Sally & Ronald
Aug 03, 2016Is she too young to understand the difference between depreciating assets and appreciating assets? I thought .. hmmm .. I’ll give it go...‘Well, if you can enjoy spending your money on things that go up in value over time, rather than things that go down in value over time, then you’ll always be getting richer.’ I said.
‘What goes up in value?’ she asked quizzically.
‘Homes, rental properties, investments, pensions, companies’ I said, trying to make it sound interesting.
‘And what goes down in value then?’
‘Pretty much everything else!’ I said. ‘A car that costs let’s say one hundred pounds will probably only be worth 40 or 50 pounds after a few years. The longer you keep it, the less it’s worth.’
‘Well, why did you buy Sally then?’ she said.
‘Good question!’ Susan jumped in with a check-mate smile on her face.
Sally is one of the characters in the Disney movie Cars – the Porsche who Lightnin’ McQueen falls in love with! They decided my car would be called Sally the first day I got it.
I had resisted the temptation to buy a fancy car for so long but about a year ago, against my better judgement I thought, oh why not?
‘And why have you still got Ronald?’ Amelie asked, smelling blood in the water!
Ronald is my old Volvo estate. (I don’t know why they gave it that name.) Ronald is practical, sensible, reliable .. very boring! And old man’s car if you ask Susan!
‘Ronald is already fully depreciated.’ I said. ‘It’s not really worth anything anymore, only to me!’
Anyway, while Sally was out of action, I had to drive Ronald again. There’s was a time when I liked Ronald, but now I had gone off him significantly!
But during those two weeks, I discovered something very interesting.
I didn’t like Ronald. I didn’t want to drive it. I hadn’t given it any care of any kind since I bought Sally.
Now I was forced to drive it around, I had to do something. So I pumped the tires up here and there. I took it to the car wash. I cleaned the inside out. Cleared out all the rubbish that had accumulated in it.
And do you know, my feelings towards Ronald started to change! I was really surprised to see that: the more I cared for it, the fonder of it I got, and the more I enjoyed driving in it. 'Isn’t that interesting?' I thought to myself.
And what was even more thought provoking: is if it’s true of an old Volvo like Ronald, what else is it true of I wonder?
What about other people in our lives .. might it be true of them too? People that we tolerate or don’t even like, what would happen if we started to, as John Maxwell says, 'love on them'? Might we grow to love them, see the good in them?
And what about ourselves? If we took more care of ourselves, valued ourselves more, respected ourselves more .. loved ourselves more .. Might we grow to love ourselves too, and perhaps start to see ourselves in a more positive light?
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