Wisdom on Wealth

Whether your primary role is that of parent, president, partner or patron, you will benefit if you know how to lead…effectively.

Just the word “leadership” conjures up mental images that, for many, are more caricatures of famous leaders than characteristics of effective leaders.

What comes to mind when you read the word “leader?” A corporate CEO? A head coach? A powerful politician? An influential religious figure? An intellectual? A philosopher?

Those are all expressions of leadership for sure.

But what about a mother of two children? How about an experienced tradesman looked up to by the younger guys? A career educator? A soft-spoken librarian who diligently sees to it that all his patrons are served with excellence?

Last week we took a depressive look at the end-game of runaway financial co-dependence between parents and adult children.

I promised we would follow up with some strategies you can use at every stage of life to prepare parent and child alike for the financial separation that should come with adulthood.

As a parent, you should have a lifetime goal of helping your children learn the twin concepts of freedom of choice and freedom from consequences.

As parents, we spend much of our time in a child’s early years simply protecting them from consequences they have no capacity to comprehend. We do not let them play in the street, ride in the car standing up, talk to strangers, touch the hot stove or stay up as late as they want to.

“Mom, I promise this will be the last time. I’ve just had some unexpected things come up and I don’t have money for the mortgage payment. You don’t want me to lose my house do you?”

Laura could feel the all too familiar waves of nausea, anger and anxiety crashing against her heart. She would try to resist, but she knew it was no good. He would wear her down. He always did. And he knew just how to do it.

Her son is 47 and Laura finds herself trapped in a codependent financial relationship that seems destined to sink her financial ship. Whatever she does from this point is going to be painful.

It didn’t need to be this way. But she and her late husband Rob kept telling each other they would deal with it soon. Maybe next year. After the crisis of the moment is over.

He was an only child. They’d wanted to have more, but nature had other plans. So, they doted on their son, lavishing all the love they had for an entire family on their entire family…of one son. He was the center of their universe.

And it didn’t take long before he realized it.

Fifteen minutes will save you…

You can probably fill in the blank. Because one of the largest insurance companies in America has built a brand on the promise that spending fifteen minutes getting a quote from them can save you fifteen percent on premium costs.

I’ve never called those folks, so I can’t speak to the value they do or don’t offer. They do have cleaver ads, I’ll give them that.

But the higher the cost of failure, the more concerned I become when the first thing mentioned is price.

If I find myself wandering around the cereal aisle at Huge-Mart and notice that the Huge Mart brand of granola is $2 lower in price than a nationally advertised, well-known brand, what is my risk if I go for the low-cost option? If I find I just don’t like the cheapo brand, I’m out a few bucks.

But if I make a decision about automobile insurance based on someone offering me a low price, I need to wake up and pay attention.

I’m a repeat offender.

A two-time loser. Maybe three. Incorrigible. I wonder if there’s a registry somewhere I’ve need to be on.

It started about fifteen years ago. I decided I would switch things up in my exercise routine by taking up cycling. Unfortunately, the borrowed bicycle I was using wasn’t the right height for me (who knew bicycles came in sizes?). As a result, I aggravated my middle-aged back. It was my first foray into the world of back pain.

But it wouldn’t be my last.

Like any good ex-jock, I determined to push through the pain. That was a mistake.

I spent the next several months in a doomed loop of exercise, injury, lay off just long enough to feel better but not get better, rinse and repeat. If you’ve ever suffered from chronic back pain, you know there is no shortage of opinions as to how to effectively treat the issue. You’ve spent many sleepless nights reading up on this stuff, unable to rest due to your pain.