Audition: “BMW” RMB Casting. This was fun and I think I’m perfect for it so let’s hope they invite me to the callback next week!

I hope I’m not becoming too annoying by posting so much stuff on the topic of personal finance…yeah, I can be a bit much when I’m excited about something. I just feel that it could have made a tremendous difference in my life if I would have had ANY guidance in that area earlier in my life from family, a friend(s), school, a stranger, the wind, etc. So I’m just trying to give what I didn’t get myself.

Anyway, I was talking to the new employee, a 25 year-old, that I’ve been trying to help at work with his relationship with money. I wanted to revisit how he felt about me saying that buying a new car as soon as his current car was paid off was a great way too "stay broke” for the long-term, in a financial sense. I told him that I understood his reasoning that this new car would help him “get girls” (we laughed and I applauded his honesty, lol!), but that he had to do his best to live within his financial reality. Heck, I want to buy “shiny, new shit” too, just like anyone else, but that I have to live within the resources that I have at my disposal or create new resources.

He understood and has put that idea of purchasing a new car on the back burner for now…way back. I told him that his current car should become more and more shiny with each payment that gets him closer to it being totally paid off. At that point the car will be much more of a total asset of his and that will increase his net worth.

He perked up at the notion of actually having a net worth.

Honestly, he has a bit of a road ahead of him to get completely out of debt, but one HAS to start somewhere! When I was $15,000+ under the boat in debt, it felt overwhelming, but I had to start somewhere and 18 months later I had worked it all off and started to build a positive net worth for the first time in my life.

I suggested that he look at his current car in a very different way and REALLY take care of it so that it has its best chance to take care of him. Many cars, these days, will last 200,000 miles if maintained correctly. BUT boy do I ever understand how addicting that “new car smell” is!

The absolutely best part of this story, for me, (ALERT-long ass run-on sentence coming) is that when I was leaving work another, different, new and also young employee (who I had never discussed money relations with) approached me and said, “I overheard and liked what you said to "so and so” about his car becoming shinier with each payment closer to complete pay off”.

I was speechless! Why? Because I believe that becoming “the guy” at work who is known to have serious opinions on money relations is making a difference in my world. It’s a little bit of what I can do to make the world a better place. These are young people that don’t HAVE to wind up in a shitty financial place like I did. They are smart enough that if someone explains something to them, in a language they can understand, without judgement, they can get the lesson and make positive changes! And the beauty of it is that I’ve been talking about it long enough, and he’s proof, that I don’t have to speak directly to people to get the word out.

My hope is that in 20-30 years they can look back and remember that “skinny, older…ish dude” left them with something useful and positive.

http://www.stephonfuller.com