We tend to focus on assets and forget about debts. Financial security requires facing up to the big picture: assets minus debts.

The dream of having one's dream job turned into "Oh my God, I'll take any job. I've been out of work for two years now. I don't care what I do. I'll do anything because I don't have any money".

What happens to your money directly affects the quality of your life -- not your stockbroker's life or your banker's life, but YOUR life.

Like your home's closets, your financial clutter needs an overhaul every now and again, and the payoff will go far beyond the psychic satisfaction of neatening up.

Money is the currency of life because it is the external measurement system that all of us have as to how we judge where we are in our own lives.

No one's ever achieved financial fitness with a January resolution that's abandoned by February.

Many people are dreaming. Let me rent. Let me have a job. Let me work until I'm 70. That's not what the American Dream used to be. It used to be, let me own a home. Let me retire at 59 and a half or 65 at the latest. Let me do this. And now, really, given what's happened, good luck with anything happening unless you do it yourself.