With success comes unhelpful criticism - ignore it.

The truth is that you are nothing more than the custodian of your inner and outer wealth while you are on this planet. All you have to decide is what kind of custodian do you want to be? Do you want to be a good custodian of your inner and outer wealth? Or a bad custodian?

Every financial worry you want to banish and financial dream you want to achieve comes from taking tiny steps today that put you on a path toward your goals.

Everybody in America started to define themselves by all these things they had around them. And all of a sudden it came tumbling down. So the old American dream has died, and that is a good thing.

The last thing family and friends want is for you to spend money on them that you don't have or that you can't really spare.

Cash - in savings accounts, short-term CDs or money market deposits - is great for an emergency fund. But to fulfill a long-term investment goal like funding your retirement, consider buying stocks. The more distant your financial target, the longer inflation will gnaw at the purchasing power of your money.

If you're saving for the long run, it's actually a good thing when the market is down because the more shares you have, the more you can potentially make when markets rise. And over time - decades, not months - the markets rise more than they fall.