Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my blog. I know that it has been a while, but I am so glad that you came. Recently, I read a very interesting book called The 100 Year Lifestyle by Eric Plasker, a book that imagines what life will be like if you live to the fullest all the way to 100. This book talks about a lot of different areas of life, and some of the things that are necessary in order to live a good life for all of that time rather than just slogging through the last years.

Extra Planning to Do

While it is true that most people will not live to see the century mark, and as the book reminds us, the clock might very well run out on us long before that one hundredth birthday, it is very possible that some people will live to the age of 100. After all, it is estimated that there are over 50,000 centenarians in the United States today, and there are always more people who live to see the age of 100 every year. (I know that I worked a few years ago in a couple of retirement communities as part of an internship. The first one where I volunteered for the summer had two women who were over 100, and one who was 99 when I worked there, and the other retirement center had a woman who was 103 at the time and another who was either 104 or 105.)

What I thought was so interesting about the idea of living to 100 is the fact that almost everyone who made it to the age of 100 that did not think that it was going to happen. Some ended up living well and enjoyed life after 100, and others did not plan long enough, and lived a life of misery, illness, and loneliness. While the idea of living to the age of 100 seems far-fetched today, Plasker points out that living to the age of 80 was something that was very rare less than a century ago. While some projections (such as those who believe that there is no natural wearing out of the human body, so theoretically, our earthly bodies need never die) seem pretty far fetched, the simple fact is that the longer one lives, the more likely seeing 100 is. For example, while life expectancy at birth is 77 years old, someone who lives to the age of 65 has a life expectancy of 16 more years (for a total of 81), someone who is 80 has a life expectancy of 12 years (for a total 92), and someone who is 98 has a life expectancy of two more years (for a total of 100), meaning that everyone who gets to that age has a statistical chance of living to that age.

When someone does live a longer life, there are a lot of things that change our lifestyle if we think of the idea of living that much longer (for me, that would mean 68 more years). How well will you eat if you know that you are still around for decades to come? How well would you take care of your family and cultivate relationships if you know that you are going to live that much longer? How would you take care of your finances if you knew that you had that much longer to live? What kind of legacy would you try to build?

What if you keep living? This is a question that changes one’s approach to life. I have heard it said that knowing that life is short will mean that people will have an urgency for life and accomplishment that would not already exist. However, I think that it is important to remember both that we have a longer time than we thought, as well as a shorter time than we realize at times.

How will things change if you keep living?

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Hi, everyone. I hope this Good Friday was a very good day for you. For those of you who have been to my blog, you have followed my series based on the book The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth by Richard Paul Evans. So far, we have discussed the need to want it in order to get it, to take responsibility for money, to keep a portion of everything you earn, and the need to win in the margins in order to build our success. Now, we are looking at the one thing that ties everything together, and in some ways can be just as important (if not more so) than the other four: the need to give back.

What is Money For?

Unfortunately, this is where too many books and speakers who focus on building wealth stop. Instead of talking about what to do with money, they only talk about the importance of getting a lot of money. However, as Suze Orman reminds us, it is people first, not money first. If someone lives a life just focused on the self, that person will end up with a huge ego and an ideal that is based only on his/her financial statement, even exaggerating about actual wealth in order to try to feel superior to those around him/her. (Think a certain TV personality who is famous for firing people who shall not be named.)

However, if someone builds wealth with other people in mind, rather than hoarding money, it is much easier to live closer to Andrew Carnegie’s ideal: spend the first third learning, the next third earning and building wealth, and the last third giving it away. We all know that we can’t take it with us, and there have been efforts to think about the need to give away. Bill Gates is well known for his efforts in convincing Warren Buffett to give 99% of his shares of Berkshire Hathaway to worthy causes upon his death.

However, others seem to think that the only real way to leave a legacy is to give it to their children. One financial guru (who likes to use Bible verses) talks about his children inheriting $18 million. I don’t know about this person’s inheritance tax strategies, but I am guessing that this means that his kids will get the bulk of his wealth on his death. Then again, seeing what how there are so many who have inherited wealth who have a tendency to be out of touch with the rest of society, it might be better to go with the philosophy of saying, like Warren Buffett did, that his kids will get a college education and that they will not be poor, but they will still have to work.

