A few weeks ago, I came across a podcast in which a history professor turned real estate investor shared what he’d learned from researching 300 years of Americans climbing the economic ladder. He spent over 10 years reading history and trying some of the strategies himself. He shared everything in his book, How to Get Rich in American History, which I read last week.

There are lots of good takeaways in this book. One of them is that most financial advice we think is timeless hasn’t held throughout history. Today I’ll share the seven strategies that Americans used throughout history to get ahead:

1. Built their own business
2. Took a large income in someone else’s business
3. Combined several small incomes to create excess income
4. Invested extreme portions of their income
5. Leveraged a high-payout opportunity with debt or risk
6. Invested steadily over a long period of time
7. Married well

Number 6 is valid, but timing matters because the stock market has had terrible periods. So, as much as timing the market is frowned upon now, history says you should time it when you use strategy #6.

These strategies are pretty straightforward. Using a combination of them intelligently is how people got ahead in life over the last 300 years.

I caught up with a friend this past week. He’s considering making an investment. He shared his thinking and asked me if I thought it was a good investment.

I told him I had no idea. Partly this was because I’m unfamiliar with the asset class, but more fundamentally it was because he said nothing about what he thinks the asset is worth today. I heard only about the price the seller wants.

Investing, in my opinion, is all about buying something for less than it’s worth. An important distinction is between price and value. Price is what you pay for the asset. Value is what you get. If you pay more than the asset is worth, it’s not such a great investment. To be a good investor, you have to be able to use your judgment to determine an asset’s value. There are lots of ways to do that. But if your analysis is thorough and you buy for less than value…you have a good chance of making a good investment.