I was recently reflecting on my father’s success and other financially successful immigrants I have helped over the last couple of decades in the primarily Mexican American working class community of East Los Angeles. I recognized that all of them share some very similar wealth habits.

Lesson #1 Working hard for yourself can create financial opportunities not available as an employee. They came to the United States looking to create a better life for their families. They quickly realized that having little formal education and poor social networks were not going to make them rich. They also realized that being caught up in the politics of the day or the macroeconomics of the US wouldn’t help them either. So they took it upon themselves to create their own opportunities through building their own small businesses. They put their nose to the grindstone, worked hard every day, moved forward slowly and then years later, never having given up, they were financially successful.

Lesson #2 Having a sense of urgency to get things done versus putting them off for tomorrow creates results. They have hungry mouths to feed and not making money is not an option. They get up every day and go to work. They never call in sick and rarely take vacation days. They out work everyone they know, including employees half their age. Their belief is why wait until tomorrow to get it done, when it can get done today!

Lesson #3 They watch every penny they spend and save money to invest in creating a better future. Every successful immigrant I have worked with took a portion of their earnings and reinvested the money back into their business or other opportunity in which they had the potential to build equity – like real estate. Notice that I didn’t say that they invest their profits. Most people spend everything they earn and never see a profit. They just take a portion of whatever revenue comes in and then put it aside to build their wealth. My parents never had the fashion of the month, the car of the year, or ate out at the restaurant of the day.

I am always amazed when I see so many people hurting financially. Whenever I have a sprinkling of doubt about my finances, I reflect on the lessons I have learned from my father and other successful immigrants. Come to think of it, I don’t think that I learned any of these lessons at school…just saying.

I first heard about “earning six figures” when I was in college at UCLA. I remember the day clearly. I was having dinner with a new group of friends who lived in the same dorm complex – Dykstra Hall. It was 1979, I had just turned 18, and I was a country bumpkin from East Los Angeles. The guys around the dinner table were discussing the types of careers they would need to have to earn six figures. I asked naively – what do you mean by earning six figures? They said – “Don’t you know? It’s earning over one hundred thousand dollars a year. That type of income will put you on easy street my friend.” Honestly, I couldn’t imagine then that it was possible to earn that much money in any given year. It would have taken my dad 4 to 5 years to earn that much money back then (and I knew this because I used to prepare his tax returns). To be quite honest, I didn’t know anyone or have access to anyone earning six figures.

Now, let‘s move to the year 2006. I’m driving home from work one afternoon listening to a Los Angeles talk radio show, when I hear the host say – “Are you earning six figures and still having a hard time making ends meet? I earn over six figures a year and just the other day I drove through a Taco Bell and had to look for change in my car to buy a couple of tacos. Call me if you earn six figures and are living paycheck to paycheck. I earn six figures and I don’t feel rich.” Call after call, people were complaining how they were earning six figures and were barely making it.

I usually see that most people struggle with money no matter what amount of monthly income they bring home. In an average week, I’ll hear a couple say – “We only make $45,000 a year and we can barely make it financially” and then I’ll hear another couple say, “Oh Louis, we only make $120,000 a year and can barely live on that.”

What I have found over my career is that people will tend to spend the amount of income they bring home. Earning a better living doesn’t mean you are living a better life, it just means that you have more expensive things. What is important is that you create a financial plan to live within your means and align your plan with the critical core values that you desire most – like creating financial freedom or having peace of mind. Aligning your money with your priorities and values is the best way I have found to get your finances in control so you can live a worry-free and stress-free life. Because in the end my friends…I have yet to see a U-Haul behind a hearse. I have found that the person with the most toys still dies and ends up leaving their family with a lot of debt.

I have been speaking to many community college students recently and have come to the conclusion about how little confidence and lack of direction they seem to have about their future, in particular their future career. Even though many of the students that go to a community college are there to get their general education requirements out of the way before they transfer to a University, most still do not have an idea what their declared major will be once they transfer.