Ultimately, I think that it boils down to where you think that your money can do the most good. Maybe you want to give it to a church, maybe you want to help a local charity, maybe you want to help the arts, or maybe something else that no one else is doing. No matter what you do, it is vital to find something worthy in order to truly enjoy the money.

Have you decided how you are going to give back?

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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my continuing series on The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth. So far, we have discussed the first three lessons on building a life of wealth. We began by focusing on the need to want to become a millionaire in order to make it. Then, we have looked at the need for responsibility for your money in order to succeed. Next, we talked about the need to keep a portion of your income in order to build a fortune. Now, we are looking at the next lesson, which has many applications and parts: the need to win in the margins of income.

Build Extra Income

One of Jim Rohn’s most famous statements is, “Work full time on your income, and part time on your fortune.” We saw this example in mind in the previous post, with its discussion of saving a portion of everything you earn, but nearly all of your windfall money. This fits in that teaching pretty well, because it talks about ways to find a little bit of extra money that you make on the side. For those of us in the world of network marketing, this is something that we all know pretty well. In The Other 8 Hours, Robert Pagliarini talks about finding an extra job that has little requirements other than needing someone there (examples in the book include night shifts at hotels and 24-hour gyms). Another way that this can be done is if you are in a two-income family, and you decide to focus one income on living expenses and the other on wealth building.

This idea of building income in the margins to build a fortune has been used by many, including legendary investor Warren Buffett, who started at a young age by finding farm land, renting it out, and then using that money to invest in vending machines. He used this money to invest, and eventually, he built a $40 billion fortune, and it all started in the margins.

Savings and Controlling Spending

As Suze Orman reminds us, there are two ways to change cash flow: either increasing income, or cutting spending. Either one will build a fortune, but it is important to understand the fact that there are a lot of ways to this. Anyone who has ever seen the show Extreme Couponing has seen just how much money someone can save using coupons and timing purchases to sales. I think that one of the other keys to saving money is what I’ve heard described as The Whopper Principle, although I think that there are a lot of other things that could definitely fit in this category. The basic idea behind the Whopper Principle is that you compare a meal that you want to order to the cost of a $4 Whopper. So, if you are buying a $12 menu, it costs you three times as much as a Whopper. Does the meal give you three times as much happiness as a Whopper? If so, it is worth the money. If not, it is better to rethink the purchase. (I’ve known people who say that they want really expensive cars because they are better driving experiences than average cars. However, I have to wonder if a $100,000 car really drives five times as well as a $20,000 car.)

Winning in the margins also includes several mindsets, but all could fall into the following category: long term satisfaction is better than short term gratification. If you understand these things, it becomes so much easier to win in the margins and build your fortune.

What do you do to win in the margins?

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“I found the road to wealth when I decided that part of all I earned was mine to keep.” George S. Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon

Hi, everyone. I realize that I have been gone for a while, but I thank you for coming back for the next part of my series on The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth, a book by Richard Paul Evans where he explains the lessons that he learned as an 12-year-old boy from a man who went from a small town to a not-so-small fortune. So far, we have discussed the need to want to build a fortune in order to do it, and in the second, we learned of the importance of responsibility in order to build it.

Now, we are looking at the third lesson in order to become a millionaire: keep a portion of everything you earn. There has been some debate by many different financial experts over how much is necessary in order to build a fortune, but the simple fact remains that it is necessary to save something in order to build a fortune. This is one that is pretty obvious when someone looks at the basics of a cash flow statement, and how it leads to changes in someone’s net wroth. If monthly cash flow is negative, this means that the net wealth will drop (or the negative net wealth will increase). If a monthly cash flow is completely even, it is pretty obvious that the net wealth will stay the same. However, in order to truly build wealth, someone has to spend less than he/she makes. Or, as Suze Orman put it in The Money Class, “It is vital not to live within your means, but below your means.”

Making Money from Money

Many have said that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. While some get the basic idea of compound interest, few seem to understand it will enough to harness its power. Imagine putting in a little bit of money into a fund, and after a few years (depending on the yield), the yield makes a bigger contribution to the fund than you do. In a chart that David Bach uses to demonstrate the power of investing early, he shows how someone who starts putting a few thousand dollars into a retirement account at a young age can fund the account for only a few years, and have more money available by the age of 65 than someone who waits ten years and funds it every single year.

