My brother and I are only 21 months apart, so for most of our lives, he went first and I followed soon after. School, swimming lessons, learning to drive, off to university. I`d watch him go, and take mental notes, and I`d be along, two years later. We were a little competitive, but different enough in interests and personalities that it never got out of hand. I confess that when we both graduated and started our first jobs, we compared salaries for a while. I`d be ahead by a few thousand, and then he`d catch up. But then he had a period of unemployment and comparisons became unseemly – good thing, because now I`d have to double my pay to get anywhere near his. While he was unemployed, he went back to school to get his executive MBA, to add to his engineering degree. Which was, as it turned out, a sound financial decision. […]