That Was Scary…

You’ve seen those commercials where a woman is running through field of flowers. She’s usually in a yellow sun dress.

It’s sunny.

Happy.

Smiling.

The flowers are up to her waist. Her hands are out to her sides. She brushes them gently over the tops of the fresh blooms.

Often, it’s a commercial for some new medicine. And the voice-over is listing off all the ways the ‘BooLanta’ or whatever it’s called could kill you.

That arms-wide-at-the-sides is how my son runs.

It’s terribly inefficient. And the #1 reason he was one of the slower kids on his 1st grade flag football team.

Who knew? I thought kids could just..run.

So yesterday, we had to break it down step-by-painful-step.

This. Is. How. You. Run.

Because basketball season is coming up. And there is a lot more running.

Flapping your arms up and down the court like some model in a drug commercial running through a field of daisy’s isn’t going to cut it.

The Impact On Your Money

Here’s why this matters.

And it’s exactly what I told my kids. They probably didn’t get it. You will!

When you do something wrong and just try to do it faster, all you’re doing is teaching yourself to do it wrong faster.

• If someone is a bad investor, just investing more doesn’t make the investment compound faster.
• If someone is a bad budgeter, changing software or adding more spending categories doesn’t make the budget better.
• If someone can’t manager a little, making more money isn’t going to fix poor spending habits.

Make sense?

That’s why fundamentals are important.

That’s why slowing down is important.

Even slowing down to the point where it’s absolutely painful, and incredibly boring sometimes.

I had my son at one point standing still in the driveway. And all we did was practice the simple motion of moving one arm.

Here’s where your elbow needs to be.

Here’s how high you raise your arm.

Here’s how to swing your arm.

And every single time he wanted to go at light-speed.

And every single time I had to yell ’STOP, STOP, STOP!’

At one point I was holding both of his arms, and sloooowly moving. Just so his brain could record the motions.

And you know what? After about 30 minutes, he was a hundred times better.

Then racing up the driveway…he went right back to woman-in-a-flower-field-form.

Getting Back To Money Basics

Rarely do people get rich overnight. You can build wealth over time.

You’ll find if you slowly learn the basics, you’ll build the good habits necessary to get there.

And if you don’t keep practicing them, the moment you ignore the basics you start losing your direction, and your money.

Today, make sure you haven’t sped up to the point bad habits have crept back into your life. That’s spooky.

• Have your saving habits changed?
• Have your spending habits changed?
• Has your goal changed, and you don’t know why?

Slow it down if you need to. That’s ok. The good news is it will in-fact make you go faster in the long run.