re: What changed your financial future for the better?

For me it was losing my job in 1982. Two years before I had married and bought a house, then the oil price fell and I got hit with the second seniority-based layoff.

For the young people on this board, 1982 saw over 1400 homeowners in East Baton Rouge Parish lose their homes. So many people were leaving Louisiana there was a three week wait for a U-Haul truck or trailer. There were just no other jobs available this side of Atlanta.

I spent the next four years working minimum wage jobs, two at the same time at one point, but to be honest my wife's nursing job kept us afloat.

Then in 1986, the company that laid me off re-hired me. By then I had matriculated from the School of Hard Knocks and I turned over every nickle ten times before spending it. People laughed and called me cheap but those were people that had never been to a pawn shop the week before Christmas.

Two years later I was on a long trip and heard the 'Bob Brinker Show' on the radio. He was telling the audience to lock up five-year CD's as the then-current 9.25% rate was going to drop. I didn't know what he was talking about but I knew I needed to find out. So I subscribed to his newsletter and discovered the term 'mutual fund'.

If you listen closely, you can still hear the Angels singing... I sure can.