I will never forget the time I was in a grocery store and watched a woman bring a jar of mayonnaise to her cart-pushing husband. He shook his head, saying maybe they could buy it the following week. She slowly returned it to the shelf.

There are many reasons why this memory is so sobering to me, but primarily it indicated so vividly the difference between having and not having enough money to meet basic needs. During the years since, I have often thought about what I witnessed that day.

I have imagined the dry sandwiches the wife made for her children without the mayonnaise. I have thought - judgmental, I know - about what a poor provider this man was. I have considered the dominant role of controlling the purse strings that he seemed to hold over her and how unfair that was. I have wondered if the same scene was repeated the next week.

Providing sufficient money to meet the needs of a growing family is a real challenge felt by both men and women, especially in this state where average earnings are comparatively low. For me, I found the answer to that challenge in an aggressive career in entrepreneurship.

For more than a quarter of a century, I have fought the risks of self-employment and the rewards have been generous. I have been successful by learning and applying the principles upon which success is built.

Unfortunately, success and the possession of lots of money (which usually follows such success) gets a bad rap sometimes. Yet having money is so much better than the alternative. To me, wealth and having the things it can buy, is just the payback society gives for doing something really well.

Michael Jordan made $36 million a year because he was the greatest basketball player alive and someone was willing to pay for that talent. Warren Buffett, the great investor, has billions because he exercises his talents at buying stock and companies.

Wealth, then, may be nothing more than the outcome from a good and faithful steward who builds upon talents rather than buries them.

Is the person who develops the talent for making money any less honorable than the one who develops the talent of playing the piano, or ice skating, or helping kindergarten children reach their full potential?

Money, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. What one chooses to do with it, perhaps more than anything else, indicates whether the individual is good or bad. I've heard it said before: Money makes good men and women better and makes bad men and women worse.

Money can be traded for so many wonderful things, such as college education for your children, or warm clothes in the winter, and proper medical treatment for your family.

Money can help you purchase a home for your aged parents, if they need your help. Or you can donate it to your church or your favorite charity. It can help your married children get into their first home or their first car.

In the right hands, money can do great things. Yet money cannot buy real friends or health or complete peace of mind. It cannot buy real love or respect.

Granted, some may have more innate talent to make a lot of money than others may have, yet do we beat up on the opera star or the sculptor who practices, exercises and develops talents? I believe the ability to make money is, generally, in direct proportion to the amount of time one takes to learn a skill, coupled with market demand and a certain amount of luck.

As we are reminded over and over, money cannot buy happiness. But it can buy more happiness than poverty ever did. Plus you can always buy a jar of mayonnaise when you need it.