Daddy, Why Aren't We Rich?
By John Adams
One Saturday morning, while he was sitting at his computer studying the market, David's 7 year old daughter came up, tugged at his shirt sleeve, and said, "Daddy, why aren't we rich?"
He looked his child in the eye, and thought to himself, what a great question - why aren't we rich?
As she stood there expectantly waiting for an answer, he struggled to come to grips with the realization that, although he had focused his undivided attention on nothing but creating wealth for more than 15 years, he was still broke.
He had bought and sold hundreds of Stocks and several properties over those years, but had never made any real money to speak of.
He looked at his daughter, and asked, 'what makes you think we aren't rich, sweetheart?'
She looked at him sternly and said, 'Because you said that if we were rich, you and mom wouldn't have to go to work any more, and you both still work all the time.
You said we could live near the beach and play in the sand every day. I want to know what you are doing about that. When can we go and live at the beach?'
There’s nothing like a child to cut straight to the heart of the problem - and what was he doing about it?
'We're not rich because daddy made some mistakes,' he finally answered.
'What kind of mistakes, daddy,' she asked.
'Well, I bought some shares that were going down and then didn't sell them soon enough. Then I bought some houses but sold them again just before they went up in price.'
'Why did you do that?' she asked.
He had to think long and hard about that. He had no reason to buy shares that were going down in the first place. He had no reason to hold on to them when they kept going down. He had no reason to sell the properties either, come to think of it.
Her logic was flawless – why wasn’t he doing better financially than he was?
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