You have me to tell you the truth

Please DO NOT read this to mean to not ask questions or challenge a point for further explanation.

Also DO NOT read this to mean making a big deal about waiting the extra 10 days.

Also throw in that I'm aggravated with myself for wasting a lot of time with the former student ( 20 times more time than I have invested in you) over about a 1 1/2 yr period.


Please do read this as a thinking process needed for financial success, career success, and life in general.

Always remember: you have ALL your friends to tell you what you want to hear. You have me to tell you the truth.

Just think of it this way: if you said to your friends "Im going to buy designer sunglasses this afternoon, and the friend knew you already had a few pairs, and no money saved. What would they say?????? How about "sounds good, I'll go with you and buy some too". :)

That is why you need me.

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Member writes:

My mom was the only one who got on the internet on vacation. I'm not going to give you BS...I simply did not check my e-mail for the past week. As far as the paper work goes that I am sending you my mom never recieved it in the mail before Friday and I never recieved it here at school. I didn't get it done. It WILL be in my mailbox when our post-office is open here at school on Monday. I will send it back to you Monday. I am sorry that it took so long.

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MONEY PROF continues:

Had a major fight with one of the other students over this. She thought it was TOTAL BS for me to be pushing you to get it done before you left. She actually came right out and said she would "stick by her thinking on this subject AND still be ahead in life". It was totally OK to wait the week or two longer. Also, I had no right to add stress to her life over not reading emails timely.

Let me stop here for my thoughts on her saying she will stick by her thinking on that: I have a collage of quotes on my home office wall, I had it on my business office wall for 20 years. One of the quotes is:

There are four mental types of human beings:

The man that knows and is aware that he knows, he is wise so inquire of him.

The man who knows, but is unaware that he knows, remind him and help him that he forget not.

The man who is ignorant and knows he is ignorant, teach him.

The man who is ignorant but pretends to know, he is a fool, so keep away from him. By Solomon Gabirol 1021-1058.

So............ I'll follow the above advice. Remember: "A fool will learn nothing from a wise man, but a wise man will learn much from a fool."
Learn from other peoples mistakes.

But how do you know if she's right, or a fool???

Easy.................. she's the one with credit card debt, car loan on an about worthless car, bills so high she needs to work two jobs. Etc.
And those of you who know me good know I never talk like this, but don't know how else to make it clear to you: I'm the one with plenty of retirement money. :)

I think you should have got papers signed before you left, do whatever you had to do. My reasoning has some but very little to do with the time frame of me having to wait 10 extra days to gain access to your acct.

Here is the reasoning process: first of all the #1 thing that will allow you to succeed with your retirement saving goal, saving to start a business, saving towards a car etc, is financial discipline AND motivation. ( allow me to get side tracked for one sentence: this is one reason you don't want to marry the old rich businessman , I can't tell you how hard it is for me to justify this process when I know I'm 100% correct on the subject, we're using so much time explaining WHY each little step needs to be done) if you don't have the discipline to be able to mail the paperwork before you left, do you have the discipline to deposit a set % of your salary into retirement for 35 years ??? ( please don't say yes today as that would be BS dreaming, guessing, wishful thinking etc. You won't know the answer for that for a while. DO NOT confuse this with the needed discipline for college.

Bear in mind that a very high % of the people that start retirement savings either stop deposits, or take out ALL the money.
Is this because their investing knowledge wasn't ample???? Or was it they didn't have the discipline??
The next thing is motivation: if you don't have the motivation return the papers before you left, do you have the motivation to stick with whatever financial goal you set??
And an important thing that I hope to be able to teach you ( not that its more important than "discipline & motivation", probably much less important) is "owing". You will probably learn disciplined & motivation without me over time, BUT it will take much longer.


Slow down............ no skimming here:

I really believe that you ( and most the other "members" will NOT learn "owing" without me. And you do need to learn it. It will be very useful in your careers, in business things, AND in life in general.

Let me try here by first stating why I think you ( and ALL the others) are so bad on this subject of owing. Most of you were raised middle, upper middle class, and yes a few in the top 10%. so you don't have much experience "trading favors". A few examples: if your car breaks down you call the mechanic, you need body work on your car you take it to the body shop, you have a clogged drain, you call a plumber. So you pay someone money to get the thing done. Obviously its nice to be in that position. The only thing wrong with it is you never learn "owing".
If you were raised " high poor" or "low middle income ( I know this is bias but why I'm not saying welfare very poor is I think a high percent don't get this) then you would have learned owing very easily. For example: you knew someone that was either a car mechanic or very handy with cars, you would call him for a favor to look at your broken down car. It was implied that you "owed him one". So........... in your dealings with him you "owed him one". If he was moving you volunteered to go over and help him move. Etc. etc.

I know that you AND the others are smarter that average and in college, graduated college or have your masters. But on this subjects rather than use the hours and hours ( or days & days) it would take me to convince you that you need work on this subject for the sake of time trust me on this one: in a best case scenario you're really bad on this subject, in a worst case you're so bad that you think he must be talking about someone else as you absolutely don't get it.

Now so you don't think I'm totally side tracked I'll give you an example that the former student will NEVER get: You owed me the courtesy of getting the paperwork done BEFORE you left for spring break. You also "owed me" checking your email at least once in that week on vacation.
Why............... because "what's in it for me". No pay, not flirting with any of you ( boy did he get polite in his older age :), no commission from the broker, etc. NO hidden agenda.
Only the self satisfaction of knowing you're getting something out of it. So the lesson here is you could have gotten a small "marker paid" with little effort on your part. But again WHY??? not only because you "owe", BUT also because you should want to motivate me to continue.
One final note: please email me that you read this ( you don't need to write anything except "I read the March 6th email". Want this to be able to free up mail space for the people not interested.