Part of my motivation for writing this blog is to pass on what I know to my children before they are on their own making financial decisions. Even though I make my choices carefully and put time into understanding how things work, I have made some financial mistakes and other people have taken advantage of me financially from time to time. People like to say that money isn’t everything, and this is true. Relationships, fun, interesting activities, and challenging pursuits lead to a full life. Money can’t give you these things, but it can give you more freedom to pursue them. Most of us trade our time for money by taking jobs. The jobs we have vary in how fulfilling they are, but very few of us can honestly say that we would do our jobs for nothing. Even the best jobs have unpleasant parts, and almost all of us do some fraction of our jobs only for the money. So, for most of us, to say that money isn’t important is to say that our time isn’t important, and this is wrong. Money represent...