Years ago, David saw first-hand just how devastating it can be to have a bad (or no real) financial plan... or one that relies on taking excessive risks. At one of his early jobs — this was just before the dot-com bust — some of his friends had invested a lot of their retirement savings into the company's stock purchase plan. They were doing great. The company was doing great. Everyone was making a lot of money, and everybody was happy. Then, they suddenly lost everything. They were heavily invested in the telecoms and tech companies of that time and you know what happened there. And for the next 2 years, they just got hammered.