ent." "Save money." "When ! get a raise, I'll buy us a bigger house." "Mutual funds are safe." "Tickle Me Elmo dolls are out of stock, but I just happen to have one in back that another customer has not come by for yet."

Many great financial problems are caused by going along with the crowd and trying to keep up with the Joneses. Occasionally, we all need to look in the mirror and be true to our inner wisdom rather than our fears.

By the time Mike and I were 16 years old, we began to have problems in school. We were not bad kids. We just began to separate from the crowd. We worked for Mike's dad after school and on the weekends. Mike and I often spent hours after work just sitting at a table with his dad while he held meetings with his bankers, attorneys, accountants, brokers, investors, managers and employees. Here was a man who had left school at the age of 13, now directing, instructing, ordering and asking questions of educated people. They came at his beck and call, and cringed when he did not approve of them.

Here was a man who had not gone along with the crowd. He was a man who did his own thinking and detested the words, "We have to do it this way because that's the way everyone else does it." He also hated the word "can't." If you wanted him to do something, just say, "I don't think

you can do it."

Mike and I learned more sitting at his meetings than we