Introduction

If you are going to take my advice, you have every right to know what kind of a guy I am, so a little bit of history is appropriate. If my life bores you, you can cut right to the chase and go directly to Chapter 1.

Let's start with some of the fun stuff. My life has been so full and unusual that I cannot resist reprinting here something I wrote for fun a few years ago, right after a neighborhood barbecue when we played a game where we had to recount things we had done that we thought nobody else there had done. That fun trip down Memory Lane started my memory running wild. Enjoy!

• I traded one spool of 8-pound-test monofilament fishing line to a chief of a village in the Amazon jungle in return for two monkey-skull necklaces, a blow gun and darts, a bow and arrows, and an anaconda snake skin. After consulting with my wife, Kay, I respectfully declined the chief's offer of a night with one of his four wives in return for a second spool.
• I've walked through the dramatic story of the death of Rasputin, the Mad Monk, right on the actual murder scene in a restored palace in Leningrad.
• I've interviewed (with Jack Anderson) newly elected President Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia in Prague Palace while he was wearing Nike shoes and a UCLA Bruins sweatshirt. He had been a political prisoner until the Iron Curtain went down.
• I've visited the Forbidden City and the Great Wall in China, Machu Pichu, the Imperial Palace in Bangkok, and wild game preserves in Kenya and South Africa and have snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef and watched great sea turtles lay their eggs and their baby turtles hatch.
• Oliver North, my Washington staff, and I persuaded Ronald Reagan to send Stinger missiles to the Afghan Freedom Fighters, which bogged down the Soviet army in Afghanistan for six years, which led to Soviet bankruptcy, which led to Gorbachev withdrawing Russian financial and military support from Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which led to a breakout of freedom, which led to the crash of the Iron Curtain.
• I have sung solos with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony, and on the Ed Sullivan Show. I also performed in, conducted, or directed hundreds of performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operas; became deeply involved with the Utah Lyric Opera society as a performer, director, and general manager; and was a church choir director at age 16.
• I had my own national TV talk show and daily two-minute radio commentary in more than 300 markets.
• I was called a liar in an angry speech on the floor of Congress by Congressman Steve Neal of South Carolina, and was denounced by Pravda, Tass, and Soviet-controlled Radio Kabul as a “radical reactionary.”
• I once refused a phone call from an angry President Ronald Reagan. He swore at me, and then sent me an unsolicited, personally autographed portrait as a peace offering.
• A ruffled Jimmy Carter succeeded in knocking 50 stations off my radio syndicate by threatening them with trouble at license renewal time if they didn't cancel my show.
• I married a celestial woman, Kay. We've been through thick and thin (I used to be thin) for 49 years, probably because we have one thing in common: We're both in love with the same man!
• We have given birth to nine children, adopted four teenagers, and helped raise 18 foster children—and endured the accidental death of one child.
• I broke up an orphanage run by American pedophiles in Bangkok, which resulted in jailing them and caused an international incident between ABC, me, and the Thai government. I set up my own orphanage to take care of the children in Bangkok.
• I was on Donahue, Good Morning America, Today, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, Oprah, Regis and Kathy Lee, Crossfire, PBS Late Night, Nightline, Charlie Rose, The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Wall Street Week, and hundreds of local radio and TV talk shows, many of them multiple times.
• My 1977 book topped the best-seller lists for two years and was the largest-selling financial book in history—3 million copies!
• I have had dinner with Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang; the Secretary to the King of Denmark; and President Synghman Rhee, the father of modern Korea.
• I sang The Star Spangled Banner at the White House numerous times as a soloist for the Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants.
• I sold 100,000 copies of an album, Howard Ruff Sings, with the Osmond brothers and the BYU Philharmonic and A Cappella Choir as my backup groups.
• I caught a piranha in the Amazon and ate it (poetic justice?).
• I've owned nine airplanes, and have logged 3,500 hours as “pilot in command.”
• I was forced into bankruptcy in 1968 by a newspaper strike, and then paid off $500,000 (plus interest) in debts from which I had been legally discharged. It took me 12 years.
• Evelyn Wood personally taught me to read 3,000 words per minute, and I then developed the marketing and advertising which made her famous.
• I cruised the Mediterranean with Art Linkletter.
• I took over Madame Tussaud's Wax Works in London one night for a private party for my subscribers, and Kay and I flew to Ireland just to spend a weekend in a castle with Elizabeth Taylor. Unfortunately, Taylor didn't show, so we spent a weekend in a castle in Ireland without Elizabeth Taylor.

