What if after working hard for years and years, you woke up to find that you'd made it, and that you're finally a millionaire?
What if it happened overnight, by accident?
What then?
That's what Accidental Income is all about.
One person's reflections on keeping your sanity, your morals, your family and your soul after wealth arrives.
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For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
- Shakespeare: Hamlet, 1603
This is something we struggle with periodically.
The conclusion we've arrived at is this: except under exceptionally rare circumstances we no longer make loans to friends, family or business acquaintances.
This has been a hard, and yes sometimes expensive, lesson learned.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
One of the thigns that has always amazed me is our societies reliance on credit: loans, credit cards, mortgages and the like. On would think that upon reaching a position of affluence the thing to do would be to avoid borrowing anything from anyone.
I mean, who wouldn't want the opportunity to say that they were truly "debt free"?
Anatole France (1844 - 1924), The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
I'm sure you've seen the classic scenario where a lottery winner quits his or her job the day after winning the big prize - before even cashing the check.
My opinion? A huge mistake.
No, not the quitting, necessarily, but the lack of thought put into the decision.
Having money doesn't mean that quitting your day job is the right thing to do. There more to work than just a pay check. Much more.
- Margaret Cho
Almost every year for the past several years I've made sure to get a $100 bill and put it into a Salvation Army kettle.
Why? It feels good!
Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)
Time.
OK, many things are really more valuable than money, but for this discussion I'll be focussing on time, and how some habits that you developed before wealth may not be serving you as well now.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the first things we did after "winning the stock option lottery" was to exercise some of those options, sell some of the resulting stock, and then invest some of the proceeds and spend the rest.
I think we invested more than we spent. (I know we lost more than we spent, since this was also just before the stock market crash of 1987, but that's a story for another day.)
One of the things we spent money on was a new car for my wife. It was sorely needed, her previous car having been nearly totalled the year before.
Naturally we were in a position to get a "nice" car, and we did. This was 1987, and the car, a new Pontiac Bonneville, cost something like $20,000. To the car's credit, and to my wife's, it lasted nearly 10 years, so we feel like we truly got our moneys worth out of it.
Or did we?
- The Beatles
Forget the wealth, every time I hear the old adage that "money issues" are the leading cause for marital strife and divorce I'm reminded about how really lucky I am.
- W.C. Fields
I can almost hear the question: "So, just who the heck are you, and what makes you some kind of authority on wealth?"
Specifically who I am is unimportant. This site isn't about me, really.
I'm certainly no authority. Far from it, actually. I'm just a guy that got lucky. Really, really lucky.
