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TRUMP UNIVERSITY WEALTH BUILDING 101

The list goes on and on. You can undoubtedly add your own objections.
That’s why I prefer to talk about budgets in a different way. A budget
makes you work for your money. Instead, I talk about a “money system”
that makes your money work for you, which is essentially what we want our
budgets to accomplish.
For the average family to understand and more importantly use, a budget
has to be simple. Many families set up budgets to control their expenses, but
these budgets rarely work over the long term. Budgets also create a lot of
stress among family members. Sometimes, they destroy the family’s fi nances,

and often relationships, because of the fighting that erupts over money. That’s
the short history of budgets and, unfortunately, despite their good intentions,
for most families, budgets only bring failure.
Simply stated, a budget should be just a tool that helps you monitor,
achieve, and maintain your financial goals. A budget, or money system, should

serve you—not master you. The operative word here is “should.”

For many years, I disliked budgets so much I tried to find ways not to do
one. If I could find just one example of a successful company that didn’t

follow a budget, then I promised myself I wouldn’t, either.
Well, guess what? After several years, it became obvious to me that there
wasn’t one successful company or operation that didn’t have the fi nancial
controls in place to be successful.
Those were the cold hard facts, whether I liked them or not: To obtain

long-term financial freedom, I had to develop and implement a system for
managing my money, too. For me to follow a budget faithfully, and ultimately,
successfully, it had to be different. This new system had to be the mirror
opposite of the old system. It had to:

• Be easy and fun to follow.
• Not take up a lot of time.
• Provide freedom for fun consumption.
• Be simple and not require me to have to watch every penny all of the
time.
• Give immediate results.
• Have no more than a handful of steps (say, fi ve).
• Produce a chunk of money for investment that could eventually pro-

vide enough cash flow to live on for the rest of my life.
• Pay off all my consumer debt within a reasonable period of time.
• Allow me to donate money to my favorite charities.
• Provide true long-term fi nancial freedom.
• Be automatic and so easy I could forget about it after setting it up.

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