One of the most recurring problems I hear people bring up is the refrain, “How can I invest when I just don’t have any money?” That’s when I ask, “Do you know the difference between having absolutely no money and not having the money to invest?” I can only remember one time working with a young couple that was totally strapped with huge imprudently acquired debt where absolutely no money applied and that was resolved within two years with good spending control and some additional part time income.

Obviously you need an emergency cash fund that will cover 3-12 months of income, but even that is an investment. Sometimes it helps to grow up poor. “How did you get started?” Really I guess you could say investing started with a simple bank account for me and doing odd jobs. My first real job was shining shoes in my Dad’s barbershop at age 12. To pay for college I wadded hip deep in maggots, dumping garbage, cutting grass and picking up dead animals for six summers. For the time I was relatively well compensated for that nasty work ($8 whole dollars an hour $48 an hour in 2025 dollars). I decided that being poor sucked. I looked at the people who worked with me in those summers and saw them blowing their paychecks on junk food and flash cars they couldn’t really afford. I opened my first brokerage account on my 18^th birthday. When it’s 95 degrees and you have to shake the maggots off your pants before getting into your car at the end of the day and your co-workers think the word “f***” as every part of speech, it’s really great to know that you have these little green employees of yours working for you 24/7/365. That’s when I started realizing that money represented choices. If you have enough money you don’t have to stay in that toxic job. When the boss says,“I don’t like your attitude! I’ll fire you if you don’t change it!” You can say, “Hey man, you gotta do you. Me? I was looking for a job when I took this one.” Priorities create better choices. Money is conserved time, that you can turn into choices, but only if you have clear priorities to begin with.

Even as I was building wealth in a brokerage account I was looking for ways to add to it. All of us in the summers had to pick up trash at work. That included refundable pop bottles. Four guys picking up bottles for 3-4 months easily pocketed you $25 (In 2025 that’s about $150.). Once a week we had to go to the city dump where you could find cash, jewelry, knives, watches. (Found an Omega watch that fetched $300 ($1820 in 2025 dollars). From all this I graduated to buying old cars, cleaning them up and flipping them. I went to estate sales and bought items and sold them easily at flea markets for at least 3 times what I paid for them. I’ve bought and sold everything from yaks to yachts. Someone admired my watch the other day, to which I responded, “Want to buy it?” That attitude helps you keep a perspective. It’s all stuff. You’re just passing through. If the price is right even my house is for sale.

Now this litany of how I bootstrapped myself into the edge of wealth, isn’t made to send you off scrounging through the city dump or meandering around estate sales looking for lost Picassos. The point is clear priorities can help you “find” money which can multiply your choices. The example I’ve used with many people who have told me, “I just don’t have the money” is to ask them, “How would you like to own real estate that would pay you a monthly income?” By this time I’ve got an idea of their spending habits. The one I like to hone in on is the daily Starbuck’s addiction. They’re spending $8-10 a day for overpriced coffee. At $8-10 for 50 weeks that’s $2800-$3500 a year. Then I tell them about REITs—Real estate investment trusts. (But it could be just about any investment…But real estate has a tangible appeal to people.) They could be proportional owners in a broad range of real estate, all without the hassles of playing landlord. You can even pick a REIT that pays you dividends monthly. Then I ask them this, “Would you rather own real estate that pays you a monthly income or would you rather literally piss away $2800-$3500 a year?” Habits. Priorities.Choices.

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I have an Uncle that took this advice. He stopped smoking and pocketed the money he was spending on cigarettes. He went on a nice hunting trip with me using some of the money he saved. My investments easily bought me a nice new hunting rifle. I have a neighbor who likes to cut grass. (Yeah, I’d rather perform a self-appendectomy with a grapefruit knife.) It’s his way of getting exercise. Neighbors pay him a miserly sum which he’d blow on ordering food. Then I put it to him as “potty or property?” because his money was going down the same hole but in a different form. Now his hobby and exercise is paying him, which makes him like it all the more.

I know that from working with people using shinjitsu that if you want to get rid of a bad habit, you have to replace it with another habit. Your mind hates a vacuum. If you don’t fill it, you’ll go back to the old habit. You already have a habit, why not make it do some work for you? Why not turn a habit into something that pays you instead of costing you? Turning a habit into investing is a great way to use the habit. It makes your investing habitual and predictable which is helpful, because markets don’t have either of those qualities. Habits. Priorities.Choices.