9 simple rules that will teach you everything you need to know about money

It turns out, everything you need to know about mastering your money can fit on a three-by-five inch index card.

That's what University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack discovered through trial and error, after turning around his and his wife Veronica's financial situation, which took an unexpected turn when they started caring for Veronica's disabled brother. Their income fell, as Veronica had to leave the workforce, and their expenses soared, thanks to medical bills.

"Harold came up with the concept of the index card not as some academic experiment but as a practical solution to the kinds of urgent financial problems many of us encounter at some point in our lives," financial journalist Helaine Olen writes in "The Index Card," the book she and Pollack co-authored to further explain how the concepts on the original card outperform more complex financial strategies.

The coauthors made a few alterations to the original index card, but the overarching theme of simplicity holds true - as Pollack found while turning around his financial life, "The most important advice was embarrassingly simple."

Here are nine rules to follow to start building wealth today, as described in "The Index Card":