A couple of weeks ago we discussed the implausibility of money being the root of all evil. Well, I have just been reading something called "Ways to get rich" and you will be alarmed to hear that I am now going to help you achieve your goal with only a very small chance of going broke.

It seems that, if you want a quick return, you'll have to take risks. Those of you who once said, "Will you marry me?" will obviously have no trouble with this at all. We will just have to make sure that the results won't make you want to jump from high buildings again.

First of all you can make big money by using an enlarger on your $20 bills. You can make them as big as bed sheets if you like. Wouldn't you think someone should have come up with this Big Money method years ago? But then, not all of us are financial geniuses.

Please do not try this method with quarters -- well, try it if you like but you will probably give yourself a terrible hernia carrying the darn things to the Coke machine. Yes, I can walk again now. Thanks for asking.

"If you are looking to do better than the average return," says Jordan Kimmel of Magnet Investment Group, "you must accept that investments with the smallest volatility also have the smallest returns."

OK, why would you take advice from financial experts who have never heard of money enlargers, and what do you do if a small volatility is all you have? Trust me, this is not something you can put in an enlarger.

For a start, beware of financial planners who say they can show you how to make enough money to last the rest of your life. This will only work if you don't plan to live longer than another 10 minutes or so.

And if your expert will only help you on the basis of an up-front fee, it would appear that he doesn't expect you to be able to afford his commission after he has shown you how to get rich. Unless, of course, his advice is "do as I'm doing." That'll work.

Look, I know you don't want me to suggest you save money by getting a smaller car but, when I was a kid, our car was smaller than a Mini Cooper. Every morning it carried my mom, my dad, me and my sister and brother, the three kids who cleaned our chimney, two dogs, a canary and Mrs. Murgatroyed from next door. Mom said we were lucky Dad didn't make us audition for Ringling Brothers where we would have to do it three times a day including Sunday. The only reason he didn't was because he thought it would be cruel to the canary.

Now here is something very interesting. Tim Philips of Philips & Co. suggests that right now might be a good time to invest in banks that have "heavy real estate exposure." This could be tricky. I mean, how do we know just how heavy their real estate might be? I'll bet you haven't even weighed your own house. But have no fear because I'm here to help you with this.

For instance, before you buy a house, make sure that, to make it heavier, the bank hasn't secreted six sumo wrestlers in the basement -- whom you will be expected to feed.

Listen, please forgive me for going off at a tangent here, but how did all this money and stocks and investment nonsense start? I mean there we were, peaceful people like Cain and Abel -- and then just Cain -- plowing the fields and milking the pomegranates.

At the time there were only half a dozen people in the world and they must have been fairly healthy since there are now 6 billion of us. But then we invented methods of getting someone else to grow our dinner.

We should never have invented money. We should have just kept on plowing the land and tending the cattle and bartering -- no, no, not me, I'm just a consultant and would need to be fed by someone.

Instead of continuing to be benign producers of provender, all the leaders with the biggest war clubs sat in their caves and painted their likeness on bits of stone, which they gave the farmers for food and concubines. Serfs who were ambitious enough to paint their own stones were invited into the leader's cave for dinner -- sorry make that, as dinner.

Those with the biggest war clubs still paint stones with their likeness on it, except that now we serfs also accumulate stones and the ones with the best stones and the largest volatility get the most action.

But just remember that things change. I mean how many experts could have predicted that your mattress would be a safer place in which to keep your money than a bank vault? What if I had told you to do that, huh?

Finally, if your house is not heavy enough, perhaps I'll let you adopt my six sumo ... anyway, just stock up on sushi, and for heaven's sake don't let them smell teriyaki sauce on you, OK?

Anthony Cicale is a Lemoore resident. His column appears weekly in The Sentinel. Readers can write him at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232 or e-mail anthonycicale@hotmail.com.

(July 20, 2008)