Increasing your net worth is fairly straight forward. Lower your expenses and/or increase your earnings. There’s only two ways to accomplish it. Although increasing your earnings has a much higher potential, the easiest way to start saving money is going to be through decreasing your expenses. For me, that means living like a poor person. Well, at least from the perspective of most people I talk to, but I don’t think I’m poor. As a young bachelor this isn’t much of a problem for me, in fact I find it exciting as it’s a challenge to see where I can cut costs and find ways to save more money. However, if you’re not all about decreasing your expenses for your entire life, you may be wondering… how long do I have to live like a poor person, until I become rich?

You’re Already Rich

I say this a lot, but if you’re living in America, Europe, or any other modern country you are most likely considered to be in the top percentage of the worlds inhabitants. You have a roof over your head, food on the table, and can afford your cable television (most of us). As a result, you’re not poor, you just don’t have as much stuff as you’d like. If you want more stuff you’re going to have to increase your revenue, but how long will that take?

It’s Not Going to Happen Overnight

Following the basic model of punching a clock 9-5 and getting paid bi-weekly you’re not going to get rich anytime soon. Of course it’s a predictable, easy path without many obstacles because time is on your side along with conservative investing. This is slow because everyone else is doing it and everyone else can’t make 20% on their investments this year either. If you continue to just punch a clock, you’re not going to get rich overnight.

The Double Sided Coin

I think of becoming wealthy as a two sided coin. On one side is your potential to make money and on the other is your ability to decrease your expenses, thus increasing your savings rate and/or free time.

The potential to make money has unlimited potential whereas the ability to decrease expenses is limited by your current situation and may be a relatively small number. It should come as no surprise that the downside is easier to work on (some may argue otherwise), because most of us don’t know how to easily increase our earnings in the short run. It’s much easier to simply not buy something than to create another income stream.

If you’re able to lower your expenses you’ll give yourself some wiggle room to play with financially. This is done through frugal living, which frugal living which gives you time to focus on the upside. If your lifestyle wipes out all your time and money, you won’t have any time or money to focus on making more money. Once you’ve appropriately accepted that you’re going to live like a “poor person” until your earnings begin to grow either by investment income, real estate, or through creating a business, you’ll remain relatively poor.

So the answer to the question of “how long do I have to act poor til I’m rich?” in my opinion, is based mostly on your ability to create additional streams of revenue that fulfill your own definition of becoming rich. This can be done more easily through frugal living which allows you the time and excess money to work on businesses that will allow those revenue streams to blossom. Learn how to create businesses and value for others and you won’t remain poor for long.

How often do you try to do more than one thing at once? For me, it’s almost every time I sit down in front of my computer. I have music going on in the background, perhaps watching a review or video on youtube, while trying to write an article and every so often I’m glancing over at a book that’s open next to my computer. Needless to say, I’m often juggling tasks that aren’t necessarily productive and often detour me from my task at hand. At the moment as I’m writing this article I’m focusing only on this article (so I’m behaving), and guess what… it’s working! Although I probably already knew it in the back of my head, researchers have found that multitasking simply doesn’t work.

In a fairly recent episode of frontline (yes I’m a geek that watches frontline) researchers tested students who thought they were being super productive by doing several tasks at once. Turns out they were just being super distracted. I won’t go into the mechanics of it all, but if you’d like to read more about why that’s the case check out this related article. The point is this. By trying to do too many things at once people are often less productive than simply focusing on one task and doing it well sequentially.

How This Affects Your Wallet

Having tunnel vision and ignoring externalities and distractions will make you much more successful than trying to do everything at once. In personal finance those distractions are often purchases. Focus, focus, focus on the task at hand! Whether it’s eliminating your student loans, paying down your second mortgage, or adding to your passive income fund make your focus concrete so that with absolute certainty you know that this is your task and you won’t be knocked off track. Spending time thinking about too many financial priorities will simply leaving you feeling exhausted, overwhelemed, and a bit like you’re not getting anywhere. Who can blame you when you’re setting yourself up for failure?

When you’re standing at the store debating on whether or not to purchase that next new hot item it’s a lot easier to say no because you want to pay off your student loans rather than saying you need to pay off your student loans, your car, your house, save for retirement, and your next vacation. If you become overwhelmed you’ll probably just give in and buy that hot item because let’s face it… you’re never going to reach all those goals anyways, right? Make your financial goals simple so that you believe you can achieve them and can easily track them.

