percent of your pay now, you virtually guarantee yourself financial freedom later in life. Only a fool would say no to that. So, start now and don't stop!"
"In the words of Syrus, 'Many receive advice, few profit by it,'" James Murray elaborated. "Just thinking about saving ten percent has never made anyone wealthy."
"Like I said, I have just the story to convince you before you go," Roy remembered. "It will be of particular interest to you, Dave, because the individual involved is a teacher, too.
"Three or four years ago, a fellow came in. He ex-plained that he wasn't here simply for a haircut, but also because he had heard that I'm a financial planning expert. T don't know a thing about insurance, stocks, real estate . . . any of that stuff,' he confessed. 'The only thing I know about financial planning is to save ten percent of all you make and invest it for long-term growth. The rest of it's Greek to me.'
"Well, it turns out this man's father had been a friend of Old Mr. White's and he, too, had been fortunate enough to have learned the golden secret. He passed it along to his young son but, unlike me, this teacher hadn't furthered his knowledge of financial planning. As he said, he knew nothing about insurance and investing. What's worse, I learned through our conversation that he had abused credit cards over the years, not started an IRA, and had lost all fifteen thousand dollars of an inheritance playing the commodities market."
"This is a real upbeat story, Roy. Very encouraging," Tom drawled, tongue in cheek.
"At the time of our meeting, that teacher's net worth was almost six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Tom. Some