Which one simple phrase has changed the way you think about money?

MEM62

No even a phrase, just one word - retirement!  :-)

RyanHello

"Pay your future self first" ... I always put savings and investments away before any luxuries I buy. 

[Deleted User]

Gers said:

You can't take it with you.

No pockets in shrouds.

That seems rather like a "spend now in case you die tomorrow" attitude!
I also somewhat disagree, I hope my future money will be there after I die to pay for cryogenic freezing (or similar) to cover me until the tech exists to either enable humans to live much longer lives or transfer the brain / conscious into a new body or even a machine

clive0510

one thing my dad used to say, amongst other things, 'don't have what you can't afford'. and I never have.

Teapot55

Cashflow . . .

Back when my income was very low I could never understand why I often went overdrawn. 

I knew that I was keeping my yearly expenditure down to just a bit less than my yearly income, so for quite a while I was mystified . . .

. . . then I realised that some months the bills added up to more than the money that was coming in that month to my bank account. 

Seems completely obvious now, but it really wasn’t obvious at the time.

Shame, because the concept could have been covered in one lesson at secondary school, which would have stood me in good stead a few years later. 

gsmh

Dickens: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

ultrasilvam

"Divide et impera. (Divide and conquer)". 
 or
 "Don't keep all your eggs in one basket".

Amateurretiree

Don’t take money from your future self.

[Deleted User]

'Good morning, can you confirm your date of birth' ?

MACKEM99

Common sense is not as common as you think.