Whenever I think I've accomplished a lot, I just remind myself that when Mozart was my age—he'd been dead for 38 years.

Now let's get serious.

HOW I LEARNED WHAT NOT TO DO

I was born with a wooden spoon in my mouth. My mother was widowed when I was only six months old (there's an important lesson for you in this full story in Chapters 2 and 12). We were poor, but I didn't know it, because in the depths of the Great Depression everybody else was poor too. We were actually too poor to afford a father. My Mom took in sewing to feed me and my older brother, Jim. By the time I was nine years old, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. A writer? A financial advisor? A prophet of doom? None of the above! I was a really good boy soprano, and I knew I wanted to be a singer on Broadway or at the Met some day.

When I was a pre-adolescent during World War II, we lived in Reno, Nevada, and I became a member of the Victory Boys, a group of boy sopranos. We gave patriotic programs all over the state of Nevada. That's when I found what I loved the most in the whole world—applause!

When I was 13, we moved back to Oakland where my voice changed abruptly from soprano to baritone, so at age 16, I joined a San Francisco musical-theatre company and also sang in San Francisco's famous opera clubs for $10 a night and tips. We would sing operatic arias and duets by request from 9:00 P.M to 2:00 A.M. It was really just a smoke-filled bar, but I was doing what I loved to do.

When I was 18, my voice teacher told me she had arranged for a full-ride scholarship to the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. Curtis was considered on a par with Julliard, and could be a very important step on my road to the Met. But when I told my mom, she threw a big monkey wrench into the works: “But you are supposed to go on a mission!” It was expected that young men from practicing Mormon families would volunteer to leave home for two years and teach the gospel to potential converts. I didn't want to go because I knew that my Curtis scholarship would be toast.

After a period of intense spiritual inquiry, I finally made the hard decision that, unbeknownst to me, would change the whole direction of my personal and professional life. I decided that if I served the Lord, He would take care of me, so with blind faith, I launched out into the dark and decided on the mission. They sent me to the heathens in Washington, DC, and not only did it jump-start my lifelong interest in government, economics, and politics, it was where I first heard the Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants in a Sunday night concert on the Capitol steps, which would change my life forever. I was also befriended by the two senators from Utah, Arthur Watkins and Wallace Bennett (the father of Utah's present senator), and J. Willard Marriott Senior of hotel fame. We had had long discussions about life, business, and the issues of the day, and I began forming my economic, business, and political opinions. I attended the Missionary School of Hard Knocks—on thousands of doors—and learned one of the great lessons of life that every salesman and marketer must learn: how to live with rejection and failure and keep bouncing back day after day. It was a tough but immensely satisfying and character-building experience, and I was sorry when the mission was over.

After my mission, I went to BYU to continue my musical education. When I ran out of money after my junior year, I went back to San Francisco, where my mother now lived, to make some money so I could go back to school, singing in the opera clubs by night and selling Chryslers by day. Then, unexpectedly, I was reclassified 1-A in the draft and ordered to report for induction into the army. I remembered the Air Force Singing Sergeants, called the Pentagon to get their phone number in Washington, DC, and was given the number of Col. George S. Howard, Chief of Bands and Music for the Air Force, so I called him. He told me he had an opening coming up for a new baritone soloist, but wouldn't be in California for six months, so I told him, “I'll audition in Washington next Wednesday.”

