Last summer, we hired a college-bound student to help with things on our farm. She is a great young lady who wants to be a veterinarian. It will be a financial challenge for her to find a way to pay for the first four years, let alone the graduate program. But she is doing everything she can to figure out a way to obtain her dream. She even joined the National Guard to help pay for college.

She didn’t have a car, so she went car shopping shortly after she started working for us. I expected she would find a small, fuel-efficient car for her long trips to college. I was shocked when she showed up with a shiny crew cab four wheel drive pickup. I wished she would have asked for some advice on good vehicles that would have met her needs and provided cheap, reliable transportation. She just didn’t know. That is true for all of us. There are usually things that we don’t know that can hurt us financially. We just don’t know what we don’t know.

If we want to achieve the financial future we desire, we should pay attention to the habits of the folks that have achieved financial success. They leave clues we can learn from.   We can learn a lot from them if we are willing to watch and learn. Growing up, I was greatly influenced by a man named Norbert Volny.   I started working for Volny at about age thirteen and while we worked on the various projects, he would pour words of wisdom into my life. One of his favorite sayings was, “You will never get rich on a W-2.” Read More→