If you want to eliminate debt or add to your fund focus solely on that. Much like the idea of a debt snowball you’ll reach your goal quicker and feel better about it than having scattered financial goals that you might not hit for a very long time. With more of a positive reinforcement with smaller successes you will be encouraged to stay on track. Yes managing your personal finances can seem a bit daunting at first, but doing one thing at a time first is how you’re going to learn (a bit like taking baby steps). If you’re deep in debt you don’t need to think about how to earn your first million… yet. You need to focus on getting out of debt and controlling your spending before moving on to the million dollar monster goal.

So much like a college student doesn’t learn as well when listening to their ipod, watching a movie, and trying to study, you probably shouldn’t try take on too many financial goals at once either. You might also want to reconsider the purchase of an ipod as well while you’re at it

How I Manage Financial Distractions

I’m pretty focused on my financial goals at the moment. A net worth of $50k by my 26th birthday and no debt are really my only goals related to my finance. Doesn’t seem too complicated or involved considering I run a financial blog, but what else do you really need? Sure I have goals related to websites, personal fitness, and other areas of my life, but making your financial goals can be pretty straightforward. After all you can easily calculate where you’re at and where you need to be. Any time I come across distractions whether they’re purchases, potential business ideas, or otherwise I simply ask myself if they’ll get me closer to the goals I’ve set for myself. If not, then they’re distractions, if so, then I’ll take a closer look.

Avoid spending too much of your time distracting yourself with needless tasks and waste less spending. Rather, make yourself a lean mean financial goal achieving machine!

What distractions do you have from reaching your financial goals?

Image from mn_francis

The recession, lack of spending, unemployment, debt, foreclosure… are you as sick of these words as I am? Well if you want them to stop, go spend money and do your part in turning around the economy, duh silly! As consumer spending makes up a significant, but debateable percentage of the national economy it’s not hard to understand that the fate of the economy is in large part in our own hands. Knowing that you have two choices, spend money and support the economy we know and love from the past few decades (big with lots of stuff) or enter the realm of frugal living, you’re left to wonder… is frugal living bad for America?

Less Spending = Smaller Economy

We need other people to spend money in order to make money; Whether it’s as a worker or the owner of a business. If goods and services aren’t being traded the economy weakens since not as much is going on. Frugalists and miniamilists (of which I’d consider myself to be in both camps) are something that directly weakens the economy because they contribute less to the consumer spending side of the equation, thus decreasing demand.

Is Not Spending Unpatriotic?

Since we know that less spending means a smaller economy it becomes apparent that in a country that values growth this doesn’t exactly seem like the right thing to do. We want growth, we want more, we want year over year gains, but by becoming a frugal citizen you’re taking a step backwards according to popular measures. Does this make you unpatriotic?

In response to the recession the US government has called for Americans to spend money to help recharge the economy. They’ve used stimulus packages and even offered $8,000 to purchase a home. It’s simple to see that the American government wants you to spend money. It can be summed up like this:

Smaller economy = less tax dollars = smaller government = less money for politicians to spend.

I try not to get too political in this blog as it focuses on the individual rather than the political affiliation and taking responsibility for your own life whether you’re a democrat, republican, independant, or whatever else, but it’s just something interesting to think about. I’m not advocating a smaller (conservative) or bigger (liberal) government, but the implications of choosing a frugal lifestyle directly impact how the country’s economy looks.

A Different America

I wouldn’t say that frugal living is bad for America, but I would say choosing to live in a frugal manor helps shape the country one conscious spender at a time. A frugal consumer wastes less, they value the things they have more, and they often have more time to do the things that matter more than work (or time to do work they enjoy more than work they have to do to pay for their stuff). I think a society of people who think this way would be more beneficial than one in which one only measures success by more and the quantity of stuff rather than the quality of their life. By choosing to be frugal you are changing the dynamics of the economy, but as we’ve seen over the past few years the economy may not be all that perfect after all. Whether or not that makes you a good American citizen… well… that’s debatable.

Do you consider frugal living to be something that is unpatriotic?

Do you support more spending and a big government or less spending and a smaller goverment (assuming tax rates stay neutral)?