I borrowed $150 from my big brother, flew to Washington, auditioned, got the job with a letter to prove it, and enlisted in the Air Force. After only three weeks of basic training, I was ordered to report to Washington to go with the Air Force Symphony on a tour of Iceland and Scandinavia as soloist and announcer, so I called the lovely Kay Felt in San Francisco and rather arrogantly informed her we would be married in Salt Lake City on the way to Washington the following Monday.

Fortunately, she couldn't think of any good reason why not, so we were married on schedule, and Kay Felt became Kay Felt Ruff (when she realized what her name would be, it almost killed the marriage). She has been the spiritual and nurturing center of my life and family, and our numerous kids (twelve living, including four adopted as teenagers) and grandkids (63 at last count). All adore her—and so do I.

I traveled all over the world with the band, meeting and in some cases having dinner with such historical figures as Chiang Kai-Shek, Synghman Rhee (the founder of modern South Korea), and assorted prime ministers and royalty on three continents and 20 countries We also toured in 48 states. I was having an amazing educational experience, while Kay was at home having babies.

But I wasn't really an absentee father. Being a Singing Sergeant was a government job, so when we weren't on tour (we were only gone about 15 weeks out of the year), we only had to report for two hours a day for rehearsals. So I got a job as a stockbroker, continuing my economic and financial education, and spent a lot of time at home, helping Kay with the kids and learning to love fatherhood.

When my four-year hitch was up, we moved to Denver to work for my broker/employer, stumbled across Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, bought the Denver franchise and then the Bay Area franchise, and launched my business career, teaching the world to read faster and more efficiently. I learned I had valuable gifts as a marketer, writer, and public speaker, but I was also laying the foundation for my first big learning experience—a business failure!

We had had eight glorious years, with more than 10,000 students in the San Francisco Bay area. I wrote the ads and designed the marketing for all the nationwide franchises, and became the protégé of Evelyn Wood, who taught me how to read over 3,000 words per minute, a life-changing skill that has served me well ever since. We taught law students at the University of California and Stanford, high school and junior high students, and businessmen how to read more rapidly and efficiently and both enjoy and absorb more from their reading. And as the money was rolling in, we spent it. We gave money to the Oakland Symphony, and I bought Kay a $1,000 designer dress so that when we had our picture at post-concert receptions on the society page, she would look great. In the meantime, our family was continuing to grow, and Kay bore more much-loved and much-wanted children.

However, I was making the biggest mistake of my life to that date, one that is the genesis of Chapter 3 (although bigger mistakes would come later). Because I thought the gravy train would last forever, we didn't bother to accumulate any savings or cash reserves. We had good credit and used it. We spent our money as if there was no tomorrow—or, to be more accurate, I did. Kay expressed her concerns, which I discounted because I thought I knew better.

Then disaster struck. I had planned an eight-page advertising supplement to go into all of the Bay Area newspapers one Sunday. On Friday night a wildcat strike hit all the Bay Area papers, and the Sunday paper was never published. I had spent $25,000 printing that supplement, which at the time seemed like all the money in the world, and we couldn't just keep them and use them at a later time because they were all geared toward specific demonstration meetings on specific dates at specific places all over the Bay Area.

I was in deep trouble. I didn't have any cash reserves, accounts payable began to pile up, we were up to our ears in hock and personal debt, and I was in arrears with my royalties. Finally the parent company, seeing an opportunity to grab off the business and resell it to someone else, abruptly canceled my franchise and notified the sheriff. My doors were locked and I was out of business. I went to work rich one day and came home broke, which ruined my whole day.

