Bribes, Begging and Ending up with Nothing...
Becoming a wealth creator instead of spender or saver.
My son and I have a genetic disorder (thanks mom - eye-roll) that makes our bones a little funny. This includes our teeth enamel potentially being weak so I have to be totally on top of my son brushing three times a day.
It’s been a waking nightmare most days. You can imagine the scene:
Me: “hunny would you like to brush your teeth or would you like me to do it?”
Him; “Nobody!! I don’t want to brush teeth!”
Me: “Sorry Bud this ones non-negotiable. We have to brush our teeth and get the germs off.”
Him: “Noooooooo!!”
And the chase ensues, toothbrushes and tantrums are thrown, I try to insist, then bribe.
“Hey let’s watch the Blippi toothbrush song!”
“How about I brush your teeth and you can brush mine?” until he proceeds to ram the toothbrush down my throat with a vengeance.
Then the begging starts...
“Come on Hunny we NEED to get our teeth brushed. Please open your mouth. No, stick your tongue back in. Please get it out of the way of the toothbrush. Hunny, we are almost done then you can have boobie.” (more bribes of course - save the ultimate for last).
Every morning, noon and night it's the same shit. Until this Tuesday rolled around and....
he got AN ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH.
He f’ing LOVES that thing. Brushed his teeth six times the first day. Giggles when it brushes his tongue. ASKS to brush his teeth.
Like, where did my screaming toddler monster go? He turned into this happy, excited, smiling -with his teeth- brush lover because of a stupid, spinning SPIDER-MAN TOOTHBRUSH.
If only I had known this would CHANGE MY LIFE! All that patience, desperation, frustration disappeared in a blink because I found something I didn’t even know we were missing: an electric toothbrush. One tiny change in the routine transformed everything.
I think that’s how most of us live in our financial worlds. We don’t even know what’s out there that would make our lives easier. Make them better. We think we have to threaten, bribe, or beg to get kids to do something just like we think we have to save to borrow to buy things we want/need. We don’t know that something can change our lives for the better because we never thought about it or simply didn't know the option existed.
Did you know there are three ways to buy a car? We aren’t going to count leasing here because that’s not owning the car - it’s renting it.
You probably know two ways already. You can pay cash, or you can borrow money (loan)
and pay for the car over a few years. We will use five years in our example.
SAVER
Last week we covered how getting a loan for a car can increase your financial stability. One thing we didn't talk about was time. If you chose to save $40,000.00 to buy a car, you probably would have to put off buying a car for four to five years. You have to go without the convenience of the car while you save the money to pay for it in cash.
SPENDER
What if you didn’t already have $40,000.00 saved and you chose to get a loan? You would get the car right away without the wait. You would pay interest for the convenience of getting a car a few years earlier than if you saved the money first.
So which one of these options brings you further ahead financially assuming you didn’t already have the funds to buy?
TRUTH BOMB
The reality is, both people end up in the same place after five years: back at ZERO, with a five year old car.
Let’s look at these charts so we can see what the car purchase looks like for both the spender and the saver.
The saver starts at zero, saves every year, and then pays cash for the car: bringing them back to zero.
The spender buys the car first, pays it off over time, and after five years is also back at zero.
What you probably didn’t know - and is the start of learning about creating a family banking system - is there is another way to buy your car (or anything) you were never told about.
This third option is becoming a wealth creator.
In this process, you take the money you would have used to start saving for your car and use it to start your family banking system instead (I’ll show you how by building knowledge slowly in upcoming newsletters). You could even take a loan to start your family banking system in the right circumstances so you don’t have to put off the car purchase.
Each time you buy a car using your family banking system, your financial stability starts to follow along the lines of the chart below. Since the average person buys 11 cars over a lifetime, you can start to imagine the difference being a wealth creator makes over time.
How does this happen? The answer is two-fold:
You stored your money in a safe place where it continued to work for you and grow every day - without risk - even while you use it to buy cars
You are now recapturing (keeping) the interest you would have paid to the bank if you got a loan from them
That is the power of this system: it's making your money do three jobs at once - forever safely compounding, doing the thing you want to do (like buy a car), and also protects your family if the worst happens. We will get into how each of these work in upcoming editions - but for now, baby steps.
Did you enjoy this week’s publication? I’d love to hear from you in the comments or have you pop into MY inbox with anything you have questions about. Let’s open up the conversation!
Warmly,
Becky “wealth creator” Webster
I’m ready, Becky! I want to be the wealth creator. I never realized both the saver AND the spender end up in the same place! I was always feeling bad about doing things the loan way as I was never able to save enough to buy anything flat out. I’m learning that mentality isn’t really any better than mine’s been all these years! I want the electric toothbrush!!
Your son has shown me I may be able to LOVE a financial system after all! One I didn’t know existed! Can’t wait for next week’s newsletter to learn more!