Worth Its Weight In Gold

A couple of years ago I was shopping with my wife at the local Outlet Mall in Orlando. It’s a fascinating mix of tattooed Brits in soccer shirts, bargain hunters that would happily stampede over a creche of 2 year olds to save a buck on something they don’t even need and people like me who are in a permanent daze wondering “Why am I here?’

This particular day happened to be the day after Thanksgiving, North America’s busiest shopping day of the year. They don’t call it Black Friday for nothing and you can read more about my experience in more detail here.

I was in a sports store with my wife and she was trying on pairs of sneakers. As a nurse who spends a great deal of time on her feet it’s important that she wears something that will remain comfortable all day long.

I think she’d tried on somewhere in the region of two hundred pairs and I sensed she was literally within hours of making a final decision as she had narrowed it down to only two pairs.

I sat watching her go backwards and forwards between the shoes and I could almost hear her mind whirring. Finally, she pointed to the pair she was going to buy with all the enthusiasm of a chicken announcing to his family he’d just landed the job as night watchman at the alligator farm.

I questioned her on this and then the real reason came out for her decision. The pair she was choosing were cheaper. In fact they were over $40 cheaper and no way could she justify spending $90 on a pair of sneakers.

That’s weird I thought, she never has any problem justifying spending $250 on a pair of boots that she’ll wear a fraction of the time.

The shopping trip 2 years ago was a rare moment of clarity for me into a Rich and Happy formula that I never even knew existed, and one that it took me another 18 months to reacquaint myself with.

I pointed out to Helen that the shoes she was about to buy were about as important a purchase as she ever made. Having shoes that were cheap and didn’t feel great when she was going to be wearing them for upwards of 60 hours per week made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

In terms of a Rich and Happy return, having good shoes ranked up there with just about anything you can imagine and certainly well above Coach purses, Channel Perfume and DKNY jeans.

There are multiple sides to being rich and happy and the reason that most people don’t hit the state and stay there for any length of time is because they focus all their energy in one area.

Until very recently I was as guilty (if guilty is the right word) of this as anybody else by neglecting the financial side of my life and trusting that “things will turn out ok because they always do”.

Then about 6 months ago after a meeting with John about the book, I was sat at home staring at my bank statement online. It certainly didn’t look like I was particularly Rich and Happy. Ok, so maybe I was doing what I wanted when I wanted most of the time, but I also wanted to go back to the UK for Christmas and it was looking unlikely.

Trust me, the irony was not lost on me.

Something else that was not lost on me was the multitude of debits on my statement between $4 and $7. I decided to total them up and came up with the grand total I can still remember (for obvious reasons), of $76.66 for the month with a couple of days still to go.

That’s not a huge amount of money, until that is, you realize they were all paid to Starbucks for coffee and the occasional scone.

As I stared in disbelief at my calculator I realized it was actually significantly worse than that because sometimes I paid cash, and on other occasions I went to Panera Bread instead and I wasn’t even looking for those payments.

It became sickeningly apparent I was spending well in excess of $1,000 per year on coffee above and beyond what I drank at home (or in other words, more than the cost of a return flight to the UK). I suddenly remembered a client once telling me if you worked out the weight of coffee in a Starbucks latte, it’s literally more than the cost of gold.

That thought didn’t make me feel as good as the 15 minute buzz the coffee gave me let me tell you.

However, fortunately for me, the wisdom of John Strelecky, combined with the cost of coffee has allowed me to become consciously aware of the money I’m spending and it’s real value.

So now I no longer buy coffee on auto-pilot just because I’m driving past Starbucks on the way to the dog park. Now I ask myself if I really want it and more often than not the answer comes back, “ no not really, and certainly not to the tune of $1,000 per year”.

A How To Be Rich and Happy Update.

We sent out an e-mail to all people that have bought the book announcing we will be undertaking some free teleseminars with myself and John starting next month. Primarily, this is for people that have the book and want help in certain areas.

However, assuming we have space on the call we’d also like to invite people that are toying with the idea of buying the book and putting it into practice. We know it’s an investment in money and also time and we want to make it as easy as possible. Please let us know any areas that you would like us to cover off because this is for you.

We have also doubled the size of the free download to give you a better taster of the what the book is all about. You don’t have to give any e-mail details to get the free sample. Simply click here and it will automatically download to your computer.

We have also started a Facebook fan page and would love to have you on board. Yoy can post questions to myself and John and generally talk about Rich and Happy stuff.