What is it to be human? When you are young it means one thing. Prowl, figuring out your way in the world, fear angst, perhaps not being what your parents were, or at least better. Yes that is it… you are youth and you can become better than your parents. We learn patterns by nature. We learned their patterns and we know what we want to correct, the problem with this is we don’t know the right patterns. There is no real mentor or no real role model, or perhaps we get lucky and have a model, but it is still different, a different time, a different circumstance.
You have kids and realize this. You watch them win, get hurt, most of these things you have little control over. What do you have control over? You forgive your parents, they were just doing the best they could. What do you have control over? Bank accounts, bills, collage funds, retirement plans, that is it, and you have little control over these things. I have 200k given to me by my father, a gift that I get penalized for if I don’t keep putting money into it. A gift? if I need to liquidate I get penalized on if I take it out. Lets look at this. Out banking system is now a negative sum game. You used to put money into banks and make money, it was called interest. This no longer happens, now you get charged for taking money out. You get charged for exchanging money, you get charged for everything. Might as well keep it under your mattress. The money that you think you own, that you invested elsewhere at a horrible interest rate, try taking that out. 3% at five years, not the 6% that they promised you now has a 30% early withdrawal penalty. Why?
You have to keep spending, that is the real way to make equity, buy a house for 600k, borrow, wait 4 years, you can sell it for 1million, if you miss the timing, sorry. Ok I get it, you can choose a market, Chris picked a good market… but you are still in debt, you own nothing. One market collapse, one wrong move by the wrong administration and it is gone, you own nothing, you never did. How do you escape this?
The same way our smart/dumb parents did. They have done it all before us. You start to think about what you can buy out of pocket, a piece a property. Do that, just buy something, don’t worry, you can set up a tent if the shit hits the fan. My father bought a boat, you can drop the hook anywhere in America, anywhere, anywhere, no road taxes, not property taxes, no school, no nothing you are off the grid. hippy communes figured this. Get off the debt cycle. Why are you there? I will tell you why I am there. I started my own company to get away from this. I don’t own my own house, so work is important. It is my insurance, it is my house payment. It means my wife doesn’t have to work. So work is important, I sort of see it as a sacrifice, if I work hard enough, I will never have to worry about this.
It is not true though. I work hard, I have slow paying clients, deaths in the family. I have to get smarter, smarter means ditching the system. How do I go on the prowl again?
I buy a boat a or property, pay for it outright. Then I pay for a house outright. I am no longer in debt. I bought both my cars this way and I have no problems. Now, if you have a place to live, on a piece of land, you are in a better position.
Prowl james, prowl.
Now I think about what exactly makes me good at what I do. What am I really good at? I am great at changing things for the better at an organization level. I can make anything better in three categories. Cost reduction, customer experience and total outcomes whether that is population health of revenue. Let me make you better and listen to me.
I can monetize this service. The real question is,
Can I apply it to life.
The answer is yes. I just need to do it.
And then maybe I will understand something that my parents already knew before they died.
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