It's impossible to map out a route to your destination if you don't know where you're starting from.

Absolutely invest in retirement. You can always get a loan to get kids through school. I do not know of any loans to get you through retirement. The markets are seriously low from where they were (even though they've gone up 30 percent recently). Now is the time to be dollar cost averaging; the more money you put in, the more shares you buy. Save for your retirement, people.

Many of the good things would never have happened if the bad events hadn't happened first.

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.

I have come to think that money is very much like a person, and it will respond when you treat it as you would a cherished friend - never fearing it, pushing it away, pretending it doesn't exist, or turning away from its needs, never clutching it so hard that it hurts. ... if you tend it like the living entity it is, then it will flourish, grow, take care of you for as long as you need it.

When you give, give from the place of the heart because it is the right thing to do, not the easy thing to do.

I am a big believer that orderliness begets wealth.