Sometimes things are so incredibly easy to understand that they are overlooked. The basic money skills to make you rich, for example, were probably mastered by the third grade. We have a tendency to believe something is important, it must therefore be difficult.

You probably experience this on a day to day basis at your job. The goals you need to accomplish are easily achievable by following some simple rules, but your colleagues and bosses make it difficult to achieve. They schedule meetings to dissect every aspect of the situation, strict processes and guidelines are created, and detailed reports are required to document each step of the process.

What should be a simple process has so much weight of being important, that it has become a difficult project in order to justify its level of importance. In the meantime it has become increasingly difficult to do your job and the small competitor who has no restrictions and can think on their own has quadrupled your level of output because they’ve kept things simple.

In Chicago, semi trucks have a tendency to get stuck in places that are just too small for them to pass. They get jammed in sharp corners, narrow alleyways, and my favorite, under the elevated train. There’s a story that one day a semi got stuck under the train and could not back out. The firemen came and could not wedge the truck out, so they called in the big machines to try to wedge the truck out from under the rail tracks. They spent hours pulling, bending and sawing this truck just to get one of these busy Chicago streets open again. But then a 12-year-old boy came up to a fireman and asked why they didn’t just deflate the air in the tires of the truck. The solution was so simple that it was completely overlooked by the dozens of people trying to get the truck free.

The money skills needed to become wealthy are similarly simple, but tend to become unnecessarily complex. It’s so easy that a third grader could probably tell you the basic money skills you need:

• How much can you afford to spend
• Are you saving for your goals
• You can double your money over time
• Some things may cost more money but have better value
• It’s easier to have 10 people making money for you than to do it yourself
• Most of all, it is important to have fun

Millionaire Money Habit: Just because something is important does not mean it needs to be complex. When in doubt, the solution is usually simpler than it seems it should be.