Proverbs 6:6-8 “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.”
A few weeks ago we got a request at ol’ AW headquarters here in Spokane, Washington (just kidding; we’re in Lincoln, Nebraska). “Could you guys write something about how to, you know… build wealth?” I gotta say, dear reader, that this request made me more than a little bit sad. You see, in the eyes of its luminary authors, everything we write on this here blog machine is extremely related to wealth building (or, we might say, capital building. We always want to build capital. And the capital we talk about is often financial, but not always).
But the point is taken: we haven’t written much in a while about how to take the advice of our friend Jeremy Pryor, who, in a recent episode of our podcast, asked:
How should a multigenerationally-minded family leader proceed, financially? Build an enormous arsenal of resources, and train children who can steward those things.
“Ok”, you might say to this great and glorious goal… “but I make $60,000 dollars per year. This ‘enormous arsenal of resources’ of which you speak seems… a bit like wistful thinking.”
Or maybe you heard that admonition, and had the opposite reaction! Maybe, on your way to resign from the 9 to 5, you thought, “Peshaw! This entry level analyst role isn’t my destiny! I’m going to stay at the house, shepherd my children, lead my family and operate multimillion dollar businesses to bless my many descendants!”
…and now reality has well and truly hit, and you’re stuck wondering how that darn rent is going to be paid next month. Hint: it ain’t gonna be paid by dreams, no matter how noble-sounding they are.
Fortunately, we have all sorts of Biblical models for the steady (an attainable) accumulation and stewardship of wealth. Before this little series is over, I’m going to use the above picture of the Proverbs 6 ant – working hard at the right times to provide for the future – to tell you how to build wealth. If you try to skip to step 3 (the management and deployment of an enormous arsenal of resources) before you’ve spent some serious time in steps 1 & 2 (I’ll get to those in a second), you’ll end up either a pretender or broke (likely both). So, shall we consider the Ant? Yez… let’s.
Step 1 – Work while it’s summer
“Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer…”
That ant, she didn’t spend her summers in Cabo. Despite not having a boss around (by George, she’s a modern homesteader/entrepreneur!), she took advantage of the season (summer) in which work was available to her and produced–and set aside–resources for the future. So many of us listen to stories from guys who have been able to become their own boss, accumulate resources and provide the type of life that we’re dreaming of (namely, establishing streams of income that allow us to focus increasingly on our primary mission as fathers), and we get fired up. This is a good thing!
But here’s the danger: we’re being slowly boiled to death in a pot of instant gratification, and that means we can accidentally start to expect that the dream of financial independence (which is almost completely void of value, by the way, if what you really want is to retire at age 40 and play a lot of xBox… but very cool when it “independence” means financial flexibility for investment, increased generosity, etc.) to happen after a just a few months of really hard work and the best of intentions. The Bible doesn’t suggest that summer is a moment of inspiration. Rather, it’s a season for hard work. And I hate to break it to you boys, but that season might last for… a few decades.
Again: “Summer” isn’t a moment of inspiration. Rather, it’s a season for hard work. And that season might last for a few decades.
We’ve written before about the danger of ignoring previous generations’ wisdom, and this is a moment when we can look to them for a bit of perspective. Your grandparents didn’t have the same IV drip of NOW in their veins that we have grown accustomed to, and the lack of this thing impacted them in all sorts of ways (some good and some less good). But one thing that we can say for sure is, the generation who hand-wrote correspondence, then would wait 2 weeks to hear back, often (coming out of The Great Depression) took a job, thanked the LORD earnestly for that job, and then put their shoulder to the plow for… the rest of their lives!
Were they perfect? Should we just stop here and reminisce about the good old days and the greatest generation? As much as that might be fun (and wise!), that’s not my point. I’m just here to point out that they did not demand to see the fruit of their efforts RIGHT NOW. There is a unique nobility to the planting of trees under whose shade you won’t ever sit, and our grandparents (and most every generation before them) are excellent examples of this long view of family building.
What does this have to do with your average 20-40 year old dad? Well, it’s very easy to go listen to someone who has succeeded in creating whatever it is that you’re after, financially or with regard to your family rhythms or whatever, and assume that you can make that same thing happen for yourself in… no more than a year or two.
Well FIE on that impetuous, endurance-less vision.
Do you really want to start building “an enormous arsenal of resources”? Well you’re going to need some dry powder to get that ball rolling, and the way that most of you young bucks are going to accumulate that will be to find a J.O.B. And I’m not talking about a 6-month side hustle. The Normal and Unsexy Job is very out-of-fashion right now, but allow us to vaunt the security that health insurance and a regular paycheck can provide to a young family builder in the early season of their journey. It is not insignificant.
Do we hope that you’re a VP of Haberdashery or Cog Production by the time you turn 55, still selling the vast majority of your time and effort to enrich another man’s family? Of course not. Now I’m not going to say that some of you shouldn’t become leaders of big companies, but having an important position in a company is not the primary goal (job titles are never, ever, ever a goal for a family builder). If you hear people living the dream of stewarding assets in their 40s and 50s, know that most of them worked like dogs in their 20s and 30s to build up the cash that would fuel business acquisitions, real estate purchases, and investment opportunities. Jumping into ANY of those pursuits without being adequately funded is a recipe for disaster.
In my own life, I worked for a solid decade after I was dead certain that I wanted to be a business owner. During that decade, I saved aggressively, so I’ve been able to launch my biz without the immense pressure to turn a profit that most new entrepreneurs feel. (Having a short runway will cause you to make bad decisions up front, partner with people you shouldn’t, and stress you out dramatically.) The cushion I enjoy in my business is felt every day by my clients, my family and my pillow (where I sleep easily and soundly each night, not worrying about tomorrow’s funding). So HOORAY for those hay-making years at the ol 9-to-5. They weren’t as fun as what I’m doing now… but they put a lot of skill and experience into my tool belt, and set me up for my next parlay. THANK YOU GOD.
Are there rare exceptions to my admonition to go get yourself a job? Of course: If you’re 25 and have a great startup brewing – why not take a swing? If it flames out, you can always GET A JOB. And there’s nothing wrong with working for yourself from the get-go… IF you already possess a skill that people are excited to pay you money for from day one. But the exception is not the rule. Most of us need jobs… and need them for a good while.
You want NOW? I got your now: NOW is the time, for many of you, to take on the responsibility (a mundane one? Sometimes. A humbling one? Often. A character-forming one? Always!) during Summer, as the ant would call it. Summer is the time to work and store up!
Summer can last for decades, especially if you’re the first guy to step out and say, “In this family, we’re going to be done with the broken model of leaving the home in the years during which fathers are most needed.” Your kids, if you’re successful, might not ever need to go work elsewhere, or they might choose to do so in order to bring new skills and perspective into the family’s endeavors. But all of this can be harpooned by the false notion that you can jump from being the standard American college grad straight into a 20-hour workweek occupying yourself exclusively with asset stewardship and family leadership. Taking the long view is a lost skill for many of our generation, and it’s step one to building wealth.
In Part 2, I’m going to talk about what you should be doing while you’re working in those early years to start building wealth (hint: you don’t just stick mounds of rubber-banded cash bills in a savings account or under the mattress). Until then, spend a few days reveling in the nobility of your 9-to-5, bros… and remember the ant.
*Mark Parrett is one of the founders of Abraham’s Wallet. When not blogging for you here, he’s raising a family in Salt Lake City, UT and working as a financial planner at Outpost Advisors.
