How do you roll?
Do you see the problem that I see in this picture (above)? Let’s talk about how you roll. On the left-hand side I have an emergency fund representation, and on the right-hand side I have an opportunity fund representation. This makes me think of a story that my 89-year-old father told me about when he was just a youngster visiting his Grandma Moison who had an outhouse at the back of the house that was the bathroom. It was the only time that he could recall that he ‘got a licking’ from his grandmother. Why? Because he used the wrong toilet paper.
When you went back to the outhouse, you had a choice of two different things. One was this really nice box that was filled with (at the time) tissue paper that had previously been wrapped around peaches that you would buy at the grocery store, in a box, individually wrapped. Grandma Moison would take those tissues and save them one at a time and place them in that box. But those tissues were for company. Let’s call that the opportunity fund representation. What the family was supposed to use and what my father used as a youngster, because he didn’t realize the difference (oh, he probably did, but who wouldn’t want to use the soft tissue). Family, on the other hand, were supposed to rip a page out of the wards catalog, which was also in the outhouse.
Here's the deal. If you’re out of the good stuff, you’ve got to use the bad stuff. If you’re out of the bad stuff, you’ve got to use the good stuff. The problem is when you are out of each. That’s the mentality of what I want you to be thinking about today because, like this picture, this is what a lot of people do; they use every individual sheet until both their opportunity and also their emergency funds have been depleted.
We always talk about saving when we’re down just a few more sheets in the roll, but isn’t this something that you want to make certain that you have enough of all of the time. We don’t do this on our own. We need to be told. We need to be taught. We need to have someone in our corner, sometimes pushing us along, sometimes instructing us on the right things to do. But here’s the deal; how do you roll? Are you always at the very end of the roll or are you at the beginning of the roll? Is there a choice that can make a difference in your life? I would like to say that there is an opportunity for you to roll the right way.
So, think ahead this week, between opportunity and emergency, where are you at? If you are unsure, or if you realize that there is a change that needs to be made in your life, perhaps it’s time to schedule your Financialoscopy.
