December 17, 1903 dawned cold and windy at Kill Devil Hills in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The temperature was not much above freezing and the wind blowing at over 20 mph. After years of work, frustration, progress, and setbacks, all of it in almost complete obscurity, Wilbur and Orville Wright felt like they…
There is a big myth out there that knowledge is power, and…we throw that around a lot, and it’s actually a lie. Knowledge is only potential power. And it only becomes power when we…use it and apply it.…We can talk about principles all day long, and if we don’t apply them, it’s just potential. –…
My father, Kent Esplin, was destined to be frugal. The first reason was that he raised during the Great Depression. My grandfather and grandmother, Frant and Annie Esplin (we called them Mom and Pop), lost their sheep ranch near Zion National Park at the start of the Depression. Dad was six or seven at the…
“It might be scary, but nobody gets hurt on a roller coaster unless they jump off.” – Dave Ramsey “Please keep your hands and arms inside the train at all times, and enjoy the ride” the voice on the intercom announced as we rolled slowly out of the station. The train then took a sharp…
Water Savings Accounts and Money Reservoirs I live in a desert. The Salt Lake Valley gets about 15 inches of rain a year and semiarid deserts are classified as areas that receive between 8 and 20 inches of rain. And yet, the Salt Lake Valley today doesn’t look like a desert. The Mormon pioneers…
There is an old story about two colleagues talking during a break at work. One of them is a smoker and the other one isn’t. The nonsmoker asks the smoker how long he has been smoking. Between puffs he replies, “About a pack a day for 30 years.” The nonsmoker, obviously a personal finance nerd,…
Every story needs a hero. One of the commencement speakers when I received a master’s degree in accounting from Brigham Young University in 2001 was entrepreneur, businessman, educator, and religious leader James W. Ritchie. I still remember a story he told that day. The story occurred when he was supervising a church youth activity. They…
The year is 1943 and America is deep in the desperate struggle to save the world from tyranny. The United States had entered World War II a little more than a year earlier following the December 7, 1941 attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. As the United States ramped up the war effort the…
Milo of Croton was the most celebrated athlete of the ancient world – the Michael Jordan of his time. He won an astounding 6 straight wrestling competitions at the ancient Olympic Games, dominating the sport from 540 BC to 520 BC. What allowed Milo to remain dominant for so long? Milo’s chief advantage over his…
Almost everyone is familiar with the tragic story of the Titanic, but did you know that the Titanic wasn’t the first “unsinkable” ship to meet disaster on her maiden voyage? On August 10, 1628, nearly 300 years before the Titanic disaster, the mighty Swedish warship Vasa set sail from Stockholm harbor. The recently completed ship…
