Things my Grandmother used to say about money [View all]

"It's not money, but the love of money that is the root of all evil."

"Money is like ketchup; you got to spread it around."

"Money doesn't care who it belongs to."

"Money doesn't talk, it screams."

My Grandmother was a flapper in the Roaring Twenties, who once saw Pretty Boy Floyd with a tommy gun, hanging from the sideboard of a car. Her father was a wealthy dry-goods merchant, who once owned the only movie theater in a small Kansas town. Then he lost everything in the Great Depression.

My Grandmother went to college and married a newspaper man, who died at age 50 on a hot summer day, wearing his wool suit and straw hat, leaving his wife and three children almost penniless. He thought life insurance was a scam, and that we should all just take care of each other.

My Grandmother worked for forty years after her husband's death as an executive secretary. She could type 160 words per minute.

My Grandmother remarried at age 62, to a wealthy farmer who was dying of cancer, who's children had long since moved away. After he died, she gave all of his estate to his children, keeping nothing of it, including several thousand acres that are today dotted with million-dollar homes.

My Grandmother lived on $600 a month Social Security until the age of 93, when she died peacefully in my parent's home, having "stored up no gold on Earth". My parents did pretty much the same thing, both dying within five years of my Grandmother's death.

Sometimes I think my Grandmother was a fool, and wish she had taken more advantage of the few opportunities she had to become wealthy. And I wonder if her influence is the reason for my poverty --not being tough enough to screw people out of money they don't really deserve anyway. But she lived by the Golden Rule.

I can't tell you anymore who's the bigger fool --her or the fool that follows her.