car payments, and trying to save for both a down payment and an engagement ring. And I wasn't meeting with much success. In my mind, there was no way I could set aside an additional ten percent. Where was I going to get that thirty dollars a month? There was nothing left at the end of the month as it was. I had tried budgeting and that hadn't worked. Then Mr. White made a very generous offer. 'Roy, you arrange to have that thirty dollars a month go directly into a separate bank account, and from there to an investment. If at any time saving that thirty dollars runs you short of funds, I'll lend you whatever you need at no interest. You can pay me back whenever it's convenient for you.'
"How could I say no? Anyway, I never did miss that money. My lifestyle didn't change at all. I know thirty dollars doesn't sound like much now, but remember, it was ten percent of my income back then, and I never missed it.
"But the best example I've ever seen of the pay-your-self-first rule not adversely affecting someone's life is Clyde.
"Good pension at work, lived in an apartment, no wife, no kids, no debt—that was Clyde fifteen years ago. Actually, that's Clyde today, too. In the early eighties, Clyde told me he had his eye on a gorgeous twenty-thousand-dollar sailboat that he'd love to have for his 'retirement home.' You could get a heck of a boat back then for twenty grand. I reminded Clyde, though, that by the time he retired in '99 or so, thanks to inflation that boat would cost a pretty penny more. The only way he would be able to afford it would be to start putting aside money right away. We started him on a couple of hundred a month—a very big chunk of his income back then. 'I'll never survive,'" Roy