Chapter 2

Worshipping Mammon

The Apostle Paul wrote, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Not money, but the love of money. It is the archetypal two-edged sword; even if putting a misplaced love of money ahead of more important things often does lead to monetary wealth, it too often leads to misery.

The older I get, the less important getting rich seems to me, and the more intrigued I have become with studying the impact of money on character and true happiness. In fact, concern over the possible negative effects of the quest for financial security and wealth on the human psyche kept me from writing about how to become Really Rich until I sorted through the effects of the quest for money on me and my family. I finally decided I was not morally at ease with sharing what I have learned about the principles of wealth acquisition if I didn't share with you up front what I have experienced for myself and learned from others about the spiritual and emotional potholes along the road to wealth.

I have concluded that happiness is the real object and purpose of our existence, and the quest for riches and the sheer fact of the existence of excess money can either enhance or destroy it. That is a fact of life, and I have never read anything about what wealth can do for you and to you, so I decided to fill that void.

Those who are champing at the bit to join the acolytes of Mammon may be bored with this discussion and wonder why I even wrote it, but I believe it is the most important chapter in the book, and affects all that follows. That's why I put it near the front.

We usually think that money is impersonal, but in my quarter century as a financial publisher, I have observed that not much in life challenges us emotionally and spiritually as much as money—or the lack of it. More money and/or happiness has been lost because of misplaced devotion to money than most other causes put together.

Money—or the lack of it—profoundly affects you, depending on whether or not you worship Mammon, the heathen god who symbolized worldly financial success. Getting rich is not a sin per se, but it's a real test of what you are down deep inside, and how you react to money triggers a lot of genuine consequences. I have known some very happy rich men who left this life with a legacy of spiritual and moral riches and big estates, and I have known just as many rich but miserable men. I have also known some whose Mammon worship made them rich, but then cost them their fortunes and their families.

Mammon's evil, phony religion always leads to slavery, but you can become rich and also escape Mammon's chains before it is too late.

Out of my personal experience, I have included four real-life stories of men who all became very wealthy. Two worshipped Mammon and found misery; two defied Mammon and lived full and rich lives full of faith. They had the love and respect of all who knew them, and were great role models for their loving families. Their stories are instructive.

SAD EXAMPLE #1

Here is a sad but true extreme example of how worshipping Mammon (money) can lead to misery and loss of money at the same time.

Back in the 1920s, a very talented man was one of the founders of the chain of stores in Idaho and Utah which later became Safeway. He was their chief financial officer, and making money was his whole life. His favorite book, which he made into a kind of sacred bible for his life's guidance, was Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. He was also a mathematical genius; he could run his finger down a long column of figures six digits wide and give you a total at the bottom. He could inventory a store in his head and write down the figures accurately on the train on the way to the next town.

Getting rich was his one passion in life, but it was also his tragic undoing. He not only neglected his wife and family in the pursuit of business, but when his wife became pregnant for the second time, which he considered to be very inconvenient to his career, he forced her to have an illegal abortion, which was a source of great spiritual pain and guilt for her. When she got pregnant again, he tried to force her to have another abortion, but this time she refused. He was drinking heavily by now, and in a drunken rage, he beat her savagely to try to cause a miscarriage. She was injured so badly that her doctor recommended a therapeutic abortion to save her life, which she refused. She then went to bed for seven months to try to save the baby, and she gave birth in due time to a healthy son.

Flashing further back in time, some months earlier the man had made a decision to get really rich, so he liquidated his company stock worth almost $1 million and took the money to New York to make a real fortune speculating on margin in the stock market. The year was 1929, and he was wiped out in one day in the October crash.

He then turned to gambling in a single-minded effort to recoup his lost fortune, and gambled away the insurance money. Many months later, when his wife was nursing the baby, he walked into the room, put a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. There was no insurance money.

He was my father.

I remember my mother's horror two decades later when she found me reading Think and Grow Rich, the book that my father called his “bible” and that I have enjoyed over the years. That was when she broke down and told me much of this story, which was later confirmed and added to by relatives. There are more informative details of my father's money obsession in Chapter 11.

This is not an anti-abortion tract, so let me leave it by saying that there are those who may think the world would be a better place if my mother had had an abortion, but I am not among them.

