How A Single Pivotal Person Taught Me What Real Wealth Looks Like
How A Single Pivotal Person Taught Me What Real Wealth Looks Like
Mad Money Monster May 13, 2019
Pivotal moments come around only so many times in life. The same can be said for pivotal people. It wasn’t until I was 18 years old that I met one such pivotal person. When I was 18 I thought real wealth meant a big house and flashy car. After meeting that person, I quickly realized that I was wrong. Over the course of a few months, my thoughts about money were completely reshaped and my financial outlook changed forever.
Up until that point in my short life, I had a very limited and distorted view of money and wealth. I was the youngest of four children in a poor family. Ironically, our trailer home was on the right side of the tracks which meant I was fortunate enough to attend a good school from kindergarten all the way up through high school.
But attending a good school didn’t stop me from sitting in study hall my senior year calculating how much money I would need to make to be able to afford a nice double wide for my impending adult life. I am not kidding. I can vividly recall sitting at that desk with a piece of scrap paper and meticulously combing over how much I would expect to pay for a mortgage on a double wide and all the other expenses that go along with home ownership. My circle of influence was small and the bar was set low. At 18 years old, that was the future I envisioned for myself.
MY WEALTHY FRIEND
Back then, from my perspective, anyone who didn’t live in a trailer seemed rich. Obviously, rich is a relative term, but I was seriously impressed by anyone who lived in a real house. And since I attended a good school in a good area, a lot of my friends lived in real houses.
In high school, I can remember driving to a new development to visit a friend at his new house. As I walked through the door I was greeted with a sea of white towering walls, a vaulted ceiling, and an impressive staircase. I watched from the kitchen as my friend hurriedly descended the staircase to say hello.
I literally felt dwarfed and not worthy of his friendship sitting at that kitchen island, and it was at that very moment I decided my friend’s parents must be mega-rich. Now, till this day, I have no idea how much money or actual wealth my friend’s parents had. I just knew they could afford a big house in a nice neighborhood. To me, a big house = rich.
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