Over the years, I have studied wealthy and financially challenged people and I have found that people can be either; poor and unhappy, poor and happy, rich and unhappy, or rich and happy. Of the four choices, I find that being rich and happy is the obvious choice to be. As I made great friendships with rich and happy people, I found four common traits about the careers they had chosen. I have created an acrostic of these four unique traits and call them C.A.S.H.™ The acrostic stands for Calling, Abilities, Self-Mastery, and Heart. I teach this concept at our all day W.E.A.L.T.H. Workshop for Young Adults, and I would like to quickly give you a brief overview.

Calling – I have always believed that the happiest people on the planet know that they have a purpose in life and are living that purpose. For some people, it’s in health care, education, finance, ministry, etc. It really doesn’t matter, but they just know it. They feel a tug in their heart that they are here to serve a purpose and that their mission in life is bigger than them. The dictionary describes calling as a vocation, profession, or trade. The real successful people make their vocation their vacation!

Abilities – In the past decade, there has been a real movement from becoming a generalist to a specialist. The idea is that you are born with unique abilities or talents and that you should focus on strengthening these instead of trying to become better at the things you struggle with. If math or science comes easier to you, you should then pursue a career in a related field.

Self-Mastery – No matter how talented you are in a specific area, whether it’s math, entertainment, or sports, you still need to work hard at becoming great at what you do. Studies have shown that to achieve any kind of success in any endeavor, you need to dedicate yourself at least 10,000 hours to it. You will never see an accomplished physician or entertainer without putting in the time and the effort to become the best.

Heart – It’s about the passion, love, and goodness you bring to your career. You can be super talented at something, but if you don’t love it and are not willing to put the time and effort you will never achieve happiness. I have met a lot of people who make a lot of money but hate their lives. There are great lawyers and doctors who make a lot of money but just can’t stand their careers and thus their lives. Having heart also means that not only do you love what you do but you also do good for others. Having heart means having passion and compassion!

My belief is that to be really successful and happy in life, you need to have ALL four traits working together at the same time. Ask yourself if you have all four. If you don’t go back and see where the gap is. Which of the four traits are you missing? If you are a student and are just starting out on the path to your career, keep the four traits on the top of your mind as you declare your major or select your classes. Remember that your goal is to become rich and happy. That’s true wealth!

When I first started as a financial planner back in 1986, I remember introducing myself to potential clients and I would often hear, “When I have money, I’ll go see you.” I remember not having a response to that. Unfortunately, most financial planners back then only sold products. Most people intentionally avoided them to not have to spend money on something they felt they didn’t need or want. The “computer generated (boiler plate) financial plan” was also used as a tool to convince a person why the product being “sold” to them was suitable. The products most often used were mutual funds, annuities, and cash-value life insurance policies.

I left the industry very disillusioned in 1988 to pursue a CPA designation and fell in love with financial planning all over again. During this time, CPA’s couldn’t offer any financial products. They were a client’s trusted advisor (until the CPA Board allowed them to also sell products in 1999). The firm I worked for was a boutique accounting and consulting firm for super wealthy real estate developers that were going through very difficult times (not unlike today). The owners of these companies saw a need for planning. The planning was comprehensive and focused on a process, not a product. The idea was refreshing to me. Then it crossed my mind, the owners of these companies were coming to our firm because they were going through difficult financial times. They valued the advice they were getting from their trusted advisors without the conflict of having to buy a product. One of the clients, an older gentleman, told me that just a couple of pieces of advice that we gave him saved him a lot of time, money, and grief. He also felt that he got ten times the value he paid us.

Over the years, I have truly seen how financial planning advice (not products) can save families money, pain, and help them from making terrible mistakes that would take them years to recover. Now I have an answer to the person who tells me, “When I have money, I’ll go see you,” I tell them, “It’s like telling your doctor, I’ll go see you when I get better. It doesn’t make sense.” Don’t wait until you feel better to see your doctor, or until the toothache goes away to see your dentist, or until you have money to invest with a fee-only financial planner. A fee-only financial planner will provide more value to you to help you get and feel financially better.

The other night my good friend, Saundra Davis, and I were having a long conversation about our experiences with helping people on MY STREET. Saundra is fantastic because she doesn’t hold back and loves to tell it like it is. She tells me, “You know Louis, if people don’t have skin in the game, they really aren’t going to take action.” Saundra and I have been in the trenches for a long time helping people with limited resources with their personal finances and I totally understood where she was coming from.