How Much?

Evans argues that it is important to save at least 10% of all income, and 90-100% of all side income, in order to build a fortune. He also looks at the question of whether or not it is important to pay debt first vs. building wealth first. He notes that the psychological factor will give someone the discipline to keep going as the wealth is getting bigger. (It also means that the account builds longer and gets more interest.) Because of this, he advocates using 10% to pay the debt down and 10% to build for the future. (In The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason argued for 20% to go to debt reduction.) These days, this is even easier to do because of auto pay options that are available through just about every major brokerage that handles 401 (k)’s and IRA’s. If you do this, you will never miss the money, and you will end up with more money than you ever thought possible.

The Goose or the Egg

However, the most crucial factor in understanding this lesson, is what happens when you have some wealth to build. There are some who might be tempted when they get a windfall to live it up. (If you’ve ever wondered why so many athletes end up broke despite making so much money, remember that most professional athletes’ careers will be over within five years, which means that this money has to last a lot longer than some people realize.) However, once the time comes to start taking out of the account, it is better to only take the yield, not the principal. Or, to use the analogy from “The Goose and the Golden Egg,” don’t ever try to kill the goose. If you dip into the principal, that is just less money that will be available in the future to grow. However, if you keep your goose healthy, it will lay golden eggs for the rest of your life.

How has your life changed after building for your future? Or, if you haven’t done so yet, what is stopping you?

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Hi, everyone. I hope this has been a good day for you. Continuing my series on The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth by Richard Paul Evans, we will now look at the second lesson: take responsibility for your money. In the first lesson, we learned the importance of deciding that it is important to decide to become a millionaire in order to get there. Now, we are starting to learn some of the ways to actually get there.

Where Are You Now?

One of the most important parts of figuring out where you are going on a journey (once you have already decided to take it, of course) is to figure out where you are. After all, you can’t know what direction to take unless you know where you are. One of the more sobering exercises you can ever do when dealing with your money is to sit down, look at your finances, and see the final numbers when you go through everything to determine your net worth. The number might be a depressing one, it might be a disappointing one, or it might be a number that makes you feel good. Either way, it is important to know exactly where you are, both the bad and the good.

The other key thing to do is to figure out your cash flow. If the cash flow statement is positive, this means that you are going in the right direction, and more money is coming in than going out, which is how you ultimately get on the path to wealth. If the cash flow is negative, this means that there is more going out than coming in.

Where Are You Going?

Of course, this is not a question of fate if you find yourself on the wrong end of the cash flow chart. Just as any journey begins with figuring out you want to make a trip, and then taking that step, it is then possible to start advancing the cash flow chart and the net worth statements in the right direction, either increasing the positive numbers, or decreasing the negative numbers, whichever the case may be. As Suze Orman reminds us in her books, there are two ways to change our cash flow: we can either increase our income, or we can decrease our spending (or some combination of the two). If you look at your income and realize that you are not making enough, there are other ways to earn more income (which has a role later in the lessons). Or, if you realize that you are living in a way that is wasteful, you can cut the spending. Of course, it is entirely possible to see both things that are problematic, and try to change both numbers in order to get into a positive cash flow.

Of course, it is always important to understand what your money is doing. Many stories have been in the news of celebrities who made millions and thought that they had people taking care of their money, only to find out that it was all wasted, or the taxes weren’t paid, but either way, they had a harsh lesson about what is necessary in taking control of a situation. Don’t let this be you. If you haven’t done so already, make this be the day that you take responsibility for your money.

What ways do you take responsibility for your money?

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Hi, everyone. I hope that you had a good week. Recently, I read the book The Five Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth by Richard Paul Evans. In this book, he recounts the story of a man in his hometown who struck it rich and came to a church to give a speech to some of the people there about how to build wealth.

In the book, Evans was an 11-year-old boy whose father had recently been disabled and lost his job in an industrial accident shortly before the presentation. Many of the people who went to the meeting were skeptical about the nature of having such a speech, but Evans was serious about getting ahead after seeing what had happened to his dad and living through the difficulties of knowing that disability pay was nowhere near what their old standard of living was. This book talks about the lessons he learned, and because each of them are so important, I decided to devote one blog post to each of the five lessons.