As I pieced this story together bit by bit from conversations with my mother and my aunts and uncles, it became clear to me that the unifying thread running through this story was “sacrificing on the altar of Mammon.” I then vowed that I would never allow money to corrupt me as it had my dad, but, as you will see in later chapters, that was easier said than done, and when all is said and done, there is more said than done. Most of the real unhappiness I have experienced in my life came as a result of losing my focus—putting business ahead of my family, and allowing wealth and ready money to corrupt me—and amazingly, I was unaware of it. I thought I was the best husband and father in the world. I guess I was better than many, but I was nowhere near as good as I thought I was or should have been, and there was a price to be paid.

SAD EXAMPLE #2

Some years ago, the president and CEO of a Fortune 500 multinational company was a guest on my radio talk show. He was a fan of The Ruff Times, and was also a well-known force to be reckoned with in publicizing and eliminating government waste as the volunteer head of a government commission, as that was his public service. We had a very cordial interview and went out for a bite to eat afterward. He told me about his work schedule—18 hours a day, seven days a week. He also required the same of his management team. He flew all over the world in the company 727 and took his management team with him so they could work on the plane around the clock. He was a great guy who liked me, and I liked him in return, and envied his financial success—until he asked me a strange question: “Do your kids hate you?”

When I told him I was pretty sure they didn't, he said, “My kids won't talk to me and won't let me see my grandchildren. I haven't seen some of them for years.” Then, to my amazement, he sprung a leak around the eyes and poured out his heart to me like a dam breaking, releasing his pent-up misery. When I asked him if his wife ever traveled with him on the company 727, he said yes, but then he told me that she understood that he would be working all the time with his staff and she also understood she was not to interrupt him. She always brought a friend with her so she wouldn't be alone, and he claimed she was happy with that.

I was planning to go to Bangkok, and since he was going to Singapore in his 727, he invited me to go with him and fly to Bangkok from there. I decided to go commercial anyway, as it was obvious he wouldn't have any time for me.

This man has since died, which triggered a bitter fight among his heirs over his fortune. Outside of his business associates, he was mourned by few. Right now, I guess, he's doing a lot of explaining.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

In contrast, I have known some highly successful men who kept their balance.

HAPPY EXAMPLE #1

J. Willard Marriott Senior was the founder of the Marriott Hotels, among other things. He was an important lay leader in his church, and always put family and church first. He was a dear personal friend, and one of my real-life heroes. He changed my life permanently one evening at a party in his home, which he had invited me to attend. (I was 20 years old at the time.) Out of the clear blue sky, he put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Howard Ruff, you're an entrepreneur. Never work for another man.” So I didn't.

He lived happily and died greatly loved by his family and everyone else who knew him. He was one of the happiest and most successful people I have ever known. He passed his values on to his family, and his son, J. Willard Marriott Junior, is not only CEO of the Marriot financial empire, but has followed in his father's footsteps as a husband, father, and church leader.

HAPPY EXAMPLE #2

Another role model was one of my ancestors, Joseph Younger Mayberry. During the deadly Mormon persecutions in Missouri and Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s, he was thrown into jail because of his religion, never charged with a crime, and forgotten about for six years. When he was finally released, he made his way to the Rocky Mountains and was one of the first settlers in what later became Franklin, Idaho, where he became a very prosperous farmer, rancher, and businessman. Throughout his life he rarely turned down a request for help or a loan. Even in times of poverty and famine, he shared his wheat and wool and the lumber and firewood he dragged down from the canyons through the heavy snows. He even tolerated it without comment when he knew needy people were stealing from him, and he said repeatedly, “I can't seem to give it away as fast as God blesses me with it.” He died a happy and greatly loved man—and a wealthy one by the standards of his day. And never at any time was he less than a completely dedicated husband, father, neighbor, and faithful church member.

UNREQUITED LOVE

The love of money is usually a composite of two things: (1) the love of wealth for wealth's sake, usually egged on by the greedy desire to be richer than the next guy; and (2) the love of the things money can buy that confer status and the appearance of success.

Some people may have made a lot of money by loving it to the exclusion of any and all other things. Maybe they have even become very rich, but are miserably unhappy, having lost a lot of things that they eventually learned to their horror were more important than money. And their money never loved them back. You can't cuddle up to it on a cold night.

A PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES

Many people are like the Guadalcanal Island monkeys. Our Marines who took the island from the Japanese thought these cute simians would make terrific pets, so they concocted a strategy to catch them. They would hollow out a coconut and fill it full of rice, leaving only a small hole, and secure it to a tree. The monkey would put its hand into the hole and grab a fistful of rice, but couldn't get its hand out without letting go of the rice, as its clenched fist full of rice was too big to get back out through the hole. The monkeys were easy prey for the Marines, as the greedy little animals were trapped. They had the rice they wanted, but they had lost something much more precious—their freedom.

This is a parable for our times. Poverty has corrupted people, but so has wealth and its accompanying greed. The older I get, the more positive I am that genuine, lasting happiness depends on intangible matters of character and spirit, and the pursuit of wealth tests them all.

Loving your money too much can also cause you to lose it, as I will show you in a minute. But although putting money ahead of much more important things—like family, church, and country—can and sometimes does lead to wealth, it too often also leads to misery. You may have the Midas touch for years, but if you love your money too much, the Midas touch can, to coin a new metaphor, turn everything into old mufflers. There is nothing sadder than a person who has sacrificed marriage and family on the altar of Mammon due to stupid, greed-driven decisions, or even uncontrolled spending on vices, only to find Mammon is a fickle god who often breaks his promises.

Conversely, love of money can lead to loss of wealth because it spawns greed, fear, and covetousness, which can lead to costly emotion-driven bad decisions.

All of these stories set the scene for my point. Worshipping Mammon—loving money more than family, church, and country—can lead to misery.

WORKAHOLICS

A letter to Dear Abby illustrates the point.

The ratio of unhappy people to happy people is at least as high among the rich as it is among the poor, if not higher. Money is a two-edged sword that can bless you or curse you, depending on the place you allow it to fill in your heart. Money can be the key that opens the door to all the expensive vices, or it can be a tool to advance the good things in your life, and this depends on your personal decisions. You can decide to be prosperous and miserable, or you can decide to be prosperous and happy, as I did after my bankruptcy. It's really that simple. Notice I said simple, not easy.

I have evolved some rules to help you put money in its proper place in your life so you can not only make it and keep it, but use it to enhance your happiness, not blight it.

The first set of rules, aimed at the fathers of traditional two-parent families, will insulate them from money's most corrupting influences and make it a source of happiness and a blessing to the whole family. I promise!

RULES FOR FATHERS

Rule #1: Choose a profession that allows you to spend plenty of dedicated time with your spouse and children, even it means less money and a step down in lifestyle. The lost years of your offspring's childhood can never be recaptured. I know personally many men who have had successful careers and fulfilling family lives at the same time; they can and should go together. If you are struggling over the temptation to trade off riches for family life, let family win the debate. Maybe you need to settle for safe prosperity instead of real riches. Attend every major or minor event in your children's lives—dance recitals, soccer games, and so on—and elevate your wife to queen of your home, but don't be an absentee sovereign.

Rule #2: Set aside one night a week for a family night. We use Mondays. Use it for family activities and outings, game nights, family councils, and lessons in things that are important to your family's moral, spiritual, and ethical growth. This is your only chance to systematically pass on your family's values, history, and traditions so they become part of the family continuum. You can use this time to teach your kids the American history they are not learning in school, or old-fashioned virtues like work, worship, or the Constitution. If you fail to pass on the family baton, your children will grow up like a ship that is all sail and no anchor, drifting with every vagrant wind, and will be suckers for irresponsible peer pressure, as well as the vote-hungry politician's lawful prey.

This is the hardest rule to execute consistently as the kids are drawn in a million directions by school, their social life, and other activities on Monday nights. Our performance in the Ruff house has been less than perfect, but we have tried hard, and it has paid dividends in family togetherness and offspring with character and a sense of belonging to an extended family unit with standards and traditions.

Rule #3: Go over the family finances regularly with the whole family at least once a month. Don't just be a bank with what looks to the kids like an apparently endless supply of money. Make sure the kids know that hard financial choices are a routine part of life. In family financial conferences, you can implant in them a long-term perspective. The kids will moderate their demands on the Bank of Dad as they understand the family's financial parameters.

