Money for Hot Wheels

If I gave my son a choice between a 5 dollar bill and a candy bar, I am pretty certain he would take the cash ! By the way, he's only 4 years old. Malachi, my son the financial wizard would most likely turn around and tell Daddy to put the 5 dollars towards a Roth IRA. Such a good boy. Nah, in your dreams Daddy!

He would say something along the lines of " yay, now I can go buy some Hot Wheels"! 

 I am VERY PROUD that my four year old knows a little something about  the value of money!

Like any proud parent should, I love to brag on my children. But honestly, EVERY CHILD deserves to be bragged on. Building upon this opinion, globally, every family should have access to financial literacy programs for their children. That way,  every parent can be as proud of their children as I am of mine.

This is a global thing

My kids will never ever need to borrow
money. Of course, they will borrow it for the right reasons. Home ownership, car lease, vacation home, or they will borrow money and use it to make more money.

Why would anyone raise financially illiterate children? Probably because they handle money poorly themselves. The truth hurts.

Where do we even start when it comes to teaching our children about money, financial responsibility, and financial literacy? Maybe it has to start with a desire to model it our own lives.
We have to reach a point in our lives where we say "enough is enough". Every dollar we spend, we must ask ourselves: "If I buy this, what will it say in the future to my children? What will I be able to teach them about money with this purchase? "

Teaching our children can be as complex as teaching them about balancing a checkbook or as simple as putting gas in the car. Okay, putting gas in the car may not be an example of financial responsibility. Or could it be? What can we say to our kids about putting a better quality gasoline in our cars? How about "pay now or pay later? " Maybe we educate them here on the value of taking good care of our cars so as to minimize expenses later.

Maybe with each and every purchase we can find something to teach our children. Words like delayed gratification, saving, finding a good deal, or getting what you pay for come to mind.

This blog is taking a slight turn. I want kids to be good stewards of their money . I also strongly believe that by starting with our children's financial literacy , we can strengthen our own countries financial future.

THIS IS NOT AN AMERICAN THING.
THIS IS A GLOBAL THING.

As this blog grows, we will translate it into many other languages. Together, we will learn from each other as we teach our children about making good financial decisions.

And maybe, if we pay close attention and listen carefully, our children may have something to teach us about money.

A long journey ahead

I have a long journey ahead of me. I am busy overcoming anxiety, depression, stress, and a whole bunch of other things

  But I am committed to not letting anything prevent me from overcoming these struggles. I want to be an example to others that we can over anything.

I realize that these are powerful words to live up. If my past were any indication of my future success, then it wouldn't even be worth it to try. 

So I am throwing away my past. Only the present exists.

I don't even want think about the future. I have so much work to do NOW.

Am I scared? Yes, I am a little scared because I don't know what I am doing and I have so much to learn about building a life that I can be proud of.

I am going to try to not take this journey too seriously so that I can help more people relate to my story. If. I can make people laugh along the way, then
I will have succeeded.

You want it too much

Someone once said to me "You want it too much". They were saying that I wanted success too badly and that it would inevitably spell disaster. Like I would come across as desperate or a "loose cannon" to anyone that I was " trying to do business with".A border line lunatic trying to get rich with little effort to show for it.

How could anyone put a label to desire? Who are they to put a name on the fuel that lights the fire. If I possess a burning desire to succeed then making mistakes won't derail my train. Wanting something intensely sounds much better than just holding on to a pipe dream and hoping that one day your  genie shows up on your doorstep promising you three wishes.

Wanting something badly enough will mean that you are likely to be able to be specific about what it is you truly want in life. You may not know exactly how you are going to get there, but you will have one advantage over most people: You can then say without hesitation that YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT.

From there you give credibility to the words " nothing's gonna stop me". It won't matter who laughs at you or who tells you your crazy or that it will never work. You can just laugh and say that yes, I am crazy. It takes a truck load of crazy to become successful. The kind of

Success that can be defined by the letters :

L, E, G, A,  C,  &  Y. 

Can I be in your blog Daddy?

Daddy: Okay Malachi, I am doing a blog post. What should I talk about?

Malachi: But daddy, what should our channel name be? Ok, I'm gonna start making up names for our channel. I'm gonna call it the Daddy and Malachi show. Let's add some more pictures.

.

Daddy: Okay, here you go.

( he would pick the picture of me with the head injury).

Malachi : Can I just have one more candy? Please? Please?

Daddy: OK, one more.   

Malachi : Let's go.

Daddy : Go where?

Malachi : Get the candy

Daddy: What candy did you get?

Malachi: Skittles.

So, my son thinks that a blog post and a YouTube channel are the same thing. For now, I will not try to explain 21st century social media. 

Daddy :

What else should I say today?

Malachi: Um, I don't know. 

The end of today's Malachi inspiration I guess.

I'm gonna quit my day job

Tomorrow morning I have to get up before most of the west coast does to go to a job that I despise.

Wait a minute. That should read "a job that I hate".  The job wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be.

Don't quit your day job? Well, I am planning to do just that. Obviously, that famous little line has other connotations than just employment. Since,  I am not a comedian in training, I'll use it here.

Let's keep in short tonight. I have to awake in a few hours to go to that wonderful job of mine.

Ok, I will cut to the chase. Sometimes it's okay to quit. Life's way too short to keep doing things that aren't doing you any good. Quit this, quit that. Some things and some people deserve your quitting them. If you don't, they will eat you up inside until you regret the last 5 wasted years of your life.
Quit those things, yes. Your dreams and goals? Never.

Share the journey

Look up personal development on YouTube and it seems everyone wants to tell the world about their personal success story. They will share how they got there and the struggles they endured on their way to the mountain top.

But very few people ever document their journey. They don't share the frustration and the sleepless nights that tend that inevitably accompany the long road to success. When we don't hear about the journey, we miss out on the failures and the pain.

What else could we call it but "pain"?
The word "journey" could easily be replaced with "struggle". This struggle comes complete with the aforementioned frustration and sleepless nights. But it also accompanied by fear, loneliness, stress, anxiety, and a dozen other emotions.

The truth of the journey to success is that is hard in capital letters!  No one really talks about how difficult it is to break away from obscurity and find your way to notoriety. Rags to riches and poor to wealthy. None of these successes happened overnight.

There were long hours, missed holidays and birthdays, missed meals, lost sleep, and a host of other sacrifices. Friendships were damaged or lost and marriages were tested or all together broken.

Ultimately, the price to pay for success is an individual one, different from person to person. However, the consensus among nearly every success story is that the journey there was not an easy one. Lottery winners, inheritances, and trust fund recipients are another story. Anything that one does not have to work for to get is ultimately unworthy of true definitions of success.