You’ve Got to Want It to Get It

The first lesson opens with a view of the wrong idea of building wealth. Richard Evans is talking to a couple who, even though their income has increase by 35% over a few years, were more in debt than ever before and facing bankruptcy. He explains to them that just following a simple plan, they could get out of debt in two years and start building for their future. They were worried because they thought that they would either have to make a huge sacrifice and give up everything for the hope of living well down the road, or the thought that they could never make it. But, they decided that they wanted to do it, and they ended up not only paying off the debt in two years, but they had an extra $30,000 on top of that.

As the book explains, this is because they wanted it. In order to make it on the path to wealth, it is necessary to decide that this is a path that you want to go upon. However, for a book that talks about building a fortune, I think that he says something that I think a lot of other books would really be better served by doing as well. We must ultimately define wealth. For some people, that number will be different than others. I think that the biggest idea is where someone will be when this point is reached and something that is different than what other people consider to be rich.

Granted, things like having a net worth of a quarter of a billion dollars and saying that you don’t think you are rich is probably not a good idea, there is some truth to that. I think that I would personally define being wealthy as reaching the point where one’s assets make enough money to fully support one’s lifestyle. I remember reading that a rule of thumb is that someone should be able to live on 4% of his/her assets in order to be able to build it without touching the principal. So, if this is the case, that would mean 25 times one’s annual cost of living.

How has deciding on your path helped you?

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Hi, everyone. I don’t know what you have seen in the news over the last few days, but one of the stories that has driven me to a surprising degree of sadness and nostalgia was the death of Davy Jones, vocalist and percussionist for The Monkees, on Wednesday at the age of 66. There were some who saw Davy Jones, and The Monkees in general, as pop lightweights, part of the “pre-fab four.” However, a deeper look at both Jones and The Monkees shows that they had a huge role in pop culture for decades, and that ultimately, they show what happens when one truly accepts things that are out of one’s control.

Looking for a Band

Perhaps the most enduring criticism of The Monkees is the fact that, unlike most bands that have organic beginnings when one member (usually the lead vocalist or a songwriter) looks for friends to play music with, they formed during auditions held by television and music producers who were looking to do a parody of A Hard Day’s Night, the famed 1964 Beatles movie. The group consisted of Davy Jones, a former aspiring horse jockey and the original Artful Dodger in Oliver! in London; Micky Dolenz, primarily an actor but someone who did have musical experience; as well as two men who were musicians first and foremost: Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork.

These four had a great chemistry and humor, and everyone who watched the show had a favorite. (I first saw the show on Nickelodeon in 1987 when I was in second grade, and my favorite was Peter.) They had some of the best songwriters of the era, including Neil Diamond and Carole King, writing their songs, and originally, session musicians provided the music on their first two albums. When the show came on the air, there were some who derided their slapstick antics, but there were a lot more who loved The Monkees, both their music and their characters, to the point where in 1967 (the year after the show premiered on NBC), The Monkees actually sold more records in the United States than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined.

Getting Control

As time went on, The Monkees proved to be quite prolific, releasing nine albums in the space of five years, doing two seasons of the show (believe it or not, there were only 58 episodes), a feature-length movie, and a couple of major tours. However, they took the criticism very harshly and wanted to be seen as an authentic band. Over time, they started writing more of their own songs, and by the time of the album Headquarters, The Monkees had full creative control. Eventually, however, some of the pressures from the movie Head, including frustration that they were initially denied writing credits, took their tool, and they broke up in 1971.

A Legacy in Several Media

However, despite the critics, The Monkees did survive in the memory of their fans, and as the show appeared on Saturday morning reruns in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, as well as syndication in the 1980′s (when I first saw them as a seven-year old boy), not to mention the nostalgia tour circuit, they had a continuing generation of fans.

As time went on, a lot of the direction of The Monkees was led by Davy Jones, the 5’3 Manchester native. Perhaps more than the other members, Davy Jones accepted his role in pop culture, and he never seemed bitter about his path to stardom. He memorably made a guest appearance in a 1971 episode of The Brady Bunch as part of his first solo tour. However, I think that it worked because he was glad for the people who loved his work over the years. If you aren’t as familiar with The Monkees, here is a video from the TV-show era, “Valleri,” with its soaring harmonies, cool understatement of Mike on lead guitar, the unbridled joy of Peter on bass and backup vocals, and the mercurial nature of Micky behind the drum kit (interesting trivia: both Micky and Davy played drums left handed. You can tell because that is the foot that is behind the bass drum.), as well as interesting techniques for video that were decades ahead of its time:

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you accept your legacy?

