Cora and I managed to talk my folks into going online while visiting them this summer. In my opinion, my father has spent an unhealthy amount of time surfing this past week. I know he's looking for rationales from other folks to back up his own lines of reasoning. This morning, my father was at BUYandHOLD, reading Eight Steps To Successful Financial Planning from Chuck Carlson's "Eight Steps To Seven Figures."

"Look here," my father crowed. "He says 'inconsistency is the bane of investing.' Look at this." He points to a list of activities that describe all the mistakes of my waking moments since birth. "Successful investors don't job hop, they marry once, they stay in one house for long stretches of time and they buy and hold investments for five years or more."

I didn't know whether to feel victorious over conquering the exact opposite of this list or admit defeat and repent. "And your point is?"

"You're not going to be a millionaire," my father declared. "You're never going to have a seven-figure bank account if you don't follow this advice. And it may be too late for you."

Thank goodness my father isn't a millionaire, or I would have felt pretty bad about all this. As it was, I just laughed and retorted that if it was late for me, then his chances were totally shot.

Do my past mistakes and experiences stop me from being a successful investor? I read through Carlson's financial "rules" and I agree with every one of them. Especially the last one. Avoiding shock to our finances is a great thing. But a divorce or loss of a job or selling our investments to pay for medical emergencies does not make us failures. It also doesn't make us lousy investors. It just doesn't make us millionaires.

Of course, you can be stable and consistent and still not be a millionaire. All you have to do is have a couple of kids and and/or never invest, and you may have blown your chances.

Two weeks ago I heard from a childhood friend. We hadn't seen each other in over twenty-five years. She told me she's divorced several times, and that she has two daughters. She sent pictures of herself and her girls, and they all look healthy and happy together.

My friend said, "It amazed me how I could get on with my life without a man. It was a struggle at first, but now I make more than most men I know." She has a well-rounded life. Her job as a computer programmer is something she learned after her last divorce. She's also using her artistic skills to build a business outside of her daytime job. This is a hobby she loves, and something she can do well beyond retirement. She owns her home, and she's content with her lifestyle.

But she hasn't invested a dime. Her daughters are teenagers. Even though they have hopes of scholarships to colleges, the upcoming years might still be a strain. My friend wanted to know how to invest her money. She wanted to know about retirement plans. She wanted to know if mutual funds were better than picking her own stocks (she wanted to know a lot, and I'm still just a beginner...).

I steered my friend to BUYandHOLD, and told her what Cora and I were doing with our money and investment strategies. I explained dollar cost averaging and how she could begin investing with as little as $20 per month. She said, "It's a shame our parents and teachers never taught us how to do this when we were kids."

Learning from example is great. Learning together is even better. Even though my father wanted his children to invest, he never showed us how to go about it. His advice, "Buy low, sell high" meant nothing to a child who didn't know what a market high and low might be.

Even though a few of us might be a little late to the game, there's no reason why we can't score. As Carlson says, it's better to hit a lot of singles than to hope for that one home run. Whether we're married or not, there's no excuse to not learn about investing; we also have no excuse to not teach our children.

All you have to do is open your account and make that first payment. No one else can do it for you. Then you have to pretend that it's a matter of life or death if you don't continue to make that regular payment. If you don't have a goal, there's no incentive to get ahead. If you can't think of a goal for yourself, take a look at your children and think of what you'd like to give them.

After all, we may not be millionaires, but it also helps if we don't think of ourselves as failures. If we pass this wisdom on to our children, hopefully they'll be able to take care of themselves and be happy. That alone might be worth a million bucks.

Until next week,

Linda Goin