February 18, 2006

• "Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."

  
  

       I love that quote, and partly because of where I am in it.  I have been teaching my boys that life is a game.  You look for the rules and then play within the rules to either win or lose.  I see people every day who try to go outside the rules.  They think they can compromise their way to a better position,  that they will be loved if they wear the right clothes, and they can borrow their way out of debt.

  
  

       Oh they will say they don't believe those things, people have an amazing capacity to rationalize and deceive themselves.  But look at their behavior and you'll see what they really believe.  I've always thought Shakespeare was making a joke when he had Polonius advise his son, Laertes, "to thine own self be true."  I have never seen someone act long term in contrast with what they truly believe.  If you believe that family is important, you may make a momentary compromise from time to time, but over the long haul, you are there giving yourself to the people you value the most.  If you believe that you are innately worthy of love, you don't have to clothe yourself with costumes designed to flatter your body and distract attention from your self.  If you know that wealth comes from playing by the financial rules of life and isn't ever just handed to you, you don't think that you can borrow it, inherit it, or marry into it.  Wealth comes more from who you are than what you have. 

  
  

      Ah, yes, you say, she is sneakily working her way back around to money again.  Nothing sneaky about it.  I want to share a conversation I had with Tucker.  He asked me some questions about money.  And specifically, he was wanting to talk about the difference between Momi and Daddy's approach to money.  He started, "Before you got divorced, did you think about that Daddy is rich and you'd be poor?"

  
  

       So we talked about what does it mean to be rich and how do you know when someone is rich?  He said, "Well, Daddy works just like you do, but he makes a lot more money so he's rich."  Imagine that spoken in the tones of a nine year old who can't believe that Mom is too dumb to figure out such a basic principal.

  
  

       I gave him this illustration, "Let's say my friend makes $200 a day.  But every day she spends it on the way home, she stops at a restaurant to pick up dinner for $35, gets a new pair of shoes for $63, and pays her electric bill which this month is $102.  And the next day the same thing happens.  She buys dinner, a new DVD, and pays her credit card.  Maybe on day three she doesn't spend at all because on day 4 she has a $400 car payment due.  At the end of the week she earned $1000 but she has no money in the bank.

  
  

       "Now let's say Momi makes $70 a day.  (Momi always gets to be the hero in my little stories.)  On the way home, she picks up a pound of hamburger and some spaghetti noodles and makes dinner for less than $5.  She knows that she doesn't need new shoes so she doesn't stop at the mall to even look.  And she knows that the electric bill ($103) and the phone bill ($35) are due this week and she has no credit card debt or car payment so she puts $65 in the bank.   Tomorrow she does the same thing.  On Friday, she writes the checks for the bills, and has $187 left over to put into her savings account where it will earn a little interest and grow over time.. 

  
  

       "Which one of these two people is richer at the end of the week?  The one who made $1000 and spent $1000?  Or the one who made $350 but saved $187?"

  
  

       It's a matter of rules and playing within them.  The Momi in the story knows that it's not what you make, it's what you keep that determines whether you win the money game.  And there is more peace of mind from having $187 in the bank than a new pair of shoes and a DVD.  I'm not suggesting that I never buy "luxuries" and my kids certainly know that with their games and toys and so forth.  And God knows I buy more shoes than I really need.  But I don't ever violate that weekly savings rule.  If I don't have enough money in my account to write that check and still make my weekly deposit into savings, I don't buy it.  It's just that simple.

  
  

       I showed Tucker my weekly "spending plan" for things like groceries and gas and shoes and movies.  And he knows that a couple weeks of spending less than we have in that account will mean a week when we can spend a little "extra" and get an oil change or go see a movie. 

  
  

       We talk a lot around here about values and goals and how you need to be honest with yourself about what your values are in order to acheive your goals.  Because you are gonna do what you value, you can't help it.

  • 9:17 am
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