Budgeting For The Truth : How to Stop the Bankruptcy of Lies

My Fellow Compassionate Capitalists:

When I was a kid I took everything my parents said to be GOSPEL!

Why would they ever have any need to lie to me???

This allowed me to have a superiority complex due to the fact I would never have to find answers to questions based on my own merits. I thought that I KNEW everything without actually having to LEARN anything! I feel at this point in the story I need to point out that I was also raised in a very staunch Mormon household. I also had OCD which had OCD!!

I ate perfection for breakfast and to live my life by any standard less…..would just be plain foolish and silly.

At a very young age… before I knew the truth about Santa and the Easter Bunny etc. my parents for some reason decided to screw with my head. Don’t worry… I more than paid them back…..with interest during my teenage years. Anyways, being Mormon we all had these cardboard multi slotted piggy banks that had a section for tithing, a section for missionary funds, a section for savings, and a section for spending. I enjoyed this system as I was a total nerd and pretended I was a little businessman and even had a little ledger that I kept track of all of my money in.

I could pretend that I was Scrooge McDuck while playing with my Hot Wheels 1930’s Bugatti and be chauffeured around to all of my plants and factories and fire people at will! I even had a three piece suit and tie with a pocket watch that I looked particularly dapper in when I went to church on Sundays. As much as I hated church… as back then it was literally an all day affair… I did enjoy clicking my freshly polished shoes loudly on the concrete steps and wooden floors of the church. I was an important business man and needed everyone’s attention dammit!

To my dismay many times as I started my loud walk to the church’s front doors I would hear the most horrible sound imaginable to a five year old boy. A girl named Julie who had no inhibitions and a huge crush on me! She would come running towards me screaming my name and tackling me and kissing me on the ground. This was annoying as hell as I had no interest in girls (that totally changed with age) and my suit would get wrinkled as well as get grass stains.

For some reason my parents thought this was hilarious and one evening after church my parents asked me to come into the dining room and bring my piggy bank. The dining room was a very formal place but my financial affairs were in order and I was confident that I could answer any questions they might have.

My parents asked me to sit down and open up my bank. I was proud of the stacks of money from my allowance/chores that I had….. proving I was a shrewd businessman. My parents then asked me if I knew where babies came from. I had watched enough cartoons to know that undoubtedly when God saw that people hugged and kissed He sent a stork down with a baby. They told me that was correct but then asked a question that rocked my world forever!!

“SCOTT……(my middle name)…… have you kissed and hugged anyone lately? Julie is pregnant and you need to start paying child support”!!! Hot tears welled up in my eyes as I did the math and realized if I paid a quarter a week in child support I would need to be working full time by the time I was in third grade in order to afford my kid.

I swear my parents let me go for days believing this lie before they finally told me the truth.

My Fellow Compassionate Capitalists……. How many of us know people… and maybe even ourselves or family members… who are destroying their financial lives due to fear… based on lies?

How many of our fellow Americans have been taught that everything the government says or does is GOSPEL? How many of us have superiority complexes because we are too lazy to find out for ourselves the answers to our questions. How many of us live a life that’s so busy that we must take the word of the government or the media?

How many of us refuse financial education… even when it’s offered?

Now more than ever is the time and the opportunity to set the example!

We as Compassionate Capitalists do not have to live in fear!

We can budget our time as well as our finances to be spent on the TRUTH!

We do not have to spend ourselves into bankruptcy because of the lies. We can continue our financial education.

We can take action.

We can improve our self-esteem and confidence by setting ourselves up for financial victories.

We can learn about human nature so that we can write a positive ending in our chapter in the book of life.

We can show how in the face of oppression and instability we kept our wits about us.

We refused to be complacent!!

We proved that victory comes to those who “NEVER awake from the American Dream”.