Celebrate 100: Centenarian Secrets to Success in Business and Life

Chapter 3

Money Wise and Time Tested

HOW THEY THINK WE ARE DOING

SIMPLE SAVING WISDOM: BATTLE OF NEEDS VERSUS WANTS

DEBT IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

TIME-LY ADVICE

INVESTING TODAY—AFTER A CENTURY OF PERSPECTIVE

DEFINING RICH

Over the past 100-plus years, America has experienced numerous economic cycles: hard times and good times, boom times and bust times, and uncertain times. These economic cycles are the inevitable and inescapable fabric everyone in our society wears, and those who live over a century wear it a lot.

Most of our centenarians have worn them well.

As our country entered the twentieth century along with the birth of our centenarians, our primarily agricultural society was laying the foundation for an industrial age explosion that would change our country and the entire world forever. World War I began to fuel manufacturing activity that proceeded into the “Roaring Twenties,” making for an ecstatic economic expansion in broad areas of our economy including the banking and investment sectors.

An “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die” mind-set swept over a lot of our society in the rocking and roaring 1920s as America energetically danced to the Charleston, applauded Wall Street’s bullish growth and toasted the country’s growing prominence and power in the world. People made fortunes in the stock market, dined generously, and dressed stylishly. In the countryside and cities, Americans were enjoying the postwar good life.

Then, like a rogue tsunami, the Great Depression ...