The alpaca attitude

Friends of ours moved to the country and bought a family home on a two-acre block.

They had so much space that they thought it would be nice to buy their kids a couple of alpacas. You know, to give them a real taste of the country life. The kids even gave them names: Alberto and Pedro.

Truth is, buying alpacas as pets is like taking heroin for a headache: they're basically camels without humps, and with the aggression of Tony Abbott.

Alberto and Pedro lived in the family's front yard.

The problem with that location is that alpacas are protectors by nature, so they naturally felt it was their responsibility to protect the family from any ‘predators’ that might approach the front gate — like the postie, family friends with small children, or grandparents.

Seriously, you'd walk up to their gate minding your own business, and then … Bam! Out of nowhere, two surly, six-foot-five alpacas would be charging at you. Whoosh! They'd swing up on their hind legs, cock their heads to the side and … Hoick! They'd shower you with green spit.

It was totally out of control.

So one day, over a cuppa, my wife offered to take them to our farm.

There was method to her madness. We'd already lost a number of our lambs that season to foxes, so the idea was to put the alpacas in with a flock of sheep and let the foxes know to keep the hell away — or they risked getting stomped.

Good plan.

I dutifully borrowed a horse float from a neighbour and drove to our friends' home to pick up Alberto and Pedro — only to find that things were already out of hand.

The 40-something father had Alberto in a headlock and was attempting to frogmarch him down the driveway.

It was two against one.

Pedro was darting around, shrieking at the top of his voice, violently headbutting him.

‘The kids are really going to … don't you bloody spit on me! … miss them,’ he panted.

The kids were inside the house playing games, oblivious to the fact that their dad was copping repeated kicks to the kidneys.

Fast-forward to the day after the fires.

As we left the remains of our destroyed home, I looked across a burnt-out paddock and saw Alberto and Pedro circling protectively around a small flock of burnt, traumatised sheep.

The alpacas' hooves were so badly burned they were having trouble standing. They'd collapse to the ashen ground and then stoically lurch back up, groaning in pain. The Department was trying to destroy the sheep — but Alberto and Pedro wouldn't let them.

No-one messes with their flock.

Nothing was going to stop them. Not being burnt. Not struggling to stand. Not staring down the barrel of a rifle. They didn't flinch. They didn't take a backward step. That was their job. That was their purpose.

How's that for focus?

I want you to think about your money exactly the same way.

See, after years of doing this, I can already tell who's going to make it — the people who have that same alpaca attitude when it comes to their money.

It's easy to spot them. They say things like, ‘Okay, so we're just going to have to work our arses off until we're debt free' or ‘I can't afford to run this car, so I'll sell it and buy something cheaper’.

These people don't know it yet, but they're already free: free from excuses, free from second-guessing themselves and free from constantly worrying about their financial future. That's the payoff for standing up, making a decision and taking responsibility for your situation.

But most people aren't alpacas — they're groundhogs.

They do the same thing day in, day out … and then bitch and moan that ‘nothing ever changes’.

Case in point: currently I have more than 13 000 money questions in my inbox. At a glance I can tell which ones are sent by the groundhogs (most of them). They ask questions like, ‘So I've been thinking about learning about day trading’ or ‘I can't pay my bills … should I just go bankrupt :( ?’

Groundhogs want the magic diet shake rather than the daily 5am run.

And that's why, for most people, five years ago looks pretty much the same as today … with a few nicer clothes — but with the same excuses, the same regrets and more debt.

Here's the deal: the goal of the Barefoot Investor can be summarised in one word: control.

I'm going to provide you with a set of steps that will give you control over your money and your life.

It will work for you, just as it has for thousands of others.

But it ain't easy.

It's not enough to skim through this book and think about opening a few accounts. If it were, everyone would be rich.

I'm deadly serious when I say this: if you want financial freedom, you need to take charge. And, just like an alpaca, you have to be prepared to stand up and fight like your life depends on it — and never, ever back down.

Put your foot down

The first person you need to fight is yourself.

Picture what you looked like in your high-school photo.

If you were anything like me, you were awkward, gangly and so ashamed of your braces you didn't open your mouth (though you now thank Christ your old man made you get them).

Even though we're now older, possibly partnered up, and have visible veins on our legs and hair growing out of our ears, deep down we're all still only a few shades from that insecure little kid.

But here's the important part: that kid in the picture formed a lot of beliefs and assumptions about who you are and what you're capable of.

And the problem is that decades roll by and life gets busy, and if no-one challenges the negative ‘scripts’ that auto-play in your head whenever you stuff something up or get rejected, those teenage beliefs bed down, compound and become ingrained — they become who you are.

And they slowly but surely eat away at your self-confidence, keeping you locked in a job you've lost interest in, relationships you've outgrown and a financial state that stops you from experiencing life on your terms.

Believe me, as a finance guy, I've seen it thousands of times.

It's like a mate of mine who's an awesome mechanic. I've watched him turn his head to the side and listen as a car pulls up, and casually tell the driver, ‘Time to tighten your fan-belt cobber … and get them to change the oil while they're at it’. To me, he's like the Nostradamus of cars. For him, it's nothing special; it's just what he does: after years of doing something day in, day out, patterns emerge that are easy to pick.

It's the same with my job. The best way to get to the guts of someone's financial situation (other than poring over their financials) is to turn my head, and listen intently as they describe their situation.

Patterns always emerge. Here are some of the scripts that may be turning over in your financial fanbelt right now.

Go on … answer that.

I'll wait.

Most people don't think about their long-term future, but nearly everyone has a specific age in mind when they'll die.

Next, subtract your current age from that number.

Now you have a ballpark figure for how many years you've got left on the planet.

The question is: What are you going to do with them?

You can continue living in the past, beating yourself up about the money mistakes you made when you were younger, telling yourself you've left it too late … or you can rise up and make yourself proud.