This forced me into bankruptcy, but Kay and I, prompted by some ethical counseling by local church leaders, decided that even though we had filed for bankruptcy, legally discharging half a million dollars in debt, we would not be right with our creditors and the Lord if we didn't some day pay it off. So I made perhaps the most important decision of my life; I would eventually pay off those debts, which meant I couldn't just get a J.O.B.—I had to become rich again. That all happened in October 1968, and we had already been hit by a tragedy the previous June when our toddler, Ivan, drowned in our swimming pool. This was a devastating year, but I now know that sometimes the healing and correcting spirit of God can only enter us through our gaping wounds, and this spiritual process had begun at Ivan's death when we had to decide what we really believed, so we were ready to make the spiritual, financial, and emotional commitment to pay off half a million dollars in debt. It took us 12 years to pay for that dead horse, but we did it! This lesson from 35 years ago has had a profound impact on this book, especially the second half, as it illustrates two of its most important principles, including the principle that the first step in getting rich is simply to decide to do it, which is what I did.

In the meantime, we had taken in a teenaged foster son in the neighborhood who had become estranged from his family, and the word got around, so over the following years we were offered more than 18 children, mostly teenagers, who we took in for varying lengths of time. We eventually adopted four of them.

I began my business comeback as a distributor in the multilevel sales organization for a major manufacturer of food supplements, The Neo Life Company, which is still in existence today and is one of the honorable survivors of the multilevel marketing business. I quickly became its largest distributor and won all of the company awards for performance, and began a lifelong obsession with keeping up with the research and development of nutritional supplements.

About this time, I began to worry about what I saw as a coming train wreck for the economy. When I was in an airport, I saw a book whose title intrigued me: How to Prepare for the Coming Crash by Robert Preston. Thinking it was a way to stay safe if the airplane went down, I bought it to read on the plane, but that wasn't the crash it was talking about. Preston advocated investing in silver and gold as a hedge against an inflation-induced economic crash, and for the first time my stock-market-oriented brain began to turn in that direction. I began to study the fundamentals of Austrian economics and the inflation that would lead to economic troubles and a resurgence of gold, and began to worry about what I believed the government was doing to the economy with its inflationary policies.

I also became convinced that there was a real possibility of a deep recession that could possibly turn into a depression, characterized by high inflation and unemployment, so I became a vocal advocate of an emergency food-storage program as a kind of family insurance program. After all, we had once lived on our stored food when the bottom had dropped out of our financial lives in 1968. This traditional Mormon practice grew not so much out of the church's theology as out of its nineteenth-century pioneer self-sufficiency culture. It was not an apocalyptic practice, but a very practical one, designed for just the kind of circumstances we had to face. This very prudent, risk-free piece of financial advice planted the roots of what would some day be the cause of my near-universal bad press.

I wrote my first book, a very bad self-published book called Famine and Survival in America, not realizing how powerful words could be. Rather than a carefully reasoned discussion of why you ought to have a food storage program as a conservative, prudent precaution against hard times for your family, it sounded more like a scream in the night. But to my amazement, as I began to do radio and TV shows to promote this self-published book, it caught on because people were scared of what was happening in the world around them as inflation was soaring.

In the book I promised to send a monthly update on the markets to book buyers, so I soon was sending out 5,000 monthly updates and going broke doing it. So I sold off my supplement distributorship to finance a for-pay newsletter, which I called The Ruff Times to a chorus of sardonic jeers. But my gut told me that name was right for our times, so I launched The Ruff Times newsletter in June 1975, forecasting rising inflation, a falling stock market, and rising gold and silver prices. Was I ever right! At the time, gold was only $120 an ounce and silver was under $2, and they had not yet begun the spectacular bull market that would take them to $850 and $50 per ounce, respectively.

As precious metals and The Ruff Times took off, I decided I needed to write a manual for new subscribers because you couldn't reinvent the wheel every time you went to press. With no intention of publishing it as anything but a manual, I wrote How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years. A member of my board of directors knew many New York publishers, so he persuaded me to go there to meet several of them, and four of them wanted to publish the book. I chose Times Books, a division of The New York Times, of all things, of which Tom Lipscomb was president. Tom was a brilliant publisher and marketer who believed passionately in me and the book and shared my philosophy, and he and I made publishing history together, selling 3 million copies!

