Race to Be a Millionaire

To be a millionaire would be a wonderful thing, but I have much loftier goals than most when they say such a materialistic thing. Stories of millionaires, how they made something of themselves out of nothing, inspire me to no end. I could read and listen to them all day every day… if knowing about them would change anything about my life. What I’ve heard so far has changed me.

The Secret Millionaire

Have any of you seen the new show ‘The Secret Millionaire?” It just started a few weeks ago and is about a millionaire each week who goes undercover in a needy area and finds people who would responsibly use or distribute a gift from them to help others in the community. It’s left me in tears without exception. I want to give that badly. It brings back memories of the last few moments of ‘Schindler’s List’ when he is pulling out his pen, coins, and his ring to save just one more person.

Deep down, I am that person.

However, deep down, I am not ready. I am not ready because I have not provided for my family yet. I would not be the man, the husband, I am supposed to be if I spent our savings on others and left us in a bad situation that put me in the hospital or worse. I would be a failure if something happened to me and Beautiful lost the house and had to move back home. I have a plan. She is helping me with it by taking care of my burdens to allow me to be better able to take care of my own load that is called “staying healthy” and “running and growing our business.”

The race is on

I won’t hide the fact that I am out to get money because it is not the love of money that drives me but simply what money provides in our society. If providing for my family meant that we had to have a lot of friends, you know I’d be a social butterfly, but we all know that’s not how it works. The system is quite simple, actually:

1. you carry your own load and the excess burdens of others so as to not let our neighbors be crushed
2. as a result of carrying my load, people pay me money for my services to them
3. this money is put to use for meeting all of the obligations that allow one to survive in society with a chronic disease
4. give back 10% or more, as able to give more
5. as it is provided through excellent or extra load-carrying, our abundance goes into savings for rainy days that are sure to come to everyone
6. once there is ample provision for any forseeable rainy days, we help more peoples’ burdens so they can reach Step #5 themselves

As long as you are able, even in Step #1, you should be on the lookout for helping those who can’t help themselves because they are young, old, or disabled. Suffer the little children and help the widows. People know what is right, but many don’t do it.

Broken economics

Many, probably the vast majority of the population has a broken view of market economics today. When I hear the term “wealth redistribution” my skin crawls and my jaw clenches. That term realistically refers to the unwilling taking of money from one person or people group to others with the argument that they have “more than their fair share.” This is based on an idea that the economy is a pie and just a few people get to eat 80% of the pie, but this is not the reality of the capitalist market.

As people create new services or products and receive money for them, that money had to come from somewhere. These same people from the illustration above believe that these services or products are being purchased with money not being spent where they would have otherwise been spent before. Stop. That is exactly where that mentality breaks down. These new people are turning around and spending the money they receive on many of the same things as everyone else: mortgage, gas, food, entertainment, insurance, TAXES, and probably consumer debt.

Mechanical pencils have been around forever. Did people stop purchasing wooden pencils? NO! There are hundreds of kinds of fancy pens around, yet the standard Bic ballpoint pen is produced and sold in insanely huge quantities today. iPad and iPhone came out, so now there is Android and all of those knock-off tablets, Kindles, nooks. People are spending more money than ever on new things that didn’t exist 5 years ago.

The point of this is that in economics, people make more pie.

Race to make a pie

So, to re-title my post, I’m actually setting out to make a whole new pie. I will cut some up and put it in the freezer for a hungry day, eat some of it every day to survive, and feed those who are hungry because their pie is still in the oven. Will I feed them forever? No, because I expect them to continue baking. They must carry their own load, even though I am taking on their crushing burden for the moment. We have created a society that has hundreds of thousands of people sitting around waiting for people to give them pie when they haven’t even gone to the store to get flour. If “getting flour” for someone is being a listening ear to children in need or playing board games with people in a nursing home, they are serving a purpose and meeting a need. Their flour is coming, baby.

I don’t know how long I have on Earth. No one does. I do know that I’m not going to get caught without having made some pie. Whether it will be enough or not remains to be seen. Why would anyone think that someone can have too much pie after hearing that they can make their own? I know some terrific CFers and their families. They are fighting to do what is right and feeling let down by the system that is in place in their lives. I suggest working a new system that will eventually bullet-proof you from the other systems that are in place fighting with your system.

Go forth and be a great baker.