Friends,

[Stoffel here]

Believe it or not, money was never a topic of discussion growing up. Of course, part of this means I was privileged enough to never pick up on the stresses that come with parents who are constantly scrambling to make ends meet.

At the same time, with parents who held jobs as a professor and a small business owner, we were far from what I would have considered wealthy.

There were however, two pieces of money advice my dad mentioned more than once. And since it wasn't a topic often discussed, it stuck with me.

As time has passed, I'm convinced these two simple rules made a huge difference in my life.

Rule #1: Start investing and saving for retirement as early as possible

On more than one occasion, he would bring home newspaper clippings like this one from The Wall Street Journal:

The totals themselves aren't that important. Here's what stuck with me

• The late-saver (red) was putting away twice as much as the early-saver (blue)
• And yet, the early-saver had nearly twice as large of a nest egg come retirement time.

In my first job as a public school teacher, I put away the maximum to get my school's match. That was painful in my early 20's.

However, the lion's share of the nest egg we have now is thanks to the cash my wife and I both invested as public school teachers in our 20s.

Rule #2: Whatever you think something will cost, double the price

Investing early is a great offensive tool (building up wealth).

But it's also important to play defense: make sure you don't make huge money mistakes. As a small business owner, my dad learned from experience that large projects have a funny way of ballooning in cost. We also took that advice to heart.

That's why we ended up buying a house whose mortgage payment initially ate up less than 20% of our income, and waited until we had plenty of cash on hand before undertaking any remodels.

Again, it was a bit painful at the outset (a smaller house without amenities). But it's amazing how quickly we can adapt to our surroundings. Most importantly, this approach stopped us from making any huge money mistakes.

None of this to say is that my family has been perfect with money. Far from it -- it's actually these two rules which made many of our mistakes benign.

Have you gotten simple money advice that's made a difference for you? Hit reply and let us know what they are.

Wishing you continued investing luck,

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