If you spend every penny you earn, you will be broke. If you spend more than you earn, you will always be in debt. Zero sits in the middle of the number line. The numbers to the left of zero are negative numbers and the numbers to the right of zero are positive numbers. You can move to the left or the right depending on which direction you discipline yourself to travel. If you travel left, you have chosen the route of debt, and ultimately debt can lead to death. If you travel to the right, you have chosen the route of freedom from debt. I have been broke before and I am currently working my way out of debt. I have eliminated debt before but I have discovered that until I view the number line differently, and until I can move from simple addition and subtraction, and begin to multiply with the use of exponentials, I will always live somewhere in the vicinity of the zero.
When I seventeen years old I wanted my dad to co-sign for me to get a car, but he said that he didn’t co-sign for anyone. He told me to put money into a savings account and when I reached a reasonable amount, I could purchase a car with my own signature. Well, I was upset, and I gave an older friend $500 to buy a used 1967 Pontiac Tempest for me and have it transferred into my name. It was a fast, pretty, red car and it was mine. Speeding tickets, traffic violations, and an accident caused the life of the car and my driving privileges to be short lived. Then, under the constraint of having a suspended drivers license, I saved my money as my father suggested. To my surprise, at the age of nineteen I bought my first brand new car, a 1974 American Motors Gremlin for $3,300. Although I did not tell him that I used his advice until after the purchase, I saved until I had enough cash to purchase the car, went to the car dealer, signed a contract to buy the car, and drove off the lot with my new car the same day. I did not use the money I had in my savings but took out a loan for the car. Following the advice of my father, my money in savings continued earning more interest than I was paying in interest on the loan. Using the same strategy, I paid my way through undergraduate school, borrowing money from the credit union each quarter, calculating to make sure that my interest earned was more than the interest I paid.
If I had continued to use the wisdom of my father, making sure that I was not only working for my money but that my money was also working for me, I probably would be a very wealthy person today. As I stated earlier, I have been penniless before, but I have learned that it was not because I lacked knowledge but because I lacked discipline. If we are going to be disciplined for success and help others to achieve success also, we must do the math and consistently apply the knowledge. The further we move to the right of zero on the number line, the freer we can live, and the more we will have to give.