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Hi, everyone. It has been a while since we have talked. I thank you for coming back to read my latest thoughts. Anyway, I have been thinking earlier about something that my professor said in class. He asked the students in the class how many had read either “The Grand Inquisitor,” or the novel that the story came from, The Brothers Karamazov. Only one hand was raised. Then, he asked how many people owned a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, and several more hands were raised, mine included. (Full disclosure: I bought the book about a week before the class, thinking that we would need the whole book for class. I found out later that there is actually a book form of this chapter, but I decided later that I had done the right thing because I figured that I would like to read it in its entirety one day.)

Knowingly, the professor talked about books like these being on our shelves as a way to impress our friends. I do not know the extent to which that is true for me, but I do know that I have several books on my bookshelves that I have not yet read (that I plan on reading some day, probably this summer when I am not taking classes and can focus on teaching and other intellectual pursuits for my personal betterment), including: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin.

I think that this is something that a lot of us in the academic profession (and even some people who are not in the academic profession) can easily be tempted by: the desire to prove one’s self well read, even if that means owning a lot of books that one has never read. I looked on my bookshelves, and not counting the books that my wife owns that just aren’t really my thing (textbooks and true crime novels, although I used to read a little bit more of the latter when I was younger), I own over one hundred books that I have never read. A lot of those books, I have not even opened. (In a similar vein, I also own a few video games that I have never actually played. They seemed interesting at the time, but the plot line seemed quite long, and I just never got around to playing them, preferring to play games that have a much more episodic format, such as sports games. None of those games are first person shooters, by the way, because I knew that I had no interest in them at all.)

So, this leads me to a bigger question: why do we feel a need to prove ourselves to other people? Would it not be better to have a more authentic life and actually have read these books, even if it meant going to the library and checking them out so you could read them there, even if your friends could not see them on your shelf (almost as, in Jerry Seinfeld’s word, trophies) as evidence of your intellectual prowess? I guess this is a big reminder that there are times that it is better to do good than to look good to others.

How do you make sure to do good rather than look good (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of this question)?

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Hi, everyone. Today is Super Bowl Sunday, where the New York Giants and New England Patriots will battle it out for the right to be known as the best football team in all the land. These teams will be led by their star quarterbacks Eli Manning and Tom Brady. However, I’ve been thinking about two other quarterbacks, and what they can teach about success.

Not Your Typical NFL Quarterbacks

Over the last few years, the NFL has evolved more and more into a passing game. For example, in the year Joe Namath set the record for passing yards in a season (4,007 yards in 1967) to become the first NFL quarterback to throw for 4000 yards in a season, even 3000-yard seasons were relatively rare. (No one broke Namath’s record until pro football went to a 16-game season, but Namath’s 14-game record wasn’t snapped until Dan Marino did it in 1984.) However, today, it is very common for top quarterbacks to throw for more than 4000 yards, and this year, three quarterbacks threw for over 5000 yards, and one just missed it.

However, there are two teams in the NFL that have made an effort to buck the trend of pass heavy offenses: the New York Jets, led by Mark Sanchez; and the Denver Broncos, led by Tim Tebow. Each quarterback has admitted limits as a passer, although Tebow’s shortcomings are far more visible, even to the untrained eye, than those of Sanchez. However, each team has had a good running game, and as a result, the Jets made the playoffs two of the last three years, making it all the way to the AFC Championship Game each time. The Broncos, after starting the season with Kyle Orton, finally decided that the season was lost, and decided to give Tebow a chance. To everyone’s surprise, he won seven of his first eight games and the Broncos won the AFC West Division and won the first round of the playoffs against the vaunted Pittsburgh Steelers, throwing for 316 yards, and an 80-yard touchdown pass in the first play of overtime to get the win.

