Remember the parable of the tortoise and the hare? Slow and steady wins the race! Surely you’ve heard the expression that “It’s not a sprint but a marathon!”. Both effectively portray the discipline required to get ahead in a long endeavor. Financial security and independence is a long endeavor. But who wants to wait? Whatever happened to slow and steady?
Over the past few decades we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that it’s now or never. Get it while you can. Live for the day! Get rich quick schemes bombard the television. Reality TV shows with like “Platinum Babies”, “MTV Cribs” and “The Real Housewives of (pick a city)” depict opulent lifestyles as if they were the norm. This is what most strive for as they endeavor to keep up with the Jones’.
Most recently I was reading about the country of Dubai who, on a massive scale of debt leveraging, has built entire islands designed as Palm Trees and one series of islands that (when viewed from space) looks like the planet Earth. They are also building the world’s largest skyscraper. Sounds great…if you can afford them! It is now estimated that there is a 35% chance that Dubai will default on these debts causing a massive economic wave that will impact economies worldwide. What a shame. It’s a crashing house of cards!
Whether as individuals, corporations or countries it’s important that we change our view from instant gratification and fast money to one of slow and steady incremental success. The stories we hear of instant and overwhelming success are few as compared to the relative population. And I would argue that this success is not instant, as portrayed. We did not see the hours of hard work and dedication that Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods spent honing their skills. What about the patience and sound financial practices of Warren Buffett. His financial philosophies and subsequent wealth were developed over decades…not days.
That’s one of the reasons I love participating whole life insurance as a long lasting, predictable financial tool. It’s safe and guaranteed, yet offers many benefits that can’t be found anywhere else. The fallacy of whole life insurance is that it’s only to protect against financial losses in the event of death. This could not be further from the truth. By utilizing tax-free policy loans we can act as our own bankers and self-finance our personal lives. By borrowing from ourselves and paying ourselves back with interest (just like we would had we borrowed from a bank) then we keep the money that we would have sent to another financial institution. We grow our own bank slowly and steadily by cutting out the middleman. We can start small with home repairs, build it up to financing a car and maybe even a house one day. And when we are done we can have a tax-free stream of income at retirement and still leave a nice inheritance to our loved ones when we pass.
It might not be as sexy as building the world’s largest skyscraper or having the latest handbag that the reality stars are carrying. That’s for sure. But life is rarely as we see it on TV. Slow and steady is the way to go when it comes to your financial freedom and participating whole life insurance is a valuable tool that you should have on the journey. After all, Rome was not built in a day!
Scott Storace