As we spoke, I started to think about where the saying “skin in the game” came from. Doing a little research, I found that the saying is usually attributed to Warren Buffett. Buffett, perhaps the most famous investor in the United States, was referring to the high-ranking members of a company who invest in their own company’s stock. The theory behind putting skin in the game is that it ensures that the people who run a company also have a direct interest in running the company well. If the company does well, they will do well, if the company doesn’t do well, then they will also share in the losses.

The saying has gone broader to mean that if you have a stake in some activity, you share directly in the successes and failures of that activity. For example, a good friend was sharing a story with me about how he had purchased a used car for his 16-year-old son. The son had no skin in the game. The dad had purchased the car entirely with his funds. The kid thrashed the car after 3 years. When the son went off to college he asked his dad if he can buy him a new car. My friend told his son that it would not be a problem if he would match him dollar for dollar in the purchase of another car. The son had to put up a few thousand dollars from his own savings. The difference in the care and maintenance of his car was night and day compared to his first car.

Saundra and I ended our conversation that evening discussing how different people take financial planning advice and apply it when they pay for the advice as compared to when they get the advice free. Our experience was similar in that we noticed that when people get free advice (sometimes called pro bono), they rarely act on it. It’s almost like if they take the advice as an opinion or they just don’t value it. The problem we have encountered is that most people would rather buy an investment or insurance product than pay for advice. Unfortunately, financial planning really is more about a process than a product. It’s about an investment of time to clearly articulate and prioritize your goals, seeking strategic intelligent advice from a fee-only financial planner who has no conflict of interest in trying to sell you something, and then following up and following through on the advice. So when it comes to your personal finances, my question to you is – Do you have skin in the game?

What is a parent’s obligation to teach their children how to make and use money to live a better life? Let me clarify.  I’m not just talking about teaching your child(ren) how to budget or save the first 10 percent of their allowance or paycheck. Budgeting and savings are important, but I’m talking about something much bigger, something that is going to affect their lives forever. Money is so woven into the fabric we call life that we rarely think about how it affects our selection of a life partner, our career choice, our emotional and physical health, the neighborhood we live in, the education we get, or just our overall happiness.

I remember when I would go out with my friends as a teen, my dad would say to me, “do you have any money?” Sometimes I would say no, and that I didn’t need any. My dad would always remind me and say, “What if you get thirsty and want to buy a soda, here take a couple of bucks.” The lesson he taught me was that you never know when you will need money, so you better have some, just in case. Looking back, I don’t ever remember having a conversation with my parents about money. They never told me that money or the lack of it would eventually influence my choice of a public college, the used Toyota Corolla I drove for years, the friends I hung out with, the sports I played, my first home I bought in a gang infested neighborhood, or the worry and lack of sleep I would have when I didn’t have enough money to pay my bills. I think you get the point.

What I learned about money from my parents was more from observation than from conversation.  Besides never having the “money talk,” I also never had the “sex talk” either. Sex and money were big taboos in my house and in the homes of many of my friends growing up. Maybe my parents assumed that my teachers would teach me how to make and use money wisely. Maybe I was like the typical teenager who just didn’t want to hear any lecture from their parents. Maybe my parents didn’t really know any better.

Here is where I must CONFESS. I can honestly tell you that until recently, I had not had that “money” talk with my children either. I felt so guilty that I almost confessed to a priest. I can’t plead ignorance about the lack of money know how. What has come out of all the guilt is an all day interactive, impactful, and inspiring workshop that I hope will not only transform the lives of my children, but someday the lives of my grandchildren.

The lessons I created go beyond the common financial literacy tips found in most money classes or informational literature. I wanted my children to learn about financial principals that would affect their life decisions to help them create not just more money, but more happiness. I call the workshop – The ABC’s of W.E.A.L.T.H. The lessons include:  Attitudes, Beliefs, and Confidence about money as well as their Worth, Education, Attraction, Team, and Humility toward life.

So, I ask the question one more time – Is it your obligation to teach your children about money? Or is it the school’s responsibility to teach them? Or do you leave it to chance that they learn about money on their own? Unfortunately, for many people, learning about money on their own will be some of the most painful and expensive lessons they will ever experience.