By this time I had a syndicated TV talk show called Ruffhou$e, interviewing a lot of interesting guests. One day I got a call from a radio syndicator who had been distributing Ronald Reagan's daily radio commentary. When Reagan decided to run for president, he gave up his radio show. I was asked to fill that slot because I was getting a lot of notoriety as the book hit the bestseller list and my TV show was gathering millions of viewers. So I created a two-minute daily radio commentary, which eventually was on some 300 stations, and The Ruff Times was on its way to the stratosphere—or so I thought!

As a public service to benefit from my high profile and high levels of trust from my like-minded subscribers, I founded Ruff-PAC, a political action committee, and Free the Eagle, a registered lobby in Washington, DC, and began to fight for free-market issues and free-market-oriented candidates for public office. We were successful in some pretty important things, such as persuading President Reagan to get stinger missiles to the Afghan rebels. This forced the Soviets to fly so high they couldn't devastate the villages that were harboring the mujahadin, and stalemated the war. The body bags kept going home and the Soviet Union was on the verge of bankruptcy trying to support its functional equivalent of our Viet Nam. Eventually Gorbachev withdrew from Afghanistan; pulled back the Soviet Army from the Iron Curtain satellite countries; and stopped financial support of Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and communist insurgent groups in Africa; and the Iron Curtain began to crumble. I honestly believe we had something to do with starting that whole process.

In any event, The Ruff Times had become a publishing phenomenon. How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years was #1 or #2 on the hard-cover best-seller list for months, and when the paperback came out a year later, it not only stayed at or near the top of the hardcover list, but was also #1 on the paperback list. It stayed high on both lists for two years.

Early on, the Prophet (sometimes spelled Profit by the media) of Doom title began to plague me. It seems that the hard-core survivalists were getting a lot of media attention. These extremists shared some of my economic views, but they believed that society would collapse completely, so they were building impregnable retreats in the mountains and buying lots of guns and storing food and hunkering down, waiting for the end. I had a chapter in How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years about the advisability of a food storage program as a no-risk, prudent hedge against personal or public financial difficulties. There it was: guilt by association!

The simple-minded media saw me as a hook for critical stories about hard-core survivalists, and the Prophet of Doom title was forever attached to me, despite my protests. Heck, the How to Prosper in the title, which is not exactly an end-of-the-world idea, should have been a clue to them that they were wrong.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Then, at the very peak of my notoriety and popularity, I made the most stupid and costly business mistake of my career, which I describe in detail in Chapter 14. I also continued to publish The Ruff Times, but to save money, I later decided to take it to the Internet. Another big mistake!

MY BIGGEST PROFESSIONAL FLOP

I believed that the Y2K crisis was deadly serious and could have devastating effects on the economy, said so in my newsletter, and even wrote a book on the subject. I was dead right about the seriousness of the problem, but for the only time in my life, I underestimated the willingness and the ability of government and industry to solve the problem in time to beat the deadline of January 1, 2000. Miraculously, they did fix it in time, due to the efforts of Senator Bob Bennett of Utah and others. On New Year's Day, 2000, when the dire consequences failed to materialize, I had egg all over my face. That book became my first big publishing flop. It wasn't that I had not analyzed the problem properly; it was that I didn't believe that they would have the will and the smarts to fix it in time. I was wrong big time!

MY BIGGEST TRIUMPHS

But it has not been all bad. There were many triumphs, but two that stand out.

Way back in 1975, when I started publishing The Ruff Times, I foresaw the coming inflation that plagued us for the next seven years, analyzed correctly that it would cause a big boom in gold and silver, and recommended gold when it was only $120 an ounce and silver when it was under $2. Gold subsequently went to $850 and silver to $50 per ounce for a few days, and I published a sell order when gold was $750 and silver at $35. This angered and offended my subscriber base, who were mostly Gold Bugs, and they began deserting me as an apostate from the true religion of the Golden Calf. For many years since then, gold has stayed around $300 and silver under $5 per ounce (more about this in Chapter 9), and I was bearish on the metals until 2004.

