The Money Student » Learn the Art of Money Mastery

I certainly don’t agree with all of these, but they should give you a lot to think about.

“If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can’t buy” -Proverb
“Money is like a sixth sense – and you can’t make use of the other five without it” -William Somerset Maugham
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” -Jim Rohn
“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.” -Maya Angelou
“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” -Benjamin Franklin
“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” -Bo Derek
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” -Jim Rohn
“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?” -Ayn Rand
“Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.” -Helen Gurley Brown
“The art is not in making money, but in keeping it” -Proverb
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” -Ayn Rand
“Money often costs too much.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” -Ruth Smeltzer
“Go out in the world and work like money doesn’t matter, Sing as if no one is listening, Love as if you have never been hurt, and Dance as if no one is watching”
“It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.” -George Lorimer
“Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail” -Richard Friedman
“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.” -James W. Frick
“Money never starts an idea. It is always the idea that starts the money.” -Owen Laughlin
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” -Benjamin Franklin
“If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.” -Dorothy Parker
“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.” -Ayn Rand
“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have” -Will Rogers
“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.” -James Arthur Baldwin
“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.” -James Goldsmith
“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.” -Thomas Jefferson
“I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.” -Robert Bosch
“Money is usually attracted, not pursued.” -Jim Rohn
“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” -Henry David Thoreau
“While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery”
“Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.” -Kahlil Gibran
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. -Albert Einstein
There is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty! -Ann Radcliffe
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. -Benjamin Franklin
If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting. -Benjamin Franklin
Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. -Benjamin Franklin
Riches may enable us to confer favours, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give. -Charles Caleb Colton
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. -Charles Dickens
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. -Donald Trump
I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. -e e cummings
The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it. -Edith Wharton
Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you’ll be surprised at how little you have. -Ernest Haskins
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country. -G. K. Chesterton
Lack of money is the root of all evil. -George Bernard Shaw
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving. -George Eliot
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. -Groucho Marx
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated. -H. L. Mencken
Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil. -Henry Fielding
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. -Jane Austen
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. -Jonathan Swift
Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary. -Julius Rosenwald
Be rich to yourself and poor to your friends. -Juvenal
The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any. -Katharine Whitehorn
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. -Kin Hubbard
The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket. -Kin Hubbard
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally. -Lawana Blackwell
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. -Oscar Wilde
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. -Plato
Money is the opposite of the weather. Nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it. -Rebecca Johnson
Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears. -Robert W. Sarnoff
Money: There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money. -Sophocles
Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy. -Spike Milligan
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. -W. Somerset Maugham
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. -Woody Allen

Forbes.com has an interesting article about college graduates crushed by student debt. The issue pointed out by the article is that many students run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and leave college unable to secure the high paying jobs that they though would be waiting for them. Even worse, many students don’t even graduate, leaving school without a degree but still with piles of student loans to repay.

The article uses some good examples to illustrate this phenomena:

Mindy Babbitt entered Davenport University in her mid-20s to study accounting. Unable to cover the costs with her previous earnings as a cosmetologist, she took out a $35,000 student loan at 9% interest, figuring her postgraduate income would cover the cost.

Instead, the entry-level job her bachelor’s degree got her barely covered living expenses. Babbitt deferred loan repayments and was then laid off for a time. Now 41 and living in Plainwell, Mich., she is earning $41,000 a year, or about $10,000 more than the average high school graduate makes. But since she graduated, Babbitt’s student loan balance has more than doubled, to $87,000, and she despairs she’ll never pay it off.

“Unless I win the lottery or get a job paying a lot more, my student debts are going to follow me to the grave,” she says.

It also mentions two married lawyers, who despite 6 figure incomes, still expect to be in debt the rest of their lives.

The moral of the story here is that a college diploma does not guarantee a life of high paying jobs. Before taking out massive loans, students need to consider the costs and benefits of that degree. Will a university education help you get high paying jobs? Are the interest rates on your student loan excessive?

Don’t get sucked in by the myth that you have to go to college and that student loans companies are there to help you. Like many parts of the debt industry, student loans, especially private students loans, are filled with scammers that feed off naive students eager to attend college.

Don’t make the same mistakes these people made. If you’re going to take a college loan, make sure you get a degree that will help you earn money. Don’t accept the first loan offer you see, hunt for the best interest rate available. Seriously consider not going to college, there are many other paths to a great living.

In the end, as in most areas of debt, it all comes down to making smart decisions.