We are all in the business of sales. Teachers sell students on learning, parents sell their children on making good grades and behaving, and traditional salesmen sell their products.

I think the lie we've told people in the marketplace is that a degree gets you a job. A degree doesn't get you a job. What gets you a job is the ability to carry yourself into that room and shake a hand and look someone in the eye and have people skills. These are the things that cause people to become successful.

A vacation home is a wonderful 'extra' as you start building wealth. Remember, though, it's still basically a very large, very expensive toy.

Never take a loan against your retirement! When you pay interest against your retirement, you cost yourself interest.

If you think about those bailouts that happened in 2008, that was a situation in which the government gave, at our expense, enormous sums of money to some of the richest people who have ever existed on Earth.

The disaster in the Gulf was no accident. It was the result of years of oil money buying off politicians to lead to an unregulated and ill focused addiction to oil and drilling. The doomed fate of the local fisherman and the environment were foretold in the infamous chants of 'Drill, Baby, Drill.'

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.

When I was growing up, we never had much money. My parents were divorced young, but I was always surrounded by loving individuals. They couldn't give us riches, but they gave us their stories, their hearts, and their time.