Rule #4: Don't have a secret financial life with unaccountable amounts of money to spend. No man would become a secret gambler or be tempted to have a mistress on the side if his personal finances were totally transparent. Not doing that can lead to divorce—which is always a financial catastrophe, as I will discuss later. Secret money that is available to finance secret vices can permanently crumble the character of a good man, and cover-up lies can become a reflexive way of life, turning a good man into a chronic liar.

Rule #5: Put aside at least 10 percent of what you make every month to earn compound interest (more about this in Chapter 3). This can be used for debt reduction, investments, bulk buying, entrepreneurial ventures, and bargain hunting, and it's the beginning of your retirement program. It's also a huge deterrent to irresponsible spending.

If you save at least 10 percent of what you make every month to build up a real nest egg, you will have found the antidote to greed and covetousness and the key to financial discipline. All of the Safely Prosperous people in your neighborhood (and there are probably several of them) have built up small or large fortunes by consistent savings over the years. The average American family earns about $3,000 a month, and $300 a month invested prudently can become a huge sum in 10, 20, or 30 years (how much is explored in Chapters 3 and 4).

Rule #6: If you must bring work home from the office, make it a rare exception, or save it until the kids are in bed. Making more money is not an acceptable excuse, and if you consistently spend family time working at home, your wife and kids will get the clear message that you care more about your work than you do about them—and they will be right.

Rule #7: Tithe to someone who can bless others. One evening we were having our regular family prayers, and one of our sons was leading us. Like a lot of kids, he had some ritualized catch phrases that are the easy substitute for genuine spiritual thought. With no real thought, He asked god to “bless the poor, the sick, and the afflicted,” and I had an epiphany: “Why are we giving back to God the job he gave us?” From that time on, our prayers became, “God, lead us to those whose lives we can bless as thy servants.” Giving away money may be the most important and effective way to eliminate greed and keep things in perspective, as well as to gain the genuine satisfaction and great self-image that comes from knowing that you have made a difference in the world. Do this off the top, or it won't get done. We tithe to our church; you can do it to any worthy cause. A tithe is a tenth, and is the cure for greed and selfishness. If you give away one-tenth of your paycheck every month, it will condition you to not love your money. Consider your income and assets, current and future, as a stewardship to bless others' lives rather than an entitlement.

There is a real payoff for this. When the Old Testament prophet Malachi promised us that if we will no longer “rob God” by not paying our “tithes and offerings,” God will “open the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing so great you can hardly receive it,” he may have been talking about things that are more important than money. When your finances or your life are all messed up, you need all the help you can get—even divine help.

With the resulting stash, you can take advantage of bulk buying to save money. You can pay cash for a car or refrigerator, or you can pay the bills if you are sick or laid off. You can provide the seed money for that dream of a business you had. You can also swing for the fences on that great day in the future when the markets offer irresistible values with a terrific risk/reward ratio of at least 1 to10, as discussed in Chapter 16.

Rule #8: Be generous. This is the ultimate inoculation against the love-of-money disease. Never miss an opportunity to help someone in need. Who might that be? They are all around you. Be a soft touch, without thought of reward or even repayment (over and above your 10 percent tithe). My great-grandpa Mayberry learned the Law of Compensating Returns: You can't give it away faster than God blesses you with it. I really believe this works in the real world.

There is no happiness like that found in giving service or other help to someone. The recipient may not even appreciate it. There is an old half-true statement that says, “No good deed goes unpunished,” but it doesn't matter: You know, and God knows, and peace of mind and serene nights of sound sleep are the result.

GET THEE BEHIND ME, GREENBACK

The Bible has some wise insights into the corrupting effects of money, such as, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Those who put money ahead of family, wholesome family recreation, church, charitable works, and so on, usually live blighted lives. It has been driven home to me over and over that most very prosperous or rich people who got their money by single-minded dedication to making money at the expense of other much more important things are terribly unhappy. They are either divorced—sometimes several times—or have desperately unhappy marriages. They are usually estranged from their children and have become easy prey for gold-diggers less than half their age. What they have gained is dwarfed by what they have lost.

RULES FOR MARRIED WOMEN

Now, let's talk to married women.