I hear the phrase “a lot of money” well… a lot… but what is a lot of money? Recently I asked what you’d do with an extra $20,000 and to some that was “A lot” of money, but to others it was not a lot of money at all. What gives?

Bringing this topic up reminds me of how different perspectives are in the world of finance primarily due to the external environment one lives in and the benchmarks they have in their mind because of their previous experiences. If you’re being raised by billionaire parents who live a highly extravagant lifestyle I actually feel sorry for you because your previous experience will make your “a lot of money” a lot more than my “a lot of money” and therefore you’ll probably have to work “a lot” harder if you want to achieve that status that’s created in your own mind. However, you do have the benefit of the knowledge handed to you by billionaires which may help at tad as well.

A lot of money in London is a lot more than a lot of money in Houston which is a lot more money than Des Moines Iowa, which is a lot more money than in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is a lot more money than in Thailand, which is a lot more money than in Rwanda. Therefore, if you want to feel like you have a lot of money, why not just move to somewhere with a lot lower cost of living and live like a king?

Does Your Perspective of A lot of money change how much you make?

If you think that $100,000 is a lot of money that may limit your goals and how hard you work to achieve a lot of money (if money is the goal). However if you think $1 million is peanuts do you think that will change your actions so that you’ll more easily reach the million dollar goal since you perceive it to be less challenging and more realistic. This scenario reminds me of dating and women. If a guy thinks that he can never get the hottest girl in the room because he’s not good enough then frankly, he’ll never get the hottest girl in the room because he doesn’t even try. Perhaps the same thought process works with finances and if one thinks they’re inferior to say, $1 million in net worth, how are they going to ever achieve it?

I Don’t Have a Lot, But I Don’t Have Not a Lot (got it?)

Considering popular perspective values the idea that you never have enough and the ideology that more is better I’m guessing most people in the world think they don’t have a lot of money. Where I work If you make $250 in a night my coworkers will say that’s a lot of money or rather that’s “good money,” but at other careers/jobs making $250 in a day is something to be laughed at (why is money laughable at all?). I don’t have a lot compared to the environment I’m in which is Honolulu, but if I drive up to Waianae where there are tent cities along the beach, I’d say I have more than enough.

I wrote a post a while back titled the richest poor person you’ll ever meet in which I outlined how even a person without much wealth still lives a life of wealth, especially in America. Just because you’re not buying things and stuff doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot. You simply don’t have a lot of things and stuff, which after all aren’t fulfilling and are often trashed anyways.

It’s all relative

The reason a lot of money can’t be defined is because we all lead different lives and have different benchmarks for success and ultimately how much money is a lot to each of us.

Perhaps a lot of money is simply whatever makes you considerably richer than everyone else in your current fishbowl. Therefore you can either become a bigger fish, move to a smaller fishbowl, or change your fish perspective. I chose the latter.

How much is a lot of money to you?

Image from tracy_olson

CNN recently created a video in which they asked New York residents in Central Park a simple question “How would you spend an extra $20,000?”

Most of the people whom they asked were puzzled, not necessarily sure what their answers should be and the range was huge from shopping, to investing, to starting a business, to buying a car. I didn’t hear anyone say I’d invest it in a retirement account though!

Watching the video put the obvious into perspective. Most people don’t know what to do with their money or any gifts of money they would receive. Too judgmental? Perhaps it was because nobody had any specific answers such as I’d invest in X, or I’d buy X car, or I’d do X just made me realize that the people who were asked didn’t have any sort of goal they were saving towards otherwise that would’ve been their first response… right?

In any case the video made me wonder whether $20,000 is a lot of money, what you could do with that $20,000, and what your responses would be to that question.

Is $20,000 even a lot of money?

If you go on a popular game show such as the Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune it wouldn’t be a bad day if you made $20,000 in prize value and/or cash. People are genuinely excited to win that much money so it can’t be that small of value. As the video closes out one of the guys says “I’m at a loss; $20,000 isn’t a lot.” So is that much money a lot to you?

That same gentleman said he’d use it towards the $2 million dollar loft he’d like to own in New York City. That’s only 1% of the value of the loft! Think of how long you’d have to save up to afford living in a place like that on a median wage! If you aren’t setting your eyes on an expensive NYC loft what other things could you do with that money?

