Know Your Money
Keep strict accounts. Have you ever heard the expression, “I
don’t know where it all goes?" Let me give you probably one of the
most important phrases of the whole lesson. You have got to know
where it all goes. You’ve just got to know.
The Rockefeller boys said their father and grandfather made
them keep track of every penny they got and where it went. It’s
called habit. You’ve just got to know where it’s going, what’s
happening, and get a handle on it. It’s part of how you become
financially independent. Because I found out early in the game
when I was making pretty good money, that you could make five
thousand dollars a month and go broke. Somebody asked how you
could go broke making five thousand dollars a month. It’s easy,
spend six thousand. And nine months from Thursday it’s over. If
your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your
downfall. You have to know where it goes. So keep strict accounts.
When you can, start investing, start a little business on the side, do
a little buying and selling. Some people got incredibly wealthy in
real estate in the last twelve to fifteen years, unbelievable. Be on
the lookout for buying. Now, collectively, for us in doing business,
we have somebody who specializes in looking for investments. But
until you can afford that kind of luxury, where people can look and
find places to put your money to get best advantage of making it
useful as well as making money, you have to be sharp enough on
your own to do some buying and do some selling.
You can even teach kids how to make proper investments.
What if kids bought light bulbs three years ago and just set them
aside, put them away. They went down to Safeway and bought
them, brought them home and put them under the bed or in a
closet, three years ago. What are they worth today? Two or three
times as much as they were three years ago. How would you like to
make that kind of return on your money? Incredible. A kid says,
“Light bulbs, I never thought about that.” Just buy some and set
them aside. Buy one, buy ten, buy a dozen, or buy a hundred.
Save up your money, put it in light bulbs. Set them aside. Three
years later, now you have some light bulbs to sell. At an incredibly
inflated price. The kid says, “Yea, but where do you sell light