Even though this is only the third week for this column, we're going to do a little recapping about how to start getting rich slowly. That's because some people told me they missed one or the other of the previous columns, and because learning how to get rich slowly is in itself a slow process. Learning is like losing weight; do it too fast, and it won't stick.

Getting rich slowly requires behaviour modification. Think about it. If your behaviour were perfect, you'd be rich already. Since you're reading this, you're probably not rich, but you wouldn't mind being rich. So something is going to have to give.

Not knowing how to be rich is not your fault. No one ever told you. Your parents probably weren't rich. No one taught you money and its management in school, which might seem like an extraordinary omission. The reason is that people who can teach you how money works are mostly earning too much to take the time to help you learn, and most of them would rather keep the information to themselves anyway.

If you knew how to be rich, you wouldn't need an advisor, right? Wrong. The richest people in the world have the best advisors. Rich people are always afraid that, at any moment, they'll become poor people, so they buy the finest advice money can buy. What they do then is what the rest of us almost never do: they take the advice they are given. They don't "keep a dog and bark themselves".

Specifically, the behaviour you are going to have to modify (which in this case means "change a little") is how you think about money. I've never met you, but I know, for instance, that you think you don't earn enough for the work you do. I also know that, if you are on a salary, when you think about your salary, you don't think much about your present salary, because it does not satisfy you. Instead, you think about the money you will be earning after your next raise, or when you get your pension, or your inheritance, or some other vague future money that you don't have right now. Getting it, you think, will make you happier and richer.

It won't. Your new money will be replaced in your mind by some other money that you think you might get at some future time. You'd do yourself a favour to stop thinking that way. Counting your chickens before they are hatched is a form of denial, and it's holding you back.

Thinking like that enables you to say to yourself: "Well, I can't be expected to save money now, because I don't have any, but when I get the raise, then I'll be able to save money and get rich." When you do get the raise, of course, you use the same logic to justify not saving any of that, either, and so ad infinitum. The next thing you know, you're financially average, i.e. not rich.

There's nothing wrong with being financially average. Most people are, by definition. In a modern welfare state, the financially average don't starve, they have a home and a TV and a car or a bike. They get by, but they don't get rich. You want to rise above that situation.

There are any number of ways to get rich over a period of time, and we'll be looking at some soon, to find the one that works for you. But they all start with wanting to get on the road to riches so much that you are willing to change the behaviour that led you down the wrong path in the first place.

I'm not saying you have to be a different person, because that won't work. I'm not saying you need to stop doing the things you like to do, or abandon your wife or children in a forest somewhere (unless you want to do that, in which case you should be reading a mental health column, not this one). I'm not even staying that you should stop buying junk that you don't need, although I wish you would. Mind you, if everyone stopped buying junk they don't need, the Bermuda economy would collapse and you'd be able to visit my head on a pole at the Cabinet Office.

Besides, it's hard to change your behaviour, and it gets harder as you get older, up to the point where it suddenly becomes miraculously easy, and then it's usually too late. Beat the system. Change now. Change slowly and gradually in the next few months, so that by the time we start looking at what to do with your money, you'll actually have some.

The average American has $1,500 in savings. I doubt that the average Bermudian has much more. If we took out from that sample Bill Gates, Ross Perot, Michael Bloomberg and a handful of others, the average would drop perilously close to zero, which is what the majority of Americans have, apparently. Zero savings! Don't go there. Save a little now, develop the saving habit, and within quite a short space of time, you will be above average, financially, which is the jumping-off point for accumulating meaningful wealth.

Start now. Here's how. Start by thinking about how much money you earn and spend. I'll bet you have a pretty good idea of how much you earn. What do you spend it on? You know what your rent or mortgage is. You know what your car payment or alimony is. But where does the rest go? About 15 years ago, someone asked me that question, and I couldn't answer it any better than you can. Sick of being poor, I thought I might do something about it. I found some squared paper, and near the end of every day I wrote down, as best I could remember, what I'd spent my money on. At the end of the month, I added it all up in categories: food, drink, cigarettes, magazines, stationery, movies, car gas, stuff like that. Your list of categories would be different. Some days, I couldn't recall exactly what I'd spent, so I had a miscellaneous category.

Then I added in the cheques I'd written, totalled up the whole mess and ended up with a pretty good idea of how much I'd spent that month. I was appalled. So much waste. The money was gone, but not on the things I wanted to spend it on.

I did it again the following month, and found I'd spent a bit less, without even trying. I've done it every month since. I still do it. Without ever consciously making any other effort, I now buy the things I want, spend less than I did 15 years ago, and have money in the bank. Some, not much, but some is all I ever wanted. You could do this, too. It didn't take 15 years to work. It didn't even take 15 months. It actually took about 15 minutes a week.

It's the middle of August now, so don't start until September 1. Until then (and I'll give you a reminder nearer the date), just watch how the money flows out of your pocket and out of your bank account. Just notice. Does most of it go in cash, or cheques, or on credit cards? Let the back of your mind do the thinking.

Try to decide, in a very informal way, which categories of spending make sense for you. Everyone spends money on food and transport, but you might buy a lot of books, or give your children pocket money, or buy a lot of goldfish food. Learn a little about who you are, financially, in terms of spending. The more you know, the easier it will be to make the minor changes that will set you up for life.

We're not going to do much more than that this month, so next week I'll have some things to say on a completely different financial subject, to ease the pressure on you.

But keep thinking about how you spend, and see if you can come to terms with keeping a sheet of paper, and making a couple of minutes available near the end of each day to list what you've spent. Two minutes, that's all I ask, plus half an hour on September 30. If you can't do that for yourself, stay broke. If you don't care about your financial future, neither do I.

crombie@northrock.bm