I turned bullish on the stock market in 1983, mostly because of Ronald Reagan. I stayed bullish for several years, and did very well for my subscribers, but I started telling people to get out of the stock market about six months before it peaked in March 2000 and called the market an “unsustainable mania and a bubble.” This was right on the money, as March 2000 was the peak of the greatest bull market in history and the beginning of the greatest bear market in history. I've been on the right side of that market ever since, keeping people out of it and instead recommending 30-year T-bonds and 10-year T-notes, where there were big profits in 2000 to 2003. This has saved my readers untold millions of dollars.

In 1983 I was at the top of my popularity; my book was number one on the best-seller lists in both hard cover and paperback and on its way to becoming the biggest financial best seller of all time. My syndicated TV show, Ruffhou$e, was showing in 350 markets, and my two-minute daily radio commentary was on 300 stations. My newsletter, The Ruff Times, had more than 175,000 subscribers. I thought I was a marketing genius, as all the direct mail pieces I wrote worked. My Washington lobby, Free the Eagle, and RuffPAC, my political action committee, were real powers in Washington. I had access to President Reagan and to any senator or congressman I wanted to talk to. I was famous, I was rich, and the world was my oyster. But just as for the high-tech investors in March of 2000 who thought they were great stock pickers, it would in retrospect be the high-water mark of my professional and business life; it would be all downhill business-wise from there. Little did I realize that I wasn't the marketing genius I thought I was. I was just a very lucky guy with the right message at the right time, and if conditions changed much, I wouldn't be so smart. And conditions changed!

Ironically, even though I had campaigned vigorously for him and had warm personal relations with him, the election of Ronald Reagan was the beginning of a long downhill slide for me. I had made my mark in the world by telling people how to prosper during the scary Jimmy Carter–induced inflation of the 1970s. Ronald Reagan was my friend and Jimmy Carter was my foil. Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker's successful assault on the runaway inflation and interest rates of the late 1970s made people less convinced we were facing some coming bad years, and rightly so, so my old message was less compelling. As I changed with the times and became appropriately bullish on America, the optimistic new message was less interesting than the scary old one, and media publicity was harder to come by.

During that years-long downhill slide I made a series of stupid mistakes that taught me most of what I know today, and laid the foundation for this safely-prosper or get-rich-surely book. I had learned how to make a fortune and had done it twice, once in good times and once in bad times. Then I had learned how to lose a fortune, and had done that twice, also in good times and bad.

In retrospect, as I became a celebrity, my financial success and notoriety infected me with a bad case of hubris—the Greek word for the arrogant pride of the gods. I unconsciously believed that I was so smart I could violate my own published rules with impunity and avoid the problems that would trip up lesser mortals, and my success wasn't teaching me a thing. Too often my operative principle was “Do as I say, not as I do.” Unfortunately, I was wrong—really wrong—which has cost me millions. Also, much of what I thought I knew that eventually turned out to be wrong came out of my successes.

One reason I felt driven to write this sometimes-embarrassing treatise is that I don't want my posterity to repeat all the foolish mistakes I will tell you about; my successes are nowhere near as instructive and helpful. If I can't pass on what I learned about the things that no longer work—or didn't work in the first place—some of my most valuable experiences will be wasted, and making the mistakes I made will prevent people from becoming Safely Prosperous or Really Rich. I also want the cathartic benefit of publicly facing reality about myself and cramming a little humility down my unwilling throat. It will be too late when I am trying to explain my arrogant pride to God.

OLD FOGY WISDOM

This book could only be written by someone of my ripe years (sometimes I wish I was 72 again). I've been observing the world of money through three serious recessions, three major bull and bear markets (including the late, lamented dot-com bubble of 1996 to 2000), the insane inflation of the 1970s, a real-estate boom and bust, a historic gold bull market and subsequent collapse, 13 children (4 were adopted—we couldn't find homes for the other 9), 18 foster children, and 64 grandchildren. I've made and lost two fortunes by making most of the stupid mistakes I describe here, and have been written off by Wall Street as a fringe character at times. But for a few glory years, I couldn't walk down any sidewalk in the Wall Street financial district without being recognized. For the last decade, I've been laying low, laboring away in relative obscurity just publishing my newsletter on the Internet and germinating this book.

