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.

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

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.

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.

Don't let what others think or say get in your way; their actions reflect on them, not you.

Money is a topic that touches all races, all religions, all sexes, all ages, all tax brackets. It's a universal language that truly has been held up to us in society as a thing that determines whether we are successful, worthy, whether we have contributed something to life or not.

We each focus on what we're going to buy, but that's an incorrect focus. Focus instead on why you want to spend the money on this or that. What feeling in you does it satisfy?