ere are three words you rarely hear: "Get rich slowly".

Who needs that, you're thinking, if you're like most people. In a recent survey of British schoolchildren aged 14 to 16, for example, more than a third said that they expected to be millionaires by the age of 30. Based on the past, few if any of them will be. All these youthful optimists expect to get rich quick. (A good number of them expect to be rock stars, they said, which is even less likely, mathematically.) The fact is that very, very few people get rich quickly. It simply doesn't happen. If it did, we'd all be rich and the world would be a lovely place. It isn't, sadly. I tell you this not to burst your bubble, but to help you understand the practical reality of how money works.

Lottery winners are among the few who get rich quickly, and statistics show that within 18 months, most of them get poor quickly. Never having had much money, people generally don't know how to handle it when they win big, and they tend to spend their way to the poorhouse at great speed.

Enough bad news. It is possible to "get rich", highly possible, especially in Bermuda. The catch, if you choose to look at it that way, is that it takes both time and effort. You can get rich slowly, which doesn't sound like fun, but is in fact enormously satisfying when you pull it off. All it takes is the application of common sense and an adult attitude. You are capable of both.

Financial behaviour is a two-sided coin. There's getting and there's spending. You might think that one is more important than the other, but both have equal parts to play in the accumulation of wealth. To get rich at any speed, you must take charge of both sides of the equation.

Much financial advice concentrates on the earning side of the equation. Increased salaries or earnings, better investments, more balanced spreads of investments, exploiting temporary opportunities ? if you are really interested, a host of concepts can be mastered and made part of your everyday thinking. It takes work, which is why most people are not rich. Hardly anyone these days wants to make the effort, yet everyone wants the rewards. Odd, huh?

On the spending side, one simple rule covers the whole thing. It is: spend a little less. Whenever people ask for financial advice, they almost always want to hear about how to make more money. Hardly anyone ? in fact no one, now that I come to think about it ? has ever asked me whether they should control their spending. People assume, I guess, that they would need to cut out all the things they like to do, and live like monks or nuns, and no one wants to hear that. The good news is that no one has to hear that. It would be bad advice.

The secret to financial mastery ? which need not involve "getting rich" at any speed ? is to spend less than you earn. A hair less, or a lot less: that's up to you. In the weeks ahead, we'll look at ways of taking control of your financial affairs and one of the first lessons will be to control your appetite for things you do not need.

That brings us to what might be the first rule of finance. Don't try keeping up with the Joneses. For one thing, in Bermuda, most of the Joneses are millionaires. It's a race you can only lose. Try keeping up with your own needs instead, and make one of your needs saving a little money each month.

What do you think makes a person rich? A million dollars? A billion? Television has persuaded us that to be rich, you need to be Donald Trump, or at least to have Trump's billions. In fact, Trump just lives rich. He inherited a gigantic fortune from his parents, and has done at best an average job of managing it. Mostly, he just talks rich. He is certainly not rich in taste, style or charm.

Try this: it is quite possible to be rich on less than $1,000 a week. Yup, less than $1,000. All it takes is spending less than you earn and being satisfied with that. It can be done, believe me. Charles Dickens put it best 100 years ago. I'll update what he wrote, more or less: Income of $1,000 a week, expenses $999, result: happiness. Income of $1,000 a week, expenses $1,001, result: misery.

Check in here every week and I'll help you cut down on the misery. You can have a positive financial future, but you're going to have to make an effort.

As this column unfolds, I'll impart everything you need to know to get rich slowly, except the one thing that only you can supply, which is willpower. There'll also be humour and Bermuda-related takes on money and a range of financial matters.

See you next week.

Roger Crombie can be reached at crombienorthrock.bm