We tend to think about the road to becoming a millionaire as adventurous, risky, and requiring a great deal of skill or talent. In actuality, most millionaires become rich in a rather, well, boring manner. It's not all about hot tech products or great business ideas -- for most people, acquiring wealth is a much more sedate process.

Becoming a millionaire might be simple, but that doesn't make it easy. It doesn't necessarily require entrepreneurial guts, but it does require patience and fortitude. With these three steps and that willingness to look at the long term, however, almost anyone can do it. 

1. Pay in cash

In other words, do not buy on credit. If you want to accumulate serious wealth, you have to spend less than you earn -- sometimes significantly so -- which means never borrowing for consumption purposes. 

To put it in another way: I remember reading somewhere (forgive the vagueness, it was a while back) the comment that being in debt is the opposite of investing. Instead of using your money to make more in the long run, when you take on debt someone is trying to make money on you. That's quite an uncomfortable way of thinking about it, but it makes sense. If you're in debt, you not only have to pay back whatever you borrowed but also interest -- and with the magic of compounding, those totals can add up very quickly.

If you're already in debt, the best thing you can do for yourself is to focus on getting out. This will minimize the damage of paying interest and allow you to kick-start the real work of becoming a millionaire. 

2. Avoid lifestyle inflation

If you're fortunate to be moving up in the world -- getting raises, growing your business -- resist the urge to ratchet up your life accordingly. While it might feel good at first to move into a more luxurious home or drive a nicer car, you'll inevitably get used to it and have to ratchet up again in order to feel good again. This is the sneaky cycle of consumption: The more you buy into it now, the more you'll buy into it later. 

Instead, focus on keeping costs down. You can still buy a nice car if you wait until it's a couple of years old, and you can still live a comfortable life in a small house. But whatever you do, focus on costs: Becoming wealthy requires saving money, so the more you can funnel your growing income to savings and investments the better off you'll be. 

Better yet, by avoiding the trap of overspending today, you'll make it easier to stay wealthy once you get there. 

3. Become an investor

It's not enough to stuff the money you save under your mattress: Becoming a millionaire is all about investing. With the power of compounding growth you can supercharge your savings and help pave your path to financial freedom. 

That means becoming a solid investor and tending to your assets. Whether you prefer to invest in index funds or trade individual stocks, take the time to become educated about investing and build a portfolio that works for you psychologically and practically. There are a few different ways of skinning the investing cat, but the tents that apply to pretty much everyone are simple: diversify, minimize costs, and keep an eye on the long run. 

Our motley band of Fools can help fill you in on the rest. 

The article 3 Simple Ways to Become a Millionaire originally appeared on Fool.com.

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April 30, 2015

talian fisherman Dino Ferrari with his 280-pound wels catfish from the Po Delta. It might be a world record on rod and reel. Photo from the Sportex Italia Facebook page

Italian fisherman Dino Ferrari, an expert at catching big wels catfish, outdid himself on Thursday when he landed an enormous 280-pounder in the Po Delta, a part of the famous Po River, the longest river in Italy at more than 400 miles.

image: http://cdn.grindtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/280-pounds.jpg

The wels catfish was put in a sling and weighed out at 280 pounds. Photo is from the Sportex Italia Facebook page

The Po River and Delta are known for massive wels catfish, but anything bigger than 6.5 feet is considered extremely rare, and this one measured 8.8 feet.

The U.K. Mirror reported that Ferrari’s fish could possibly be the world’s biggest wels catfish caught with a rod and reel, though records of this sort are difficult to confirm.

The Mirror and NT News reported that the biggest wels catfish ever recorded was a 9.1-footer from the Po Delta, but they differ on its weight—one reporting it as 308 pounds, the other as 317 pounds. The method of that catch is uncertain.

Sportex Italia, Ferrari’s sponsor, called his fish the “world record spinning torpedo,” which might mean it’s a world record for a Torpedo spinning rod made by an Italian manufacturer, though it also simply says it’s a “world record in the spin fishing for catfish.”

