Asking yourself the question, "Why can't I be rich?" can actually be a helpful exercise, as long as you don't come at it at an angle of self-pity.

When I was a kid, I grew up very near the poverty level. I used to look at the other kids whose parents had financial success and wonder why things were so different with my family. My parents were nice people. They worked hard and didn't seem to go overboard with their spending. So what was the deal?

As a family however, we never really saved money. We didn't give very much either. I think I remember a few times hearing, "That church just wants our money..." It's kind of funny looking back on that because it's not like we were the Gates or the Waltons as far as the church wanting our vast wealth. Plus if God really wanted our money there would be a lot easier ways of getting it.

In my search of trying to figure out how money really worked, I came across a funny situation when I was around 9 years old. I had a habit of getting 25 cent toys (now they're around 50 cents) from machines at places like Wal-Mart and the grocery store. One day a good friend of mine liked a key chain I had and offered me $1 for it. I took that dollar and bought 4 more toys. Pretty soon I had created my own little toy black market and did pretty good for awhile for a 9-year-old. That is until I got in trouble because turns out kids were spending their lunch money. Better that I learned the concept of a win-win situation that young as opposed to later.

So for at least the next 10 years I fell in line with what everyone else my age was doing. I figured out I was smart enough to get into college but knew I would have to take loans out to do it. I did however manage to get a few scholarships that cut the price in half. Once I got my high-paying job, I'd knock those loans out within 30 years. That was my thinking at least back then.

College was interesting in that some instructors had this really weird habit of putting down rich people just because they were rich. I honestly didn't understand the whole liberal/conservative difference in politics in the beginning, but I did find it odd that people would consider it bad for someone else to do well. I'd always been happy for friends who were successful because they did more to pull me forward in life than make me jealous of what they had. I knew the answer to being rich had to be something in my own behavior or how I thought. Blaming other people for where I was

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