Dear Dave: Thanks for the roadmap to success. I am 58, married with 3 children including mid teens still at home. I read your Start Late Finish Rich this spring and would like to share the following. Last year I earned an extra $18,000 and spent it all plus an additional $11,000 on my line of credit. It was a year of new vehicles, trips, house renovations, and RRSP contribution . . . spend, spend, spend. When my wife and I looked back, we couldn’t believe how much money we had gone through and then I read your book. First item on the latte factor to go was newspapers for $475 a year because in reality I was reading most of the same news items on the net. Next was cutting weekend spending money in 1/2 for a further $2500 a year. Finally, we just stopped meeting everyone’s wants rather than their needs. Being self employed I always considered everything I made as paying myself but I see now I was wrong. Since we setup your system 10 weeks ago we have paid ourselves over $2200 into a savings account, put an additional $2200 into my RRSP, reduced the L of C by $1000, have the credit card paid off and reduced my tax payments by 5%. It was really quite easy . . . we just had to stop spending. Your book helped us see clearly how to enjoy life blessings and still get ahead. My only disappointment is that I didn’t read it and follow it 20 years ago. Thanks again.

PS Although I didn’t follow it myself before, I have always encouraged my children to bank at least 10% of everything they earn. The result was that my oldest son graduated from 3 years at college with minimum debt (paid off with first 2 paycheques) and at 24 is now position to use your leverage, buy, live, rent method to purchase a house in the red hot Toronto housing market.