Regardless, Ferrari’s fish is one of the biggest wels catfish recorded in recent history.

image: http://cdn.grindtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/sportex-italia.jpg

After weighing the wels catfish, Dino and Dario Ferrari released the beast back into the Po Delta. Photo is from the Sportex Italia Facebook page

image: http://cdn.grindtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Dino-Ferrari-with-record-wels.jpg

Any wels catfish bigger than 6.5 feet is considered extremely rare. This one was 8.8 feet. Photo from the Sportex Italia Facebook page

The wels catfish is the second-largest freshwater fish in its region, ranking behind the beluga sturgeon. The largest beluga sturgeon on record is reportedly 3,463 pounds.

Ferrari told GrindTV that the fish took an artificial bait on the surface, and the fight from a boat lasted 40 minutes.

The best part about Ferrari’s catch is that after he and his brother, Dario, weighed the fish, they released it back into the delta so it could fight again another day.

Follow David Strege on Facebook.

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Read more at http://www.grindtv.com/fishing/italian-catches-huge-wels-catfish-record/#Sgj1TeWVOREEboF7.99

April 30, 2015

The Nigerian military has moved the 293 females they rescued two days ago from Sambisa Forest to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital where they are to undergo series of test including HIV and pregnancy test. According to a military source who spoke to Punch, 7 of the girls rescued had gunshot wounds and are being treated at the hospital. The 200 girls rescued are of between ages 13 and 18 years.

April 30, 2015

11 year old Marvelous Adekunle is missing! According to his family, he left his home at Matanmi Street Onipanu, Lagos at about 6:30am yesterday morning 29th April and never returned. Please if you see him, kindly call any of these numbers 08058568894, 08029886720,07086339434 or report to the nearest police station.

April 30, 2015

South African women married to Nigerian men have narrated the discrimination they face for marrying men outside their country. Seeing the disaffection their kinsmen show them after finding love in the hands of Nigerian men, the women decided to form an association, the United Nigerian Wives in South Africa (UNWISA) club about two years ago where they give support and succor to each other.

42 year old Lindwela Uche who serves as the chairwoman of the group told AFP that they saw the xenophobic attacks coming and alerted their husbands but they did not take their warning seriously "We saw this thing coming and that’s why we formed this association. If only they (the authorities) had listened to us… they would have known that there’s a fire burning slowly and they would have seen how to tackle it.”she said

One of the members of the association,“Lufunu Orji who is married to a Nigerian resource consultant, Ogbonnaya Orji, says being married to a foreigner is very challenging

"Being married to a foreigner is very challenging. You often spend your time defending yourself and then you defend your foreign husband for being himself. Just before I got wed to my husband, I lost two very best friends of mine. They thought I was out of my mind" she said

Another member of the group who gave her name as Uche, said her 13-year-old daughter returned from school a while ago, complaining that her teacher had told her “not to bring that Nigerian mentality here” after she and classmates were noisy in class.

“We need to be protected, we need our children to be protected… and our husbands to be treated with dignity,” Uche said

37 year old Thelma Okoro, says the attitude towards them “are negative everywhere we go,”. According to her, wearing traditional Nigerian dress on the street can attract bad comments. She spoke of how her eight-year-old daughter gets mocked by schoolmates over her name “Ngozi” which means “blessing” in Igbo but literally translates to “danger” in Zulu.

April 30, 2015

Abigail and Brittany are dicephalic parapagus twins. They are conjoined and share the same body but have different heads. Yes, this is amazing but what is also amazing is that even though they share the same body they do not share all the same organs. They each have a stomach, heart, spine and spinal cord. They must count on each other to function as one twin creates all function from the left and the other from the right side. Another amazing fact is they are also individual when it comes to activities such as eating and writing.

April 16, 2015

According to reports by SA media, a number of shops owned by foreigners have closed their shops in the Johannesburg CBD area after allegedly receiving threats from a mob. The group, who are said to be Zulu boys, threatened to attack any shops that remained open. They recently looted many shops in Durban and killed about 10 foreign immigrants, including Nigerians. They burnt some people inside their shops.

An eNCA reporter Nickolaus Baeur was in one of the streets this morning called Lilian Ngoyi Street and shop owners told him they feared for their safety

April 16, 2015

Residents of Irele township in Ondo state have been hit by a deadly diseases. According to reports, the victims wake up blind, with a terrible headache and die within a few hours. At least 15 people who contracted the disease are feared dead.

