicate yourself to, and decide what you're doing every single day.
This is why it leads straight into goal setting. Your goal is your long-term ambition. You're going to be rich one day, you're going to have that house, whatever it is. Maybe you will. But on its own, that is just overwhelming, because you don't know how to get there from today. Break it down into your inputs. Know what you can do today, and do it. Know what you can do this week, and do it. And don't stress or get overwhelmed by the things that are out of your control, because that is wasted energy.
But this is the key part, and it's the part most people miss: you can't just focus on input. You can't do things aimlessly, without direction. Every input needs direction. Every input needs conviction. You can't fire off loads of applications without thinking, without actually striving for them to go somewhere.
Everything you do in this life has to come with precision.
Aim it at something. Put your whole heart into it. And step forward with a big stride.
07Law 45: don't let past losses define your future
In trading, this law is brutally specific. Don't chase losses.
People are risk-seeking when they're losing and risk-averse when they're winning. Behavioural economists call it loss aversion. What it means in practice is that when you're down, you always think you can make it back, so you'd rather hold on and wait until it eventually turns positive. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't, and a small loss becomes a big one. This is a key thing in trading, and you have to cut it off.
Outside of trading, it means something much bigger to me. Don't let something that flopped define who you are.
My Etsy shop was suspended. I'd put in hours and hours of work, ten-hour days over and over again, and it was all coming together. It was literally compounding. And then it ended.
But I knew that day was coming, and it didn't set me back. I didn't sit there thinking it was gone for good and so was I. I moved on to the next thing, because I had bigger ideas, brighter ideas, things I wanted to build. That shop did not define who I am. I'm not a failure because one business didn't work out. I'm someone who can handle mistakes. I'm someone who isn't afraid to go out there and put my foot down, and even if it backtracks, even if it comes straight back at me, that won't make me lie down on the ground and concede.
The losses build you. The wins define you.
Because every win you ever have is the result of all the losses that came before it.
I will keep going, again and again and again, until those losses turn into a win. I will flip it back. I will prove that point.
08What's next
Part two covers the laws on patience and discipline: compounding, playing the long game, staying consistent when it's boring, and knowing when to stop. If you've read the book, I'd love to hear which laws stuck with you: hello@getritual.app.
09How Ritual helps
Law 29 is the reason Ritual exists. You can't control the outcome, but you can control what you do today, and Ritual is where those inputs live. Everything you commit to goes on one page, and every task and habit you finish moves your own share price. It's play money, but it turns a big goal into what you'll actually do today, and keeps an honest record of whether you did it.
- One page for today: only what you commit to counts
- Habits with streaks, and a recovery day after a bad one
- Your week on a calendar, with your goals broken into days
Ritual is in beta. Join the waitlist and you'll hear first when places open.
10Questions
01What is The 48 Laws of Money about?
It's a 2024 book by Victor O. Carl that sets out 48 short principles about money, from compounding and patience to risk, investing and what money is for. I've grouped the laws into seven themes and I'm writing about each theme in turn.
02Why should money be a means, not an end?
Because if money is the goal, there's no finish line; there's always a bigger number to chase. What money really buys is freedom: the ability to do what you want, when you want, how you want. When it's a means to that, every decision you make about it has a reason behind it.
03How do you stop emotions ruining your trading?
Set your rules while you're calm, follow them when you're not, and treat a lucky win as luck rather than proof you were right. This is my own experience, not financial advice: trading is high risk and you can lose more than you put in.
Something here out of date, or a question the guide doesn't answer? Email hello@getritual.app. More in Guides.