To Be a Fat Cat
That’s me… I’m the fat cat. Or at least I’ve always wanted to be….
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” 1 Timothy 6:9
When you’re able to put aside the societal bias against the Bible, you will find the profound nuggets of truth inside are impossible to deny. Unfortunately I tend to be a little bit hard-headed — although I’ve read that verse many times, it required extensive personal experience with the matter to really understand it. As Mark Twain put it: “A man who carries a cat home by its tail, learns a lesson that can be learned in no other way.”
If you’re like me, then you see a lot of social media content from people who claim to be rich. Even worse, they usually claim to be making a ton of money while doing hardly any work. Internally, my struggle is that I have a deep desire to be rich. I honestly don’t even know why. But when I see those videos, I immediately get swindled into finding my own ways to make money. It’s a personal flaw I have had as long as I can remember. Here is how it served me so far.
- Financial Advising:
The start of my journey into the forrest of headaches and stress. I had no business becoming a financial advisor out of college, I simply did it because the interviewers showed me a path to making a LOT of money. They were salesmen, and they sold me on the job. I didn’t even know what a financial advisor was! While I was there, I found myself in stressful situations all the time. I was absolutely miserable at that job, but in a weird masochistic way I continued to show up because I believed it would make me rich. It never did. Now, after 4 years since leaving the company, I find myself harassed by debt collectors who want me to pay them ~$14,000. Allegedly I owe money for pre-paid premiums on policies that have been canceled by the clients. I was young, naïve, and blinded by money — so of course I signed the contracts without reading them… the ones that said pre-paid premiums would become personal debt if client contracts were canceled. The headache lives with me today and I’m reminded of how stupid I was to take that job every time the creditor calls me. It seems small, but it was my first nudge to stop playing these stupid “get rich” games. I should have listened.
2. Board Advisor:
Fast forward a few years, and I find myself being offered a position on the board of a very small publicly traded company. Man, my ego was through the roof. To be on the board, the crooks running the company required a $100,000 investment into the company’s current private placement offering. I didn’t have that kind of money — I’ve always been broke. But my wife’s uncle, who was also being offered a board position, stepped up and loaned me the money. The proposed board compensation was HUGE. We assumed I would be very wealthy in ‘no time’ and I could pay the loan back — no problem. So we invest our money and start serving on the board. Uh oh… turns out we did absolutely 0 due diligence, and not only did we join a board full of crooks [literally, 2 individuals were barred from the securities industry] but we also discovered there were misrepresentations about our investment, and the amount of ownership we would have in the company. We tried to stop the completion of our share registration, and undo the entire purchase, but the crooks forced it anyway.
Now we find ourselves in meeting after meeting with lawyers as we prepare to take serious legal action against the company and the officers. I have never seen a dime from the hours of work put into this company, and I never will. Now it’s a fight to get our money back, and I may find myself spending years as a part of this legal battle. It’s a draining amount of stress, and it leaves me just a broke as I was when it started. But I have an obligation to fight because I used someone else’s money to get there. I’m trapped into doing years of extra work for no pay. The pattern becomes clearer.
3. Bitcoin Miner:
I’m [un]fortunate enough to know a thing or two about the bitcoin mining space. Enough to be dangerous... literally. Earlier this year, I knew that a certain type of bitcoin miner was selling for roughly $16k/machine while BTC was trading at $60k. Fast forward to the summer, and BTC is trading at $20K while the miner prices have dropped to $4k/machine. I thought I spotted an opportunity — the miners were cheaper and theoretically more profitable. So I gathered up a group of friends and we all put in money to buy several miners. Just another scheme of mine to make a quick buck.
It turns out there are a lot more expenses and complications to mining bitcoin than what you might expect. Like most industries, there are lots of “middlemen” ready to take a cut. Margins are razor thin. Through my own failings and misunderstanding, it came to light that we did not have the cash flow required to operate the miners. We needed to sell and get our money back. This is where the real disaster starts.
Even though bitcoin continues to trade at ~$20k, the miners are collapsing in price. I post them at $3.5k/machine, nothing sells — $3k.. $2.5k… $2k… nothing. The losses continue to pile up, the machines wont sell, and my friends who trusted me are patiently waiting for their money back.
Those miners are here next to me as I write this in my office. Listed at $1.5k and still not selling — for those counting that is a 60% loss. While Bitcoin is still trading at about $20k. It’s a constant reminder of how I failed my friends, and it hurts every morning when I see them. That’s a form of torment that I’m sure many people experience, but it’s never talked about. Failure thrown in your face before you can finish your morning coffee.
Conclusion:
So I’m the guy that has carried the cat home by its tail many times. For some reason it took this long to understand that my greedy actions are the reason for my painful, bloody, cat scratched arms. I have 4 more stories to add to this list, but I’ll save those for another time.
I’m not writing this to complain, though it may sound that way. I’m writing this to give very practical examples of that message from 1 Timothy — chasing after riches will leave you in pain. Each individual endeavor is minor on its own, but they compound into a whirlwind of stress, ruin, and destruction. I want people to reflect on what they are doing, and why. If you find your job, or whatever project you’re working on, to be very stressful, and you’re doing it because you might make a lot of money…QUIT. It’s the devils way of keeping you from your true potential. It’s a distraction. It’s a snare. A trap. It doesn’t end well.
These few examples show what happens when you chase riches. I now owe money that I don’t have. I owe work that I won’t get paid for. And I owe sincere apologies to friends who trusted me, but may never trust me again. Continuing down this path would leave me broke, exhausted, and alone. Exactly where the devil wants me.
The Bible is wisdom. Had I listened sooner I may not be the little ball of stress that I am today. The past is in the past, and now I get to act as a warning sign. DON’T BE THAT FAT CAT
Cheers,
B.
