The $10 Note That Changed Everything
I was 16. Maybe 17. I'd just received my first real wage, money earned from working in a fish and chip shop in New Zealand. Not glamorous. Not the beginning of a career I'd planned. But it was mine.
Before I spent a cent of it, I took out $10. Exactly 10%. I folded it up, put it in the back section of a cheap leather wallet, and told myself something simple: I would always have this. Which meant I would never, ever be broke.
"Poor is a situation. Broke is a mindset. I decided I'd never let myself be broke."
I still have that wallet. I still have that $10. It's a New Zealand ten-dollar note, worn and soft at the folds, with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand printed across it. It's not worth anything to anyone else. To me, it's the origin point of everything I've built since.
What that $10 actually taught me
It wasn't about the money. It was about the decision. The act of separating that 10% before I touched anything else, before I bought anything, before I paid anything, created a habit of thought that followed me for the next 50 years.
The habit was this: always keep something for yourself. Always maintain a position of not-zero. Always have something to work from, even when everything else is tight.
I went from that fish and chip shop to a bank job. From the bank to high school for qualifications. From high school to Air Force pilot selection. From the Air Force to Australia. From Australia to university, then architecture, then contracting, then America, then professional speaking. Every transition, every risk, every change of direction, all of it happened from a position of having something. Never from zero.
Poor but never broke
There were plenty of times I was poor. Saving for the university year, working double shifts, choosing between going out and paying rent. Poor is a real thing and I don't minimise it.
But broke is different. Broke is the feeling that you have no options, no fallback, no position to act from. That feeling never got me, because of a decision I made when I was 16 with $10 and a cheap wallet.
This is where BLISS starts
People ask me what the BLISS philosophy is really about. They expect something complicated. What I tell them is that it starts here, with the $10 note. With the idea that you always keep something for yourself. That you never spend yourself to zero. That you maintain the capacity to act, to change, to move.
Everything else in the BLISS framework, the long-term thinking, the intentional design, the strategies, all of it flows from this one root: you have to have something to work from. You cannot build a life from nothing, but you can build it from very little, if you protect that little fiercely.
That's what the $10 note is. It's not a savings strategy. It's a philosophy. And it's been sitting in that wallet, folded and quiet, for half a century.