What can you do with $20,000?

The Burj Al Arab

• You could buy a Mini Cooper
• You can invest it for 30 years and turn it into $265,353 at a 9% rate of return…
• You can buy 40,000 donuts which is enough to last you 109 years (without inflation and the cost of your heart surgery).
• You can stay at the Burj Al Arab for 3 nights
• You can live in Thailand for two years
• You could feed 80,000 children in Africa for a day or 220 for about a year.

The options are limitless, but I thought I’d use this example to show you the power your money, even if it’s not a lot of money to you it begins to stretch further when you look in different places. If you’d like top of the line (think pareto and living in America) then your $20k won’t go too far. But your $20k could probably make a fairly significant impact somewhere else. Would you prefer three nights in a hotel or feeding 220 children for a year?

For me, is $20,000 a lot of money? Yes… I could comfortably live on it for about a year and a half here in Honolulu, but that’s just me, and as a recent college grad I haven’t made millions (yet ), but to you it could be pocket change.

What I’d Do with an extra $20,000

In the spirit of the question originally asked my response at the moment would be… I’d pay down the majority of my student debt and that would be about all. Nothing fancy, no travel, shopping, or 1% of lofts for me, but I would gain something that’s more valuable… Piece of mind in my financial security which I value much more.

What would you do with an extra $20,000?

Is $20,000 a lot of money to you or not so much?

Getting rid of debt seems to be many people’s number one priority. They realise they need help with their debt. The sheer number of personal finance blogs, or PF blogs as they have come to be known, dishing out debt advice makes this clear. For many of us, however, eliminating debt is a bit of a balancing act. Things do not always happen in exactly the way we’d like them to nor do we always stick to our budget/principles/guns in exactly the way we had intended to.

One of the biggest obstacles in our path to a debt-free future is that of indecision. This happens when we have too many options available to us. It’s similar to when we’re standing in front of the toothpaste aisle and 897 toothpaste brands stare back at us. All the options look equally good and therefore we feel unsure that we’re doing the right thing.

Let’s take an example that many people may be struggling with right now. Perhaps one of Planting Dollars’ readers is wondering what to do about this problem at the moment. They have a credit arrangement with a fixed monthly instalment and they have a personal loan or credit card with a high interest rate.

Thanks to a raise or their parents or a small miracle, our reader has some spare money to put towards their debt. This is good news, right? Well, yes, it is but our reader is slightly confused over which channel to direct the money to. And it’s not surprising because both channels look equally tempting.

Putting the extra money into the credit card or personal loan may mean saving quite a bit of money on interest if it doesn’t attract penalty charges. It’ll also mean paying off the credit agreement in a shorter period, which will free up some money to help reduce other debts – eventually.

The other option – though there are more than just two options here – is to pay off the item with the fixed instalment. This works especially well if the item’s value is equal to the disposable amount of cash available to our reader.

The answer – yes, there is one answer – is that both options are potentially great. No one option is better than the other. It really depends on what our reader wants. If they want to improve their cash-flow for the next couple of months, then that’s a good choice. Or perhaps the interest on the loan or credit card is giving them too many worries so they decide to eliminate it by as much as they can – for now. That’s also good.

The best option is to do what makes it easier to sleep at night. Some people feel more secure with knowing they have a security blanket equal to 3- to 6 months’ living expenses while others are OK with having easy access to credit in an emergency.

Remember that, though we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, the only true rational creature is a computer. We humans have messy things called emotions that run our lives and they often get to decide not only which toothpaste brands we get but also make many of the financial decisions in our lives. Don’t give them too much free reign but realise they are there and they do exert plenty of control.

Charles Howson is the CEO of Debtsolver and a financial expert in the debt industry in the UK. Debtsolver is a financial services provider offering debt solutions such as debt management, debt consolidation and IVAs.

The topic of money doesn’t come up that much, being a social taboo and all, but when you have to explain your spending habits as a frugal consumer it can create a few odd looks and perhaps a judgment by your peers as being cheap. Being frugal it’s safe to say that, you’re in the minority… Most people do not save the majority of their money, cut cable television from their bills, or enjoy watching their account balance grow and eventually snowball. Personally I have more fun saving $100 than spending it at the mall, which makes me odd in America. However, even with my frugal ways there are ways to explain it so that you appear to be “normal” and not a money weirdo.

