Just in time for Summer reading, I recently came across a very inspiring book written by Dwight R Lee and Richard B McKenzie called “Getting Rich in America“.

I highly recommend this book because the focus of the book is on “ordinary people” like you and me, people of modest means and talents and how they “made it” through simple steps taken without sacrificing their quality of life.

I believe wholeheartedly in the idea that if you want to accomplish something, model someone that has already done it. This book uses real life examples of people that have accumulated enough money to be financially independent and tells you how to do that too!

They went from Frugal to Rich!

Here are the 8 Simple Rules featured in the book:

1. Think of America as the Land of Choices
2. Take Compound Interest Seriously
3. Resist Temptation
4. Get a Good Education
5. Get Married and Stay Married
6. Take Care of Yourself
7. Take Prudent Risks
8. Strive for Balance

The quote from Ben Franklin at the front of the book explains it well. “The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market.  It depends chiefly on 2 words, industry and frugality: that is neither waste time nor money, but make the best use of both.  Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; and with them-everything!”

So basically, that means work hard and be frugal! If you save your money and invest, it will build wealth!

Look at these thought provoking questions the authors pose to help you on your way to getting rich!

Buy it used on Amazon.com or request it for FREE at your local library!

It is well worth your time!

Each year I see ads for flower packet seeds for 10 cents a piece, so I knew that it wouldn’t cost much to get started.  After preparing the soil a bit, I raked in the seeds and within weeks–flowers began to bloom.

One marvelous characteristic of wildflowers that you may not know is that the more you cut them- the more they bloom! Soon, my home was overflowing with fragrant bouquets!  I began to ponder who would enjoy the abundance of these fabulous flowers as much as I did.  Then I had an inspiration!

My dad had suffered a stroke and was living in a nursing home in another city far away from where I lived, in another country at the time.  I had learned how much he valued his visits from friends and family and I decided since I couldn’t visit him as often as I would like, I would take flowers to folks at a local nursing home!  I decided to purchase inexpensive vases at garage sales which I would leave in individual resident’s rooms, and re-fill them with fresh flowers each week.

What an impact that simple act of kindness had on folks that really could use a distraction!  I quickly learned how much they cherished our weekly visits, even more than the fresh bouquets.  What the elderly folks wanted more than anything was to have someone listen to their stories and whatever was on their minds.  For the entire week, the vase of flowers was a reminder to them that someone was thinking of them.

The powerful lesson I learned in this experience is that kindness is FREE, yet priceless, and that all the money in the world does not replace the value of human interaction and compassion.

Each week as I walked out of the nursing home, I reflected on the real wealth I had.

I had a marvelous family, I was healthy, I could walk, I could talk, and I had the extreme good fortune of living in the United States– the place where people would crawl on cut glass, just for the opportunity to live in this great country!

Any of the residents at the nursing home would have traded all the money in the world for what I had for FREE!

It is good to remember that having money is great, but true wealth is the abundance of blessings you have in your life now!  Maybe in these tough times, a cutting garden could help your perspective too!

Get Started on Your Garden Here

The government doesn’t have the resources to track people down, so the money remains unclaimed.   The program featured the story of a woman named Betty that had shown kindness to a wealthy elderly man she knew in New Orleans, where they lived.  As it turned out, when Albert died, he left Betty $237,000 and she didn’t know about it!!  Her kindness had really paid off for her!

It is worth taking a little time to investigate if there’s any money out there for you, don’t you think? I know I will…   A few minutes of searching may really pay off for me!  Who knows– Maybe it’s my lucky day!

There is also a great lesson here!  Your kind gestures may reap you rich financial rewards!  At the very least, you will feel really good about yourself and that is free!

Read the whole article here  You Might Be Rich

We both have degrees in Business and learned that through hard word, perseverance and frugal living it is possible to save and invest to build wealth, especially when you start young.

Our quest to get rich began when we had a fateful conversation with a friend of ours named Pat.  In the course of visiting with Pat, he casually mentioned that he needed to drive over to his 4 investment properties and pick up the monthly rents!  Pat was the same age as us, 23, and he already owned 4 duplexes!  We were stunned!  How could this be??

Over the years, I learned something that that has served me well!  When I see someone accomplishing something I would like to do too, I ASK them directly– How Did You Do That??  So I asked Pat to explain how he accomplished this amazing feat!

Pat said– It was easy!  He told us he saved like crazy by setting a very strict budget based on the money he made at his job at an insurance agency and, because he wanted to accomplish his goals quickly, he supplemented his income by working at his family’s sweet corn business- so he could save more.

Pat’s family had financed all 5 children’s college educations through the selling of sweet corn at a farm stand on the side of the road in the summertime!  They all worked very hard and made lots of money that was split between each child!

Pat decided to defer his spending and build his wealth NOW by saving a large percentage of what he earned and use that money as a down payment on investment properties.  When he purchased a property, Pat would move into each duplex, so it was considered owner occupied and he only needed to put 10% down.  He then would repeat the process!

He’d save the money, move into the property, live there while he continued to save for the next property and buy another property and move into it!  Then, Pat rented the entire property he had just vacated.  He did that 4 times!

We said WE CAN DO THAT TOO! And we did it!

While aggressively saving money from our jobs,  we also took on piecemeal assembly work for my company that we did at home on the weekends so we could save even more!  We didn’t sell sweet corn, but we utilized the same concept.  Take on extra work and save all that extra income!

At the end of our first year, we bought our first piece of real estate!

We were on our way!

We promptly spent that $ 500 on a used and functional (but very ugly) pea-green colored Plymouth Duster car. You know the type—similar to the one on the Dukes of Hazards.  The “ugly” car worked fine and got me where I wanted to go. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t new, but it worked.

My husband was a salesman, so his company gave him a car.  So—at that point we had 2 great cars at a total cash outlay of $ 500. Not bad.  But, now we were BROKE.

Both my husband and I had majored in Business is college because it gave us  a marketable skill (we could get a job) and it would help us understand the workings of personal finance and building wealth. We learned that rich people do things differently than people that were always struggling to pay the bills.

The # 1 thing that has influenced ALL our buying decisions is this: Whenever possible, spend your money on items that will go UP in value—not on things that go DOWN in value.  Thus–the $ 500 “ugly” car. It would have been throwing money in the garbage can to buy a brand new expensive car!  We wanted to BE rich– not just LOOK Rich!

Our goal was to purchase real estate as soon as possible to build equity and have a place of our own. That required some serious saving for a down payment.   We figured we needed to save more than 10%  on a $ 70,000 purchase price for all the costs .   That meant we would need to save approximately $ 12,000 by the end of ONE YEAR–that’s $ 1,000 a MONTH.

Considering we were each only earning about $ 14,000 a year in 1977—that was almost 50% of our pay we wanted to save!

AND WE DID IT!

Not only did we do it ONCE—we repeated that procedure 3 times in a 5-year period!

The primary motivator behind our intense saving effort was we did NOT want to rent an apartment more than one year—since the rent money was making the landlord rich—not us.

We bought duplexes rather than single-family homes because we could own, rent and control a larger value property.  We would rent half the building, until we moved out, then we’d rent it all, so the tenants were paying the mortgage off!   What a deal!   Frugal to Rich!