Ondo state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Dayo Adeyanju, said the disease was discovered yesterday but didn't say how the victims contracted the disease or how it can be passed on to others. Hopefully, the Minister of Health will tell us what's happening.

April 16, 2015

Being an opinion article by President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, as published in yesterday’s edition of New York Times. 

When Boko Haram attacked a school in the town of Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria, kidnapping more than 200 girls, on the night of April 14, 2014, the people of my country were aghast. Across the world, millions of people joined them in asking: How was it possible for this terrorist group to act with such impunity? It took nearly two weeks before the government even commented on the crime.

This lack of reaction was symptomatic of why the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan was swept aside last month – the first time an incumbent president has been successfully voted out of office in the history of our nation. For too long they ruled, not governed, and in doing so had become so focused on their own self-interest and embroiled in corruption that the duty to react to the anguish suffered by their citizens had become alien to them.

My administration, which will take office on May 29, will act differently – indeed it is the very reason we have been elected. This must begin with honesty as to whether the Chibok girls can be rescued. Currently their whereabouts remain unknown. We do not know the state of their health or welfare, or whether they are even still together or alive. As much as I wish to, I cannot promise that we can find them: to do so would be to offer unfounded hope, only to compound the grief if, later, we find we cannot match such expectation. But I say to every parent, family member and friend of the children that my government will do everything in its power to bring them home.

What I can pledge, with absolute certainty, is that from the first day of my administration, Boko Haram will know the strength of our collective will and commitment to rid this nation of terror, and bring back peace and normalcy to all the affected areas. Until now, Nigeria has been wanting in its response to their threat: With our neighbours fighting hard to push the terrorists south and out of their countries, our military was not sufficiently supported or equipped to push north. As a consequence, the outgoing government’s lack of determination was an accidental enabler of the group, allowing them to operate with impunity in Nigerian territory.

That is why the answer to defeating Boko Haram begins and ends with Nigeria. That is not to say that allies cannot help us. My administration would welcome the resumption of a military training agreement with the United States, which was halted during the previous administration. We must, of course, have better coordination with the military campaigns our African allies, like Chad and Niger, are waging in the struggle against Boko Haram. But, in the end, the answer to this threat must come from within Nigeria.

We must start by deploying more troops to the front and away from civilian areas in central and southern Nigeria where for too long they have been used by successive governments to quell dissent. We must work closer with our neighbors in coordinating our military efforts so an offensive by one army does not see their country’s lands rid of Boko Haram only to push it across the border onto their neighbors’ territory.

But as our military pushes Boko Haram back, as it will, we must be ready to focus on what else must be done to counter the terrorists. We must address why it is that young people join Boko Haram. There are many reasons why vulnerable young people join militant groups, but among them are poverty and ignorance.

Indeed Boko Haram – which translates in English, roughly, as “Western Education Is Sinful” – preys on the perverted belief that the opportunities that education brings are sinful.

Promise of food

If you are starving and young, and in search of answers as to why your life is so difficult, fundamentalism can be alluring. We know this for a fact because former members of Boko Haram have admitted it: They offer impressionable young people money and the promise of food, while the group’s mentors twist their minds with fanaticism. So we must be ready to offer the parts of our country affected by this group an alternative.

Boosting education will be a direct counterbalance to Boko Haram’s appeal. In particular we must educate more young girls, ensuring they will grow up to be empowered through learning to play their full part as citizens of Nigeria and pull themselves up and out of poverty. Indeed, we owe it to the schoolgirls of Chibok to provide as best an education as possible for their fellow young citizens.

Boko Haram feeds off despair. It feeds off a lack of hope that things can improve. By attacking a site of learning, and kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls, it sought to strike at the very place where hope for the future is nurtured, and the promise of a better Nigeria. It is our intention to show Boko Haram that it will not succeed. My government will first act to defeat it militarily and then ensure that we provide the very education it despises to help our people help themselves. Boko Haram will soon learn that, as Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

April 15, 2015