“The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty.”
~ Publilius Syrus~
I’m as guilty as the rest of the mob. When a relative stranger approaches me, gains my ear, and ultimately convinces me that they have a real solution to my personal or financial problems…well, I still hesitate and reach back to make sure my wallet is still stewing in the rump pocket.
Let me get in your face and mine. Life is not a saintly adventure. It is full of cataclysmic choices. When you have weighed the pros and cons of doing or buying something, make a choice. NEVER pocket veto a chance to be right and to move your life forward one notch or a hundred.
In these dismal economic times, when most people are licking their FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real), resolve to be decisive.
The alternative is to find your fame and fortune in a soup line with all the losers shaking with fear and unwilling to invest in anything or anyone that could possibly improve their lot. Get out of that line.
Think about the moments when you say, “If only I could afford to get help with XXXX, I’m sure I could succeed.” Most likely you have been saying the same thing for ages, hoping against hope that God might intervene with oodles’ of money or a knight on a white horse who will sweep you off your feet and gallop you away to the castle of your dreams.
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Let’s say a financially-secure relative takes his precious time and explains to you a formula to get a job by the end of the month, though you have been on the dole for six months. It all sounds logical, but when your friend says it will cost you $200 in envelopes, paper and stamps and another $100 in phone bills…you balk. “I can’t spend money,” or “My spouse wouldn’t let me do that,” or “That sounds good, but you’re different than me.”
So you keep your dwindling cash in the rear pocket and continue to pray for divine intervention. Of course, you don’t receive it, unless you consider one meal a day at McDonald’s to be divine.
That friend then gives you tough love and tells you that you are the most moronic piece of cockroach feces on the planet. He tells your wife that she’s a disabler, and then shrugs his shoulders and walks away saying, “It’s your life, fool.”
Husband and wife look at each other in flashes of rage and utter despair. Finally the husband says, “I’m going to invest in that stationary and stamps and send out hundreds of resumes.” He does so and, lo and behold, three weeks later he’s back at work.
The lesson? Find good advice from successful, ethical people and then follow it to the letter. Going cheap is very costly and stupid indeed. Think always of what your Return On Investment (ROI) may be, if you act. There are no guarantees of success when you step to the plate, but the soup line crowd will most definitely keep you treading water forever.
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