The internet is filled with wannabe wealth gurus and get-rich-quick schemes. While there is some decent money management information online, I’ve actually gotten some of the most incredible pieces of financial advice I’ve ever heard from various roadkill animals who shouted at me while I was driving on back roads late at night.
1. Understand the power of compound interest!
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was dodging potholes down a remote stretch of Missouri highway at 3 a.m. with a cup of lukewarm joe in my lap and my last Marlboro between my lips when my high beams hit a full-on dead black angus steer in the middle of the road who had a message for me. Fresh blood poured from his snout and steam rose from his lips as he mooed out the words, “Understand the power of compound interest!” The second I got home I placed $2,000 into a low-cost mutual fund, which has already ballooned 10 times thanks to the incredible power of compounding. Had I not listened to that mangled steer’s advice, it would have cost me $18k.
2. Start saving now!
When an entire family of roadkill raccoons screams financial advice at you in unison as you dodge them on your Shovelhead chopper on a midnight run to Tallahassee, you tend to listen. “Start saving now!” the flattened mother ‘coon and her six dead kits yelled loud enough to be heard over the sound of my roaring V-twin. Their message was clear: Don’t feel like if you haven’t already started saving it’s too late, but don’t wait another day either. Now is the time to take control of your financial future.
3. Have a budget and stick to it!
The deer that yelled this one at me was practically mummified. Not much left of it but skin, hair, and bone, but it still managed to stand up, look me right in the eye as I sat behind the wheel of my flat black ‘73 Oldsmobile Toronado, and shout at me that it’s not enough to just have a budget, you’ve also got to stick to it. You wouldn’t expect a diet to work if you didn’t actually follow it, would you? Nope, what that mummified deer said to me on my moonlit cruise made perfect sense.
4. Cover your needs before your wants!
I was deep in the Arizona desert, trying to make it to Reno to say goodbye to a dying friend, when a young rattlesnake with its guts hanging out of its mouth appeared in my headlights and barked out, “Cover your needs before your wants!” I thought to myself, “If that ain’t the greatest goddamned advice I’ve ever heard, financial or otherwise.” Sadly, I didn’t end up making it to see my friend in time, but that dead rattlesnake’s words still echo in my head every time I’m shopping.
5. Credit cards are almost never a good idea!
With the night sky cast in a red haze from a nearby wildfire, I buried the pedal of my F-250 and lunged up the rocky trail to my elk hunting camp deep in the Montana wilderness. At an intersection in the steep path lay a roadkill owl whose species I was unsure of because its form was obscured by a layer of fresh mountain snow. The owl’s frozen beak cracked its icy glaze and hooted out, “Credit cards are almost never a good idea!” Now, that may seem like garden variety financial advice, but the inclusion of the word“almost” elevated it from banal to brilliant. Used responsibly, some credit cards can actually save you money and earn you benefits that you just don’t get when paying cash, but that frozen owl knew that it takes a certain amount of discipline to make credit cards work in your favor, and not everyone has it.
6. Your most important wealth-building tool is your income!
With everything I had to my name loaded up in my early ‘80s Econoline van, I prowled a seldom-traveled stretch of upstate New York county road in search of a cheap motel as the morning sun threatened to crest the craggy horizon. My heavy eyes settled on a maggot-ridden, bloated coyote corpse that had certainly seen better days, but was nevertheless ready to scream a key piece of financial advice at me that I still scream at my friends to this day: “Your most important wealth-building tool is your income!” That’s right. Not your investments, not your budget, but your income. Thanks to that carrion’s advice, I immediately renegotiated my salary, and I put that extra income to work using all of the tips and tricks I’ve had shouted at me on back roads late at night by various roadkill animals.