For me, the idea of frugality isn’t something that necessarily gets me excited, but it is a means to an end. Saving for the sake of saving doesn’t serve a purpose if you don’t plan on using that capital for a future spending. Just look a Buffett who recently encouraged fellow billionaires to give away half their savings. Having a lot of money is great, but if not used, what’s the point?

That being said, most of us are frugal because we either don’t want to work as much or we’re saving for something down the road. I’m the latter of those and have goals that relate directly to my balance sheet. Being able to live off passive income, purchasing real estate, owning a piano bar, and being able to donate to charities I think are worthwhile (oceana is my favorite) are things that require such money. So if you’re like me you’ll most likely have big goals that need funding. Those goals make you unique and create a pretty cool story. Some may say that working towards those goals is inspiring and since no story will be exactly the same, sharing your story will help share who you really are and what you care about most in life.

When sharing your story and what you’re working towards it becomes not so much an issue of being cheap, but an issue of priority. Do I want to go to the bars this weekend or should I save my money for something I find more worthwhile? These are the decisions you face each day and most people fail because they don’t have a compelling story to continue them on the track of working towards their life goals.

So when someone calls you cheap, or asks about your frugality don’t simply say I don’t like spending money. Tell them that you’d like to accomplish your life goals which are directly related to who you are and what you stand for in life. Purchasing that new car or coach purse means that you’re one step further from accomplishing the things you want in life. By sharing your story and your compelling reasons you become a lot more interesting and may even convert a spender to a fell frugal consumer along the way.

How do you explain your frugality to others when they ask?

What goals or compelling story do you have that drives your frugality?

Although I never intended to win any awards when I started writing about personal finance, that’s just what’s happened over at ecollegefinder.com. Apparently they think I’m doing something right, so I’ll try to keep it up! Although admittedly I have been a slacker in the past month It’s summer in Hawaii… who can blame me?

Several of my other favorite bloggers were mentioned as well and hopefully a few college students will find value in learning about personal finance and proper money management. After all, that’s where the seeds really start to get planted as young people such as myself begin making financial decisions that will make a lasting impact on our lives.

With so much talk about becoming a millionaire and becoming financially free it can all seem a bit daunting. After all, only 2% of Americans are millionaires and if you’re a just starting out in life (myself included) it doesn’t exactly seem realistic to come up with a million dollars or become free by next Tuesday. Instead of focusing on these largest goals possible and the end product of years and years of labor, consider chunking it down into baby steps.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “What about Bob” you’ll recall the famous book “Baby Steps.” “Baby Steps” is simply the name of the book, but Bob (played by Bill Murray) takes it literally and does everything in baby steps which allows him to face the challenges of his life that had previously shut him into his apartment.

For finances many people see hedge funds and complex investing in the news and bankers making bonuses bigger than their lifetime earnings, but I would recommend they take a look at the whole process in the form of baby steps. You don’t need to know any complex investing techniques, but you do need to start from where you’re standing now. It was Warren Buffett who said all you really need to know in business is addition and subtraction, so don’t make it more complicated than it is.

Instead of saying “I’ll never become a millionaire” say “I’ll save $5,000 this next year, or even smaller just say I’ll save about $400 a month, or perhaps $10 a day. Saving $10 a day will get you to your million dollar goal, but it sure seems a lot easier than looking at that final figure.

If you’re starting from scratch and dont’ have a clue about personal finance your steps might be something like this:

• Open your first bank account
• Open a checking account
• Set up direct deposit
• Set up a 401k with your employer
• Open a Roth IRA
• Learn how to analyze businesses
• Pursue your own business

The same goes for real estate. Most real estate developers and investors aren’t born with ability to analyze deals, so start small and learn along the way. Most real estate developers start with a process that looks a bit like this:

• Purchase a home
• Purchase smaller residential real estate properties
• Advance into multi family property
• Do a 1031 Exchange into a commercial property
• Use equity and current holdings to finance riskier developments and new construction.

If you started at the end you wouldn’t have the necessary knowledge learned from the steps you took beforehand. The baby steps along the way are necessary to teach you lessons that build off of each other.

