When Duff McKagan left Guns N’ Roses in 1994, he was looking for a better monetary future than The Spaghetti Incident? had afforded him. After some finance courses at Seattle University (15 short of a degree) taught him the importance of spreading out his holdings beyond the low-risk Treasury bills he’d previously invested in:

“I have mutual funds. I have a lot of individual stocks. I’m across the board, really well diversified. And then real estate has been a thing for me.”

But rather than “flipping” properties for quick profits, McKagan holds on. He has interests in Los Angeles, Seattle, Hawaii — “wherever I see fit.”

He says he was also an early investor in Google Inc., whose stock has quintupled in three years. But he avoided speculative tech stocks, and certainly did not “freak out and sell everything after the dot-com crash” of 2000-02.

That measured approach has even served him well in the music business, too. Upon hearing the news that Velvet Revolver’s album Libertad had leaked before its release date, he nearly smashed an expensive Les Paul Sunburst guitar in his collection, but then realized the possible financial ramifications of his anger; instead, he trashed his Blackberry, which he later replaced at a fraction of the cost.

Guns N’ Roses rocker tries new tune as businessman [Reuters]