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My $100 lesson: how taking responsibility changes everything
11-year old me had no idea what was in store
They say that you carry around emotional baggage from your childhood for years, decades even. That must be true to some degree, since we all know how EVERYTHING seems so dramatically life-altering when we’re younger (remember those awful teenage years, when even the slightest awkward moment meant social death???)
Anyway, I had a pretty traumatic moment that had an affect on me, well into my adult years. It’s one that I’ve come to think about a lot in recent years, as I’ve been on my wealth-building journey and it’s one that I’d like to share with you.
When I was about 10 or 11 years old, it was the same time as the Persian Gulf War and one of the results was that the US experienced an economic recession. Being from The Bahamas, this had an almost immediate effect on us because of our proximity to the US and also because my family’s livelihood was fuelled by entrepreneurial ventures.
Anyway, at the end of the summer of my 11th year, my Dad took my younger brother and I to Miami and I was really excited because this was time for us to spend together, just us. But also, my Dad gave both my brother and I a crisp $100 bill each, which I neatly folded into my wallet as I thought up ways to spend what seemed like a fortune at…
