I accepted the fact after finishing high school that I was not college material. At first it depressed me because I knew that I would have to work my butt off in order to be somebody. But I am not a lazy person and I was willing to do all it takes to live a normal life. That realization lifted my spirits and I went out looking for a job. My first job was on a farm as a tractor driver. I worked hard for two years in which I doubled my salary, but it still wasn’t a living wage, so I headed for the big city where I was hired as a driver for a parcel delivery service. The job offered lots of overtime pay which I was happy to get. Half my pay was put into a mutual fund which was recommended to me by the financial department of the bank. Three years later I met my future wife. She was a beautiful woman who worked as a sales manager in a department store. We were approved for a mortgage on a new home and got ready to raise a family. Our son was born two years latter. My wife was a practical and thrifty woman, so it was agreed that we would put twenty five percent of our salaries into the mutual fund that I had started a few years back, it would still leave us enough to enjoy our lives. Years later my son finished high school and searched for a good college to go to. He asked me for a loan of two hundred thousand dollars. That was the four year cost of the college he had chosen. Upon graduation he would need another hundred thousand dollars to get his masters degree. I sat him down and opened up the statement from my mutual fund. He gasped when he saw a million dollars. I told him that he could also be a rich man if he followed in his parents foot steps. I opened up a mutual fund for him and deposited the three hundred thousand dollars that he was going to spend on college. He was hired by the same company that I worked for and started work the next week. He is now married and the owner of his own home. His wife works as a saleslady, and is also a practical and thrifty woman. They put away twenty five percent of their income in a mutual fund. They have a young son, who I am sure will never go to college. http://360.yahoo.com/melvin_polatnick