• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Wealth Pilgrim

No Money Worries. No Matter What.

Neal Frankle featured in
  • Home
  • Life Insurance
  • Investing
    • Build Strong Investment Building Blocks To Avoid Going Broke In Retirement
    • Systematic Mutual Fund and ETF Investing
    • Stock Market Investing Guide
    • Choosing the Right Investment Brokerage Guide
    • How Bonds Work Guide
    • How Banks Really Work Guide
    • Annuities – What You Need To Know Before You Invest
    • A Beginners Guide To Buying Individual Stocks
    • Create A Pool Of Great Mutual Funds and ETFs To Pick From To Secure Your Retirement
    • ETF and Index Fund Investment Guide
  • Earn More
  • Banking
  • Retirement Planning
    • Retirement Guide
  • Reviews
    • Upgrade Personal Loans Review
    • Lending Club Review
    • Prosper Review
    • Ally Invest TradeKing Review
    • CIT Bank Review
    • LegalZoom Review
    • Lexington Law Review
    • Airbnb Host Review
    • Should You Drive For Uber?
  • Tax
  • Courses
    • Raise Your Credit Score So You Can Buy a House – Free Video Course

The Best Money Tip My Dad Gave Me

by Neal Frankle, CFP ®, The article represents the author's opinion. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more info.

I learned a lot about money, career and investments from my father. He worked hard and modeled a great work ethic. I never met a harder working person than my father. He was also a master of negotiation skills.

He also made some huge financial mistakes, and I learned quite a bit from that too. As a result of seeing him lose just about everything, I’m cautious. I have a tendency to see the risks before the benefits. It slows me down. Sure I’ve missed some opportunities. But thankfully, I haven’t suffered huge financial consequences either.

The Big Tip

The best money tip my father gave me was, strangely, nothing I saw him do but something he said to me often. He used to tell me not to worry about the results but to focus always on my efforts and doing my best.

His argument was that results are often beyond our control. But we have complete control over how hard we try. And a results-based life isn’t satisfying either. At least not for me. There will always be someone who has better results. There is always someone with less, too. If I build my life around results, my happiness will always be dependent on how I stack up against others.

But each of us knows how much we’ve got to give. If we stop because we’ve reached some artificial goal, we sell ourselves short. And if we set our goals artificially high, we’re bound to be unhappy.

In the financial services industry, we’re trained to be miserable – and to make our clients miserable too. Our trainers wanted us to always have super high lifestyle and income goals so we’d have to sell more of their (sometimes) lousy products. That led to a constant sense of dissatisfaction. And we were taught to make you, our clients, dissatisfied with your results so you’d buy more crappy annuities and high-load mutual funds from us. What a stinkball system. That’s why I left and became an independent advisor.

I believe that you should do your best. And if you do that, what more can you ask from yourself? I don’t believe you can really kid yourself either. You either do your best or you don’t. How does this translate into your financial situation?

I don’t care if you have the best job possible. I care if you’re doing everything you can to land that job.

I don’t care if you are in debt right now. But I wonder if you’re doing everything you can to get out of debt.

If you don’t have enough income, that doesn’t bother me. But what I want to know is if you’re doing everything you can to create a second income, get a part-time job or make the best investments to create income.

What about you? Are you more concerned about results or efforts? Why?

 

Tweet
Pin
Share3

Reader Interactions

User Generated Content (UGC) Disclosure: Please note that the opinions of the commenters are not necessarily the opinions of this site.

Comments

  1. Super Frugalette says

    July 9, 2011 at 8:15 PM

    From my experience in life…all you can control is the effort and you never know when all the effort you put in will pay off.

    Reply
  2. Bill says

    July 7, 2011 at 8:21 PM

    My dad gave this advise on my last day at home:
    1) Never lie to your doctor or your lawyer.
    2) Never (have sex) with a women you wouldn’t be willing to marry.

    I took both pieces of advice but added: “Work a job you love”, my dad loved his job as a biologist, I love my job as a computer programer.

    Reply
    • Neal says

      July 8, 2011 at 4:56 PM

      Sounds like your father is a smart fellow. And you were clever to heed his good advice. Nice work Pilgrim!

      Reply
  3. Eric J. Nisall says

    July 7, 2011 at 6:34 AM

    Personally, I think the two are forever tied together. You can be happy with the effort, but if the results are not as expected, then the effort may seem wasted to a certain degree. This is especially when it comes to finances.

    If people are working their butts off to get pay down debt but don’t see any progress, they get down and start to question whether the effort is worth it. If someone is always the first one in and the last one out yet never gets any compensatory recognition or promotions, they question whether the effort is worth it.

    Funny thing, too, because I just wrote about my own father’s advice to me. I guess it’s a lot better to get advice from a parent rather than find out the hard way on your own!

    Reply
    • Neal Frankle says

      July 7, 2011 at 11:31 AM

      You are right. My experience is that “best efforts” include making sure I am on track by having accountability in every important aspect of my life.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Are You Human? * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Primary Sidebar

Who is Neal Frankle

Neal Frankle

I'm a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional with more than 25 years of experience. I feel very blessed and hope to share my personal financial experience and professional wisdom with readers of WealthPilgrim.
Read More »

Stay Connected

Facebook Twitter YouTube RSS
We are on YouTube
Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement.  We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement. We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

YouTube Video UCoU0buhwVplzXrsyf342nOg

Retirement Crusaders

June 10, 2022 1:19 PM

Subscribe
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error 403: Requests from referer are blocked..

Domain code: global
Reason code: forbidden

More Categories

Career Development
College Funding
Credit Cards
Credit Score Fixes
Money and Marriage
Debt Relief
Estate Protection
Property Investment Loans
Small Business Strategies
Spend Less Money
Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement.  We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement. We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

YouTube Video UCoU0buhwVplzXrsyf342nOg

Retirement Crusaders

June 10, 2022 1:19 PM

Subscribe
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error 403: Requests from referer are blocked..

Domain code: global
Reason code: forbidden

Disclaimer

Wealth Pilgrim is not responsible for and does not endorse any advertising, products or resource available from advertisements on this website. Wealth Pilgrim receives compensation from Google for advertising space on this website, but does not control the advertising selection or content. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers. The information contained in WealthPilgrim.com is for general information or entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional financial advice. Please contact an independent financial professional for advice regarding your specific situation. Wealth Pilgrim does not provide investment advisory services and is not a registered investment adviser. Neal may provide advisory services through Wealth Resources Group, a registered investment adviser. Wealth Pilgrim and Wealth Resources Group are affiliated companies. In accordance with FTC guidelines, we state that we have a financial relationship with some of the companies mentioned in this website. This may include receiving payments,access to free products and services for product and service reviews and giveaways. Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. We do our best to maintain current information, but due to the rapidly changing environment, some information may have changed since it was published. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.


About · Contact · Disclaimer & Privacy policy

Copyright © Wealth Pilgrim 2023 All Rights Reserved