The card came out of an RBC chat I had with Helaine Olen regarding what I view as the financial industry’s basic dilemma: The best investment advice fits on an index card. A commenter, Alex M, asked for the actual index card. Although I was originally speaking in metaphor, I grabbed a pen and one of my daughter's note cards, scribbled this out in maybe three minutes, snapped a picture with my iPhone, and the rest was history. (Here's the picture and post.)
Pollack's right. Follow these principles and you'll be in much, much, much better shape than most Americans — or most anyone. And all it will cost you is $2.20 for a pack of index cards — and you'll have 99 of them left over.
It's really hard to be poor (see Pollack's amazing interview on how being poor changes the way people think for more on that). But the lesson here is that once you have an income that you can live off of and save a little bit besides, managing your finances shouldn't be all that hard. The people making it complicated are often trying to make money off of you.