The Geometry of Riches: Why Living Below Your Means is the Fastest Path to Lifelong Wealth

For many students, the pursuit of long-term wealth seems complicated, requiring insider knowledge of stocks, complex budgeting software, or a massive salary. In reality, the foundation of riches is not found in complex products or high incomes, but in simple mathematics: the Geometry of Riches. This geometry is defined by the gap between what you earn and what you spend. The wider the gap—the more you consistently live below your means—the faster you will build lasting financial independence.

The Power of the Savings Gap

The concept of living below your means is not about deprivation; it's about optimizing your resources to create a surplus. This surplus is your savings gap, and it is the single most powerful tool in your financial life.

Living below your means, a simple, powerful example:  We raise our children Catholic. Sunday Mass wasn't just about faith; it was the quiet start of a profound financial habit. Every week, before the collection plate passed, my wife and I gave each of our children a single dollar. The instruction was simple: Give this to the church.

This ritual wasn't primarily about charity; it was about saving. It taught them the essential discipline of taking money from today and allocating it to an account for tomorrow. For them, the initial "tomorrow account" was their community and their relationship with God.

As they grew, the ritual evolved. They stopped receiving the dollar from us and started bringing it—taking it directly from their allowance or after-school earnings. That single dollar, passed weekly, became perhaps the greatest financial gift we ever offered our children. It was the simple, consistent habit of saving and prioritizing their future needs over immediate desires. They built that ritual into a reliable foundation, using the very same habit of intentional allocation to grow their own savings and investments as they stepped into young adulthood.

The lesson was clear: The discipline to give is the very same discipline required to save.

In financial geometry, your income and expenses define the shape of your wealth-building potential. If your expenses meet or exceed your income, the "area" for growth is zero or negative. Conversely, every dollar added to the savings gap becomes a dollar that can be put to work through compounding—a convex function that increases wealth at an increasing rate.

For students, this decision is paramount. Early financial choices—such as taking on college debt, financing a car, or establishing credit card habits—have the longest possible runway for compounding. A small, disciplined savings gap built today is dramatically more impactful than a large one started 20 years from now. Some misunderstand the purpose of a budget. It is a prefabricated set of tradeoffs. It is much easier to implement those tradeoffs if they are made in advance of when those tradeoffs need to be made. Budgeting is how you make sure there is a savings gap.

By consciously deciding to maximize this gap, you are providing the fuel needed for your wealth to grow exponentially.

The Comparison Struggle

I sometimes hear, "Hey, rich people can live below their means because they have more means, but I do not have enough yet, so I will wait until I am rich enough to live below my means." This is both a paradox and a sure path to poverty. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk both have budget constraints. Their budget constraints are just higher than yours. As much as Elon wishes he could buy Mars, he simply does not have enough money (yet) to buy a planet. We all have budget constraints. It is our comparative culture making it seem more difficult to overcome when others appear more wealthy.

Living below your means starts with resisting the comparison culture. Be proud of your modest appearances, all the while building life-changing wealth.

Personal Finance Reimagined: Mastering the Decision

Understanding the need to save is only half the battle; the other half is conquering the human tendency to make poor spending decisions driven by behavioral biases and the complexity of modern consumerism. This is why I founded Personal Finance Reimagined (PFR) to provide a game-changing solution for students and prospective professors.

As a behavioral economist and professor, I recognize that the challenge of personal finance in the modern, data-saturated world is not a lack of information, but a failure of decision-making. Most traditional financial education focuses on memorizing product details (e.g., specific retirement accounts or mortgage types), which quickly become outdated. PFR, however, teaches the Decision FIRST approach: a consistent, repeatable process designed to help learners and educators alike make confident, sound financial choices for a lifetime.

How PFR Empowers Students and Professors

1. Decision-Process First: PFR shifts the focus away from product specifics and towards a clear, single-threaded decision process. This empowers students to evaluate high-impact life choices—like selecting a college that offers a strong Return on Investment (ROI), choosing a career path, or making major purchases—with confidence and clarity. When faced with a complex financial scenario, my method teaches students how to think about the problem, enabling them to curate data, identify important criteria, and avoid common cognitive pitfalls.

2. Behavioral Science Application: Our curriculum is rooted in behavioral economics, helping students understand how their own psychological biases work against their financial well-being. By understanding these biases, students can implement commitment devices and structured decision-making tools to naturally adopt habits, like maintaining that crucial savings gap.

3. Support for Educators: PFR provides professors and prospective faculty with a flexible, high-quality curriculum, including my book (Making Choices, Making Money) and classroom resources. This material allows instructors to teach personal finance as a dynamic skill set—focused on real-life application and decision science—rather than a static collection of facts. This approach ensures that future generations of students leave the classroom with the skills to confidently manage their financial lives.

The Equation for Confident Wealth

For students ready to achieve long-term wealth, the lesson I teach is clear: your financial success hinges on two things: maximizing your savings gap by living below your means, and developing a consistent, repeatable decision process to ensure you stay on track.

My program, Personal Finance Reimagined, provides the framework to master the second element, turning financial confusion into confident action. By adopting the PFR decision approach, you gain the skills to intentionally widen your savings gap, fueling your wealth with the unstoppable power of compounding.

The equation is simple:

Better Decisions + Living Below Your Means = Lifelong Wealth. 

Start building your confidence today and watch your geometric wealth grow.

A message to those ready to reimagine their relationship with money

Would you like to learn more about our reimagined personal finance approach, but do not have access to our university or high school courses? Check out our book, which includes access to our patented decision technology.

Making Choices, Making Money

A message to aspiring financial educators

Our mission is to empower experienced financial practitioners who are ready to give back.  Are you a high school personal finance instructor looking to up their game? Do you have an interest in teaching at the college level?  Are you an experienced financial professional with amazing experiences and well-earned war stories to share?  Do you believe in the behavioral challenge of financial success?

Personal Finance Reimagined solves the "last-mile" problem.  We connect teachers and aspiring adjunct professors to personal finance education.  Our textbook, technology, Canvas-ready class downloads, test banks, PowerPoint lecture presentations, and deep guest lecture network are available for aspiring financial educators.

We wrap you in the resources to supercharge your teaching success.  We walk that last mile together.

Let’s solve America’s Financial Literacy crisis together. To learn more:

High School and Middle School Teaching

 PFR University Teaching