The Pathway to financial indepenDENCE
A Book for High School Students
Young Adults
Parents and Grandparents
About Ghost Money
Overview
Stop waiting for a windfall that may never come. Ghost Money: The Pathway to Financial Independence is your no-BS guide to building wealth on your own terms. Tired of eye-rolls when you talk money with your kids? Or maybe you’re a young adult ready to ditch the myth of “someday” riches.
This book delivers practical, game-changing strategies—from developing key wealth building behaviors, to making monthly contributions, to unlocking the power of compound interest with Ron’s sequential doubling method. Learn how to start small, invest smart, and grow your money with the Kmet Kurve’s proven approach.
Whether you’re 18 chasing freedom or a parent/grandparent sparking a financial wake-up call, Ghost Money empowers you to take control. Say goodbye to the fleeting promises of inheritances, lottery or stock market fantasies—and hello to a future you build. Grab your copy and start your path to financial independence today!
Behavior
Money doesn’t care about your fame, your talent, or your good intentions—it amplifies your choices. Wealth vanishes not because of bad markets or dumb luck, but because of bad behavior. Ghost Money identifies 7 behaviors to avoid.
Ghost Money highlights the 14 behaviors that build wealth: Hard Work, Education/Training/Learning, Work/Life Balance, Budgeting and Planning, Disciplined Spending, Modest Living, Debt Avoidance, Frugality, Long-term Thinking, Time Management, Consistent Investing, Accepting Volatility, Diversification and Rebalancing, and Resilience.
These behaviors work together, like a team of superheroes, to turn ordinary incomes into significant wealth.
Making Money
One truth stands out: wealth starts with income. Most of us begin at zero—no trust funds, no silver spoons. The beauty of starting at zero is that every dollar you earn is yours to shape. High school students, don’t wait for graduation to start making money. Entry-level jobs are everywhere, and they’re your first step to financial independence.
After high school, your entry-level experience prepares you for the next step: better jobs or further training. On-the-job training (OJT) from those early gigs gives you a leg up, teaching you discipline and workplace basics.
Once you’ve got skills, you can aim for careers with big pay and growth. These aren’t pipe dreams—they’re achievable with the right training, building on your hard work and learning.
Ghost Money explores career options, with a focus on the training required to get significant pay bumps. It shows that you don't have to go to college to realize your financial objectives.
Investing--A Sequence of Doubles
- Early Steps (Contributions Rule): At the start, your own money does the heavy lifting. The first doubles happen fast because the amount you add is a big chunk of your starting money.
- Middle Steps (Contributions + Compounding Team Up): As your money grows you’re still adding contributions, but now the interest (compounding) starts helping more. You’re still adding a lot, but the account gets bigger on its own.
- Last Steps (Compounding Takes Over): By the time you hit $256.000, contributions play a smaller role. The Kmet Kurve shows it takes about 5.5 years to double from $256,000 to $512,000, and then to $1,024,000. Here, compounding is the star—your money is so big that the 10% interest alone does most of the work, like a giant snowball rolling super-fast downhill.
Double Time--The Kmet Kurve
The Y-axis (up-down) shows "Time to 2X" in years (from 0 to 15). The X-axis (left-right) shows ROR from 0% to 25%. Each colored line represents a different contribution rate (like 0% in dark blue, 5% in orange, up to 30% in navy blue).
The Kmet Kurve teaches a big lesson: Start early, contribute regularly, and aim for good returns! Even small contributions (like from a part-time job) can shave years off your time to financial independence. It's not magic—it's math showing how consistent effort pays off. If you're in high school or just starting out, use this to plan: Want to double your money fast? Pick a safe 10% investment, contribute at 30%, double your money in about 1.75 years!