The secret to financial management is to open up more sources of income and practice strict budgeting. “Open up,” means increasing your capital income; “practice strict budgeting,” means planning how you spend your funds. Successful financial management means effectively preserving and growing your money, improving your family’s or your own life in a planned way, and having sufficient financial capacity so you can set aside a beautiful tomorrow.

Smooth studies, a happy family, a successful career, and an easygoing old age—these life waystations build a perfect life journey. However, when you pass through one waystation after another, money often plays an important role. Therefore, how to make reasonable use of the money in your hands and how to seize every investment opportunity in time are major questions that personal financial management must address. Financial management should accompany you throughout your life, shining a light on your journey and adding brilliance to your life.
A person’s life will encounter many opportunities to change themselves, but truly changing one’s fate is rare—my dad told me that a person has three chances in a lifetime to change their fate: birth, education, and marriage. The ability to be reborn can decide whether, from the moment you’re born, you’re a winner or an ordinary person. The childhoods of those so-called “second-generation rich” or “officials’ children” are definitely different from those of ordinary kids; from birth, they already have more opportunities and social resources, and they even have a family background, so they start life’s race far ahead of everyone else. But we also need to know that life is long; after you’re born, everything is provided by your parents, and the road ahead still has to rely on yourself. In everyday life, most of what we encounter are ordinary people with ordinary backgrounds, ordinary families, and ordinary jobs. Because an ordinary birth has already predetermined that you can’t change your fate, to break through this class, besides studying, you can also be through learning various skills. Only by working hard can you have opportunities to change your fate at every stage of life.
Let me make an analogy for you. Before meeting British Prince William, Kate was just an ordinary female college student. Her parents ran a grocery store. After marrying Prince William, she became a world-class life winner, drawing global attention. So this ordinary girl suddenly became a noble princess. Marriage not only changed Kate, it also changed her entire family. Kate’s princess-sister also married into a British aristocratic household. Friends in my own circle have also become life winners by changing their destiny through marriage. If we don’t have the right to choose our birth, but we do have the opportunity to change our destiny—whether we can seize it is something you have to ask yourself.
Three people are going to be locked up in prison for three years, and the warden gives each of them one request. An American loves cigars, so he asks for three boxes of cigars. A French person is the most romantic and wants a beautiful woman to accompany him. And the Jewish person says he wants a phone that can communicate with the outside world. After three years, the first to burst out is the American—cigars stuffed in his mouth and in his nostrils—shouting, “Give me fire, give me fire!” It turns out he forgot to ask for fire. Next comes out the French person. You can see that he’s holding a small child in his arms; the beautiful woman is holding the hand of a small child, and she’s also pregnant with a third. Finally comes out the Jewish man. He tightly grips the warden’s hand and says, “For these three years, every day I’ve been in contact with the outside world. My business hasn’t just not stopped—it’s actually increased by 200%. To show my gratitude, I’ll give you a Rolls-Royce!”