I can’t claim that giving is a prerequisite to amassing a pile of money, because there are so many obviously greedy people getting rich.  However, I would never consider these people wealthy, and I’ve seen a lot of them fall hard in the last few years.  As I’ve said before, wealth goes beyond money.  It […]

Do you ever get the sense that you don’t have time to deal with the secondary things, because you have to deal with so many consistently demanding fires and crises? Well, guess where most of those fires and crises come from? Correct — from secondary things that were ignored because of all the fires and […]

Respect the life energy you are putting into your job.  Money is simply something you trade your life energy for.  Trade it with purpose and integrity for increased earnings.  Ask yourself:  Am I making a living or making a dying?
— Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

Teach yourself to compare down, not up.  It makes complete sense that you’ll be disappointed if you’re constantly comparing your wardrobe to that of your boss (who earns twice as much as you do) or your colleague (whose spouse created the latest reality-TV smash).  Instead, if you need to compare at all — and most […]

… accept and acknowledge how you honestly feel about your financial situation.  When you’re broke or in debt, you know something isn’t right.  That sinking feeling you get whenever a bill arrives in the mail isn’t healthy.  When your finances are strong, a bill is nothing but a piece of paper that takes two minutes to process.  But […]

A budget simply records how much money is coming in and where it is going out.  A budget makes no judgment; it’s a tool that tells the truth.  And once you learn how to use a budget well, it becomes an instrument that helps deliver your lifelong dreams.  A budget is a key tool in […]

The whole point of building a larger net worth is to provide the wherewithal for living expenses while you do what you most want to do.
— George Kinder, The Seven Stages of Money Maturity

Money isn’t that hard.  Getting straight with your money can be challenging — in the sense that you may have to make some difficult choices and break some long-standing habits — but it isn’t complicated.  You don’t have to be great at math, and you don’t have to understand a lot of specialized financial terms.  […]

If I asked you to make a list of your top ten values in life, to write them in precise order of importance, I’d be willing to bet that only 1 in 10,000 could do it.  But if you don’t know the answer to this question, how can you make clear decisions at all?  How […]

Contentment is natural wealth. To be content, happy with one’s situation in life, is to be wealthy. Riches come not from money and material items, but through living life in a manner that fulfills you.
— Lisa, financial blogger; Contentment Is Wealth (blog) || “Contentment Is Wealth” (post)