“Ma’am, we’re ready to get started on your car. Which tire is it?”

It’s amazing how life works out sometimes. My tire had a nail in it which prevented me from going to visit my grandpa today, and I couldn’t be more grateful. This morning, as I walked out of the house and to my car as I’ve done a million times before, I somehow dropped my keys. The keys didn’t just fall, they seemed to gravitate under my car, which caused me to pause and look at my tires. This is the only reason I noticed the nail in my tire, which could have caused a blow-out on the highway.

Funny how life works sometimes.

As I sit here in the car dealership, I reflect right now on my grandpa, who has been my inspiration in life and for whom I am incredibly grateful for on so many levels. My grandpa Pierre inspired me early in life to start thinking about money and to follow my passions.

My Inspiration for Investing

Pierre knew the importance of investing and was the first person to explain to me how stocks work. He had a group of investing friends who met once a month to review their stocks and to predict the next big win. He and I would try to do the same, but with no money attached. We had fun reviewing the growth of a handful of stocks we’d selected and tracked. I still have the green binder he gave me, filled with photocopies of newspaper clippings and notes showing me how to read the stock pages in the newspaper. Every time there was a family gatherings, he’d ask me how my stocks were doing.

In my teens, I took a gamble and placed a couple thousand dollars of babysitting and birthday money in the stock market. With trust and faith in a family stock broker, I selected a technology money market fund, and hoped for huge gains. After all, technology was growing tremendously and these stocks had been on a steep rise. Unfortunately, this was just before the tech stock market crash of the 90’s and my nest egg dropped practically to $0 within a year. Despite this loss, I was inspired to keep trying to grow my hard-earned money.

Through my experience in stock market loss, I definitely learned about the importance of placing market investments in a variety of companies and industries in order to sustain continued growth. Some segments will increase and some will decrease, but at least I won’t relive my initial mistake. In addition to diversification within stocks, it’s important to diversify all investments. A solid portfolio could include real estate, savings accounts, metals, and pure cash.

By the time I graduated high school, I had begun to diversify my investments. I already had a savings account at my local bank that provided a small return in interest. I had also opened a handful of staggered Certificate of Deposits (CDs), which at the time had great interest rates, ranging from 5% to 9%. Since I always liked having cash on hand, I staggered these CDs so that I always had the option of putting cash back into my savings account about every six months. I even began investing in material things that I hoped would grow in value over time, such as stamps.

Stamp collecting also happens to be a hobby that I share with my dad, and we had a lot of fun looking over our growing collections. However, to date, stamps haven’t turned out to be quite the money-maker that I had hoped for as a child. In hindsight, I wish someone had introduced me to the idea of collecting gold coins!

As for stocks, it took me a long time to trust in the market again. After the initial loss in my teens, my next market investment began with my 401K that I started with my first job out of college. I started with a modest 6% investment of my income into my 401K. Again, if I knew what I know now, I would have invested 100% of my income. But, at least it was a start in the right direction.

Grandpa on the Importance of Saving Money

My grandpa also instilled in me the value of saving. “Every penny counts!” When he and my grandma would visit, they’d always bring a plastic baggie full of pennies, which I’d deposit straight into my piggy-bank. Although it wasn’t a simple piggy-bank, no. It was a huge Coca-Cola-themed, kid-sized bottle piggy-bank. What fun! I never did manage to fill that entire bottle, but it taught me the joy of saving and seeing my money grow. Thank goodness that my bank had one of those new counting machines for my bulk of heavy pennies by the time I was ready to convert it into bills and into one of my bank accounts. Otherwise, it might have taken me days count and roll them all.

“What are you saving for?” my grandpa would ask me. My answer was usually something that was just out of my reach and that I would have to save a lot of money for. First, I was saving for a huge stuffed animal, then it became a bike, then a car, and then a house! Once I was able to buy whatever I was saving up for, it seemed to lose its appeal and I would look for the next big thing I should save up for. I would ask myself if it was really worth turning in all those years of savings for that item, and the answer was always “No, I’ll keep saving for something better!”

Ok, I’ll admit towards the beginning of my savings journey, I did break down and buy the first thing I wanted – a kid-sized stuffed rabbit. The novelty wore off after a month…

Grandpa Says Live Life to the Fullest

I like to think Pierre helped build my life’s money strategy. I can remember him saying things like “Keep saving!”, “Live life to the fullest!”, and “Follow your passions!” He knew how to enjoy life without breaking the bank. I remember my grandpa mostly as a quiet man, but he was zealous about life and had a lot of life adventure to draw from with his words of wisdom. When he spoke, everyone listened.

Pierre lived an incredibly full life of adventure and always appeared joyful and at peace with the world. He had a hard childhood, but it never stopped him from being kind to everyone and seeing only the good in others. He loved history because he believed we should learn from our past, and he was always ready with a good story. My grandpa had a very diverse life full of passions. He flew small planes, grew grapes and other fruit, and made wine.

Before he met my grandma and had a long and loving marriage, Pierre was even a priest. As you can imagine, that created quite a stir. He spent weeks in Africa as a missionary, riding around the dusty landscape on a motorbike and helping people in any way he could – whether it was building shelter or even extracting abscessed teeth.

Pierre also recorded and released two albums, in which he was an opera singer. My grandparents both had musical talent and they would put on a show for the family at Christmas time. Indeed, what a wonderful life he has lived and how many lives he has affected in a positive way.

Pierre followed his passions and it led him to many new and exciting corners of the world. I don’t think a family visit has gone by without him encouraging me to follow my dreams. But my grandpa also showed me that it’s possible to be both frugal and happy. It’s important to be happy in the now, but to also to plan for the future.

Back to the Present

“Are you having tire problems, too?” This question distracting me for a moment in the car dealership waiting room. The old man next to me elaborating, “I have a nail in my tire – and it’s always in the right rear tire. Isn’t that something?” Hmm… mine is also on the right rear tire. I took a short break from my writing to speak with the kind gentleman sitting next to me. He was amazed by my high tech set up – a phone and a Bluetooth mini keyboard. He expressed that he was thankful that I had noticed the nail in my tire prior to my trip to see my grandpa. He really reminded me of someone.

Funny how life works sometimes.

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been reminded of how important it is to save for the future, be grateful for what I have, and to continue to live life to the fullest.

Tomorrow, I will again go visit my grandpa as I’ve done often over the past three weeks. Pierre is fighting for his life after requiring two unexpected brain surgeries. Every day, a family member visits him and we want nothing more than for him to regain the strength to survive. At his age, it is not proving to be easy. The hardest part is his lost ability to communicate verbally, which the doctors say will need to be relearned with speech therapy over time. Even though he is not able to speak to me, I can still sense that he cares deeply for the family and is trying to impart wisdom even in his current state. Even still, grandpa maintains his pride and holds his head up high. What an inspiration!

Tomorrow, I will go and try to inspire him as well, just as he inspires me. I will talk to him about the positive things in my life and tell him how much he means to me, and we’ll exchange knowing looks.

Funny how life works sometimes.

Tomorrow is a brand new day of possibilities.

Did someone inspire you early in life?