01-Total Money Makeover
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T H E T O TA L M O N E Y M A K E O V E R
It is never too late to start. George Burns won his first Oscar at eighty. Golda Meir was prime minister of Israel at seventy-one. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel lying on his back on scaffolding at seventy-one. Colonel Sanders never fried any chicken for money until he was sixty-five, and Kentucky Fried Chicken is a household name worldwide. Albert Schweitzer was still performing surgery in Africa at eighty-nine. It is never too late to start. The past has passed. Start where you are, because that is your only option. However, a note to all of you under forty: All of us over forty are giving you a collective yell, “INVEST NOW!” Baby Step Four is not “Get rich quick.” The investing you do systematically and consistently It is never too over time will make you wealthy. If you play with late to start. this by jumping in and out, always finding something more important than investing, you are doomed to being one of those fifty-four out of one hundred sixty-fiveyear-olds still working because you have to work. Systematic, consistent investing is the tortoise that beats the hare in the race. When you keep at it, the investing compounds and explodes. The following by Timothy Gallway always reminds me of this concept: When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.” We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don’t condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; we do not criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place, and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in
IF YOU WILL LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE, LATER YOU CAN LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE
IF YOU WILL LIVE LIKE NO ONE E YO