So next time you read an article about becoming a millionaire or achieving any large goal, break it into baby steps so that it becomes much more achievable and realistic in your mind. This will make any goal seem possible and if you’re Bob, you’ll be able to even leave your apartment!

What are some of the things you take baby steps on?

Are you motivated more by looking at the big goal or taking small steps of action?

Image from Radhika_bhagwat

The career track as you know it is not a permanent condition of human life. It’s barely three generations old.

Civilization has been around for maybe 8 millennia. And for 7.9 of those, “career track” meant working on the family farm and eventually inheriting it. That’s if you were lucky and male. If you were female, it involved a lot of spreading your legs and hoping you survived at least enough childbirths to keep the lineage from going extinct.

In the late 19th century, technological advancement reached the point where agriculture exploded – the single biggest economic shift ever. It became so easy to grow more food than you and your family could possibly eat, that it freed up almost all would-be farmers to find new lines of work and create industries out of nothing. Even unglamorous jobs like carpenter and mason became feasible as careers: before then, it was the rare person who had the time or the economic impetus to build a house without living in it himself. Division of labor meant specialization, which resulted in people spending their lives building furniture or writing newspaper columns instead of just squeezing that activity in between the milking and the threshing. Attorneys, bankers and human resources directors were rare throughout most of human history. It’s only in modern times that these gigs have become something that a kid can aspire to. (Not that anyone “aspires” to run an HR department, but you get the concept.)

In the last couple of generations, the career track has been honed to a series of rote steps: do as many extracurricular activities as possible in high school. Get into as prestigious a college as your pedigree and necessarily thin CV will permit. Borrow to pay your tuition. Earn a degree. Go to your college’s job fair and find an employer whose vacation schedule and sexual harassment policy you can live with. Once you get hired, ensure that the times during which you choose to apply yourself coincide with the times your boss is watching. Come early, stay late, play company softball, show up on the occasional Saturday.

If that’s what you want out of life, fine. But understand that that strategy is neither permanent nor logical.

Look at the list of the richest people in the world. Notice anything about them, from Gates to Buffett to Carlos Slim Helu? None of them were salaried employees, at least not past adolescence. Sure, many of them inherited their money and a few might have acquired their fortunes somewhere south of ethically, but that’s not the point. With a handful of exceptions, you can’t achieve the peace and freedom that’s your birthright as a member of Homo sapiens just by filling out your time sheets correctly and handing them in by 5 p.m. Friday. Make partner at your law firm, and you’re committing to a life of greater responsibility at every rung – with more pressure, more gray hairs, and a greater likelihood of commencing that coke habit that all the cool attorneys have. (By the way, the next attorney or middle manager we meet who truly loves his job and its accouterments will be the first.)

This is not a recommendation to spend your life riding the rails and eating hobo stew. It’s a recommendation to start a business. The economic climate is ripe for entrepreneurship, which is ultimately the only thing that keeps progress progressing.

Huh? What are you talking about? The economy sucks on wheels.

Exactly. The dim affluence you could have enjoyed by staying in your loathsome job circa 2005 no longer exists. With every 8th American officially unemployed, you have to work harder just to tread water and keep your position. More misery, same result, only this time the result is more tenuous.

When you’re your own boss, this becomes a non-issue. All of a sudden, being productive and moving assets from lower-valued to higher-valued uses becomes more important than striking the right balance between not laughing at your boss’ jokes and laughing too hard.

Regardless of the nation’s regulatory climate, the cost of entry to entrepreneurship in 2010 is less than it’s ever been. Starting a software development company or a pool-cleaning business costs nothing more than an initial outlay of a few hundred bucks, if that. We talk about a rate of return for everything from bond funds to new industrial processes, but the rate of return on a sufficiently motivated human dwarfs anything you’ll find during even the most effervescent of stock-market bubbles.

There are tangible reasons for doing this, too. Arrange your business as an LLC or S corporation, and you’ll enjoy tax advantages that salaried and waged employees never experience. You can earmark much of what you buy and use in your daily life for exemptions and even credits. How this can be construed as worse than just having the same FICA deductions confiscated from your semimonthly paychecks is beyond us. Want to learn more? Modesty prevents me from telling you where you can, but someone wrote a useful book on the topic.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas and Lahaina – testament to the power of entrepreneurship. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. Buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.