10. Have fun and be Foolish.

This may be an unusual way to end your Foolish Steps to Independence, but we can offer perhaps no better advice than this. Treat the management of your money as the fun and rewarding activity that it can be. Trick yourself into saving a little cash each month. Invite friends to help you through the typically grim process of buying a car. Have fun on the phone, negotiating down your debt with your creditors. For the sheer Foolishness of it, do a little research and then buy stock in a company whose products you love.

Life is not filled with an endless run of games. Fools have to endure tedious lectures about American foreign policy in the age of Teddy Roosevelt. They have to suffer standing in line for three hours to alter course-registration slips. They have to pretend that more can be learned in a stuffy classroom filled with 1,100 people than halfway up a mountain studying conifers or walking through museums or learning French over a glass of wine at lunch. Fools in school and out of school have to endure the Department of Motor Vehicles, have root canals and fillings, and sit through Lethal Bullet XXIII.

But when in Fooldom, you can relax and learn while chuckling. Our mission is to inform, to amuse, and to enrich. We want to help you learn how to manage your own money and we provide a community where all Fools can learn from each other, ask questions and get answers. Come visit us online at www.fool.com, where we've got a lot to offer you.

If you take a little time to learn how to save some money, invest it in common stocks for the long haul, and even gain Foolish pleasure from the process, we think you'll be adding monetary and non-monetary wealth to your life in the decades ahead beyond any of your expectations. Good luck out there and…

Fool on!