Messing with the Formula

However, there were (and are) a lot of complaints that Sanchez and Tebow were horrible quarterbacks, and that someone needs to be a great passer in order to succeed in today’s NFL. (The last team to win a Super Bowl without an elite quarterback at the helm was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers nine years ago.) In his first season, Sanchez threw 12 touchdowns against 20 interceptions. As a starter, Tebow only completed 46.5% of his passes. However, each of these quarterbacks succeeded when he had a great running game and a defense that gave him a chance, and each has had a tendency to perform well in the clutch. The fourth quarter became known as “Tebow Time” in Denver, where the Broncos have seven wins in the fourth quarter or overtime in only 13 games as an NFL starter for Tebow. In his first two seasons, Sanchez had a 6-2 record on or after December 1st in his rookie season, and a 4-4 record on or after December 1st in his second season (each including the playoffs), and he tied the NFL record for most wins by a starting quarterback in road playoff games, with four.

However, what led to disaster for each team and each quarterback was when the formula changed. For the Jets, Sanchez threw a lot more than he did in either of his previous two seasons, with 543 attempts, or 33.9 per game, compared to 364 in 2009 and 507 in 2010. His high in passing attempts was 59 in a game against the New York Giants. For the Broncos, it came when the Patriots jumped out to a big lead, and were able to stop the run, forcing Tebow to pass far too often. This is not to say that they are terrible quarterbacks, but that they need a good running game in order to make their passing game to work.

This made me think about what it means to fit into your role in life. Sometimes, we try to be flashy, and we try to do things that we are not as good at, and it harms us in the end. In the end, I think that this is not a strike against reaching out to do something new, but an understanding of what our abilities are, and where we work our best.

How do you know what your role is in life?

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Hi, everyone. It has been a busy time for me as of late, what with visiting my family in West Virginia, preaching a sermon nine days ago, tracking down paperwork to make sure that credentials are in order, and starting another semester at Temple University. However, one thing that I have been thinking about for several days now, after Martin Luther King Day, is about the nature of what it means in order to have lived a multi-faceted life with a challenging and complex message, only to be remembered as a two-dimensional character.

The Impetus for the Post

Eight years ago, while I was stationed in northern Iraq, I saw a drawing for some material commemorating Martin Luther King, and the winners would be announced on Martin Luther King Day. I went to the mess hall the next day, and I saw my name on the list of winners. To my surprise, I found out that there were more free books than there were people who entered the raffle, so I was allowed to get whatever book I wanted. When I picked my book, I saw one that compelled me more than the others: A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this book, there are several of Martin Luther King’s sermons, from the 1950′s into 1968, the year he was assassinated. A lot of people think of Martin Luther King as someone who gave a great speech on the Washington Mall with the refrain, “I have a dream…” Anyone who has ever written music or any oral form of communication knows the importance of repeating a key word or phrase in order to help the audience remember it, and anyone who has studied at a seminary can recognize the preacher’s rhythm of the words and tone of the I Have a Dream speech, and can probably sit down and diagram each of the major points of a well-crafted sermon. Here is the speech in its entirety:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Many of us in the United States hear of that speech, and we also hear of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the 1955 event spurred on by Rosa Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on a bus, that eventually prompted an effort by black people in Montgomery to refuse to ride any bus that would not treat them equally, which eventually broke the back of the bus system in Montgomery, and after a year, it ended in victory.

However, this sanitized version of Martin Luther King is not the whole truth. Civil rights was and is an important part of King’s legacy, but it is not the only part of his message. He was a brilliant man who was taken from us far too soon, dying at the end of a gun at the age of 39. However, he began his national role at the age of 26 years old. He went across the country preaching a message of justice, and making sure that the message of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution applied to all, and not just a few.

A Broad Message

As I read the book, I found that this book covered one area more than any other: poverty. Over and over, he pointed out the unjust nature of an economic system that too often focused on greed and focused on the haves rather than everyone. In his lifetime, King advocated a national guaranteed income and he opposed the Vietnam War, both because he opposed violence, and because of what he saw happening to poor people in the region whose farmland was destroyed. As a matter of fact, when he died in 1968 in Memphis, he was not there for a civil rights march, he was there to stand in support of striking sanitation workers, as part of his Poor People’s Campaign. If you have never heard Martin Luther King on poverty, here is a powerful video juxtaposed with images of what poverty really means:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Martin Luther King was a great man with a great message, but I believe that we do him a disservice by ignoring the whole message of Martin Luther King.

How do you fight to make sure that someone’s entire legacy is remembered and not turned into a cartoon?

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