The document outlines 10 money rules to live by: 1) Set specific financial goals for the short and long-term. 2) Create a monthly budget to track income, spending, and savings. 3) Spend less than you earn by reducing expenses and/or increasing income. The remaining rules provide additional guidance around paying yourself first, automating savings, being frugal, balancing offense and defense financially, making saving easy and boring, starting to invest as early as possible, and continuing personal finance education.

1. Top Ten Money Rules To Live By

2. Rule 1 - Set Financial Goals
- Without knowing where you want to go, how
will you ever get there?
- Set goals for the 1 year, 5 year, and lifetime
marks
- Set specific goals

3. Rule 2 - Budget
- Everything we do with our money is
determined by our budget
- 30 minutes/month
- Three simple steps
- Record your income
- Decide how to spend it
- Track your spending vs. your plan
- Word doc, Mint, or You Need a Budget

4. Rule 3 - Spend Less Than You Earn
- Arguably the most important rule to financial
independence
- Two parts: Spend less and/or earn more

5. Rule 4 - Pay Yourself First
- Before you pay any other bills, put money
toward whatever step you are currently on:
- Debt reduction
- Emergency fund
- Retirement

6. Rule 5 - Make It Automatic
- Pay all of your bills automatically through your
checking account
- Make transfers to savings and retirement
automatically as well
- Simply set it and forget it

7. Rule 6 - Always Be Frugal
- Big difference between being frugal and being
cheap
- Frugal = Spending money on things you love
and not wasting money on things you don’t

8. Rule 7 - Offense vs. Defense
- Offense - High income
- Defense - Saving money, being frugal, etc,
- If you have both, great, you will accumulate
wealth easily
- If you have only a good offense, it will be very
hard to accumulate wealth (spend what you
make, keeping up with the neighbors)
- If you do not have a good offense, you can
still accumulate wealth by having a good
defense

9. Rule 8 - Saving/Investing Should Be
Easy and Boring
1) Max out 401(k) to get employer match
2) Roth IRA - Index funds/target date retirement
fund

10. Rue 9 - Yesterday Was The Best Day
To Invest, Today Is 2nd Best
- Investing $5000/year @ 8%
- 10 years = $78,227
- 20 years = $247,114
- 30 years = $611,729
- 40 years = $1,398,905

11. Rule 10 - Educate Yourself
- Books
- The Total Money Makeover
- The Millionaire Next Door
- Your Money or Your Life
- Blogs
- The Simple Dollar
- Get Rich Slowly
- PT Money