In short, in a financial world that has been dominated by twenty- and thirty-something kids who weren't even stockbrokers during the last bear market in 1987, I'm one of a small clique of real adults—newsletter writers, financial publishers, analysts, and advisors—who are old enough to have been around since the 1960s and 1970s, through good times and bad. For the most part, Wall Street people have not respected us, but that's OK because we don't have a lot of respect for many of them either, for reasons I will explain later.

I'm also old enough and emotionally secure enough to admit my bloopers. In fact, that's part of what inspired this book. Like an old trailblazer, I want to mark the trail's pitfalls as a warning to those who follow after me, especially my numerous posterity.

Remember the old bridge builder:

A REAL ADULT: I'VE BEEN THERE

I have been publishing The Ruff Times through 25 years of bull and bear markets, unlike most of the hot financial advisors and brokers during the late, lamented bull market, who are so young they weren't even brokers yet during the last bear market in 1987. They were the invincible optimists at the peak of the last bull market in the spring of 2000, when I was yelling at them to get out of the market. I think I am one of a handful of real adults in the Wall Street kindergarten with a long-range view of the world of money.

I can write to you about your concerns because there aren't many of you I can't identify with. No matter where you are in life, I've probably been there.

Do you have a growing family? We have parented a ton of kids. I understand your fears for their future in an increasingly dangerous and volatile world and know how hard it is to balance the search for wealth with the more important demands of family and church. I can relate.

Are you struggling with age and health problems? I've had cancer and a heart attack, although I'm in great health now for a man my age. I guess you couldn't kill me with an axe. I can relate.

Have you struggled to build a business, perhaps without success? I've started six. Three of them failed and three of them didn't. I can relate.

Do you have an extended family you love and worry about? So do I, in spades. There are 11 families in our posterity, and we have a real juggling act to stay close to them. I can relate.

Do you live in a big city? A small town? A rural area? I've lived in all of them, from the San Francisco Bay Area to a small Utah town with 2,000 souls. I can relate.

A single parent? My mother was one, so I grew up in a one-parent family. I can relate.

Are you retired and trying to get by on your Social Security and less than 1 percent interest on your savings? I'm 73 years old. I can relate.

Up to your ears in debt? Broke? Here I can really relate. When I was growing up, we were too poor to afford a father. I know what it's like to not have a car, or to be the last ones in our neighborhood to have an old black-and-white TV, and to live in second-or third-floor walk-ups. I've also lost two fortunes, one of them after we had just gone through the shock and pain of our toddler, Ivan, drowning in our pool.

I know what it's like to be a newly minted bankrupt standing in the ruins of a collapsed business.

I've been a small investor and a big investor. I've won big and lost big in business and the markets. I've been depressed and euphoric. I've loaned and borrowed. I've made every costly and stupid mistake there is. I've been there, and I can relate.

In short, I'm one of you. I'm not a twenty-something Wall Street hotshot in a $2,000 Brooks Brothers suit, detached from the realities you face every day, who thinks there is no real life west of the Hudson River. I'm just a regular family man who loves bass fishing; BYU football; the Utah Jazz; Star Trek, the Next Generation on TV; directing my church choir; singing in, directing, and conducting Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas with the local opera company; dinner with Kay at the Outback or the Red Lobster; teaching a Sunday School class; off-the-wall humor; and movies that don't make me wade through garbage.

Prosperity or real wealth is within the reach of anyone—I promise! If you will do the things I will describe here that the Really Rich or the Safely Prosperous do, prosperity or wealth is inevitable, and will come much faster than you might think! However, it's not easy, because they both require big changes in your mental paradigm, attitudes, and temperament.