You are the principal steward for your children, and you are your husband's conscience in keeping emotional and spiritual balance for your family. The following rules apply no matter how much or little your husband brings home.

Rule #1: If there are minor children, make sure one of you is a stay-at-home parent during the preschool bonding years, and I don't care which one—although in the early years, I think mothers are usually a lot better at it. I am not hostile toward working or professional women; I was raised by one. If you need a career, that's OK with me, but if you do, just don't leave your children with minimum-wage day care workers. If there is a great tug of war between making money and having a parent in the home, one of them will lose, although the damage to your children may not show up for years. They may seem to be coping just fine, but the latest research says that they are paying a silent price. Once you have a child, you are no longer a completely free agent. If one of you is not there during the day, you will miss out forever on all the important events of a child's life—the first crawl, the first step, and the first words. They will instead be witnessed by some emotionally uninvolved worker—if he or she is even watching. All those great teaching moments will be lost forever. Accept a smaller home; an older car; a smaller, older TV in exchange for a precious bonding experience. That's worth all the money, personal professional fulfillment, and prestige toys in the world. Some parents have worked it out by having staggered working schedules so one is always home when it matters. The rule is simple: kids come before all other supposed treasures.

Rule #2: Be the custodian and enforcer for the family savings account. Your husband is likely an overgrown kid on the loose all day. If he has unaccounted-for money burning a hole in his pocket, he'll spend it. You must save it and keep it out of his juvenile reach. Get him to agree on a small, fixed allowance he can spend as he chooses and not have to account for, and claim the same for yourself.

Rule #3: Train yourself to be a widow or divorcee. The odds are that you will not have a husband all your life. Statistics show that you will probably be alone for 5 to 10 years, and your adult kids will have to be a part of your financial life. If they have been taught well, they will be there for you when you need them. You have no idea how many new widows or divorcees call our consulting center begging for advice because their husbands had kept them in the dark about the family assets and income. You need to know the location of the insurance policies and the phone number of your agent as well as the location of the stock certificates, CDs, checkbooks, mortgage and payment books, and so on.

Rule #4: Don't let your husband become a workaholic. Insist on a weekly date to some inexpensive restaurant, movie, stage show, or sporting event. Gently but relentlessly suggest (demand?) that he preside over a weekly family night and/or family council and attend all the kids' special events and games and recitals, creating everlasting bonds that will become more and more precious as your lives wind down. Don't let him neglect his familial duties. Some day he'll thank you for it.

Rule #5: Stay out of the expensive social whirl. It will only lead to the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses syndrome, as it once did with us, and that will blow the family budget. It's just an ego thing, anyway. When Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” he must have meant the Joneses with their Mercedes, their boat, and their relentless, interest-laden credit-card bills.

RULES FOR THE UNMARRIED

Rule #1 through 10: Get married and stay married. A growing numbers of singles are postponing marriage until some undefined time in the future. Sometimes it's because they are getting lots of free sex without commitment in this increasingly permissive and sexualized world. Sometimes they are cohabiting with an undefined future—“We'll probably get married someday.”

Often they give financial excuses, such as, “We'd like to get married, but we need to wait until we can afford children,” or, “but we want to wait until we can afford a real nice home.” They don't realize it, but they are sliding into a hell on earth on their buts.

Numerous studies have confirmed that married people are ultimately healthier, happier, and richer than singles. They are more emotionally stable, have more savings and investments, and make better employees and more successful entrepreneurs. Postponing marriage and childbearing does not seem to help people be more financially successful, perhaps because nothing concentrates the mind like having hungry mouths to feed and the emotional security of loving, being loved, and being committed to a joint future.

DIVORCE: THE FORTUNE WRECKER

Nothing is more devastating to your finances than a divorce; it's always a train wreck. It is an intolerable burden to the divorced husband, and there is rarely enough money to support two households. Poverty-stricken divorced women are almost a cliché, and many men don't make enough money to pay the court-ordered alimony and child support and also support a new marriage and family as they try to rebuild their ruined lives. They are society's most unsympathetic villains if they get behind. The chances for either party to ever have a financially sound future are small indeed.

I'll say it again: Get married and stay married, or be prepared to suffer from the terrible financial penalties that go along with a divorce.