The Money Game

I had a moral dilemma the other day.  And it bothered me so much that I lost sleep over it for two days until I realized what I needed to do was give my honest opinion to help this person out of their situation. 

My moral dilemma involved me either doing a refinance for someone and helping them wrap up some debt OR telling that person what they really needed to hear which was, “you need to downsize”.  And the challenge with saying that is it’s not what a person wants to hear.  So, as a result, I risk being seen as someone who can’t get the job done.  And that was the internal struggle for me… because while I’m a person who routinely “gets the job done”, I don’t want to be the guy that gets the job done only to have the person lose their home, declare bankruptcy, file divorce, or any other of a litany of things that can happen when a poor financial decision is made.

What consumers need right now is someone who is telling them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.  And unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there in positions of authority in the financial world doling out terrible advice for the sake of closing sales.  I get it — it’s a tough market and if you can close something, do it.  But, what are you risking for someone else by making the sale?

Two examples: A couple wanting to buy a home needs to verify assets and they ask about using a whole life insurance policy.  “We’ve been paying $200 a month for the past 6 months so there should be some cash value to it.”  The cash surrender value is zero.  And that would’ve been $1200 in a bank account compared to the very little that was actually there.  So my question, Mr. Insurance Guy is: What qualified these young kids to buy a whole life insurance policy before they ever had an emergency fund started?  Why didn’t you encourage them to fund a ROTH IRA instead of pad your own wallet?

The reality is, very few professionals are telling it like it is and I think we need to be willing to lose a sale or two and watch out for our clients.  After all, we should all have a fiduciary duty to someone other than ourselves.

Have you ever left a meeting with someone and felt really really good about your own situation in life?  I’m not writing about one in particular with this post, but over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had MULTIPLE instances where I leave feeling a huge sense of relief at what I’m going home to.

So, after having these experiences, my subconscious has been stirring about what exactly keeps people in a perpetual state of “stuckness”.  I’ve gone through the conversations I’ve had with these folks over and over in my mind and there’s a couple of things that constantly rise to the surface. 

The first is a series of really bad choices that ultimately led them to the place they currently are.  The choices are usually not thought out, unplanned, completely random happenings that lead to a very negative outcome for the person.

The second, and probably worse thing that happens to people in these situations is a feeling of, “this always happens to me” OR “I can’t do anything about it now”.  It’s as if their minds shut down completely and it’s easier to ignore the situation instead of doing something about it.

So, What’s Keepin’ The Man Down?  My theory is that somewhere in everyone’s past there was a moment where they either decided they were in complete control over their destiny, or they weren’t.  And that decision is like putting a thousand pound weight on your dreams and telling them to fly.  Or better yet, it’s like how circuses train elephants.  They anchor an elephant to the ground with an 8 foot stake hammered into the earth until the elephant no longer tries to escape.  Then, even a 6 inch stake will keep an elephant in place.

Peter Senge wrote about this stake that we all have in his book The Fifth Discipline.  The stake in question is your perceived reality.  And Senge says that it’s easy to achieve what you want to achieve.  You simply have to adjust your perceived reality.  Move the stake. 

So, to the people that are stuck, those that have made poor choices and believe they have to live with them, I suggest you do one thing — change your perceived reality.

It’s not that you don’t make enough money to start a business, it’s a matter of finding the resources, or decreasing your debt, or building it on the side.  It’s not that you don’t have the education to get a better job, it’s a matter of changing your focus to finding someone that can help you get a better job.  It’s not that you attract the wrong men or women into your life, it’s that you haven’t decided exactly what you want in a man or woman and once you do, they will appear before you.

What’s keepin’ the man down?  It’s you.  It’s what you are allowing your mind to tell yourself.  Your mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.

To Be prosperous, you must THINK prosperous!