If you ask people why they want to be rich, the most common answer will be “so that I don’t have to worry about money any more” …

Think about it, no more money worries!

So, let me pop that little bubble for you:

MICRO

I went to the supermarket on Friday and duly handed over my credit card to the attendant who swiped it for me … only to find the TRANSACTION DECLINED.

What!? I thought that I put those days well past me? I called my wife who said that we must have max’ed out that card (it has a $17k credit limit!) that month and the scheduled payment hadn’t been processed yet, but didn’t I have another?

Well, I did have a ‘business’ credit card on me, as well, but that wasn’t the point … it appears that even rich people have credit card issues from time to time.

Not to worry, I just whipped out the old debit card and trotted off to the ATM, to find …. INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.

Now, I was confused … how could our bank account be empty? To be sure, it’s only a daily money needs account (not The Big One with all the zeros) but didn’t I just pop $15k in it, ‘to be safe’?!

Turns out that the debit card that I’ve been using is attached to an old bank account that we now just use to manage one of our properties … and, I’d unknowingly been using the wrong debit card and draining it with my day-to-day cash needs …. oops.

So, there I was shopping without any cash or credit cards; I solved the problem by rifling through the parking change sitting in my car (fortunately, there was about $50 or $60 just sitting in my center console) and even managed to lend $2 to a another ‘rich’ friend whom I happened to bump into the street as she was rifling through her purse for some cash to buy a loaf of bread from the bakery that I had just stepped out of.

Seems like she can afford a $3 house and $1 mill. renovations, but was equally ‘cash poor’ (on that particular day) as me …

… oh, the irony!

MACRO

Some people go through their wallets, handbags, coin jars, and various bank accounts adding up the bits and pieces to see if they have enough in the ‘kitty’ to buy that nice [insert discretionary item of choice: clothing; car accessory; concert ticket; etc.; etc.].

If my experience is anything to go by, it doesn’t stop when you become ‘rich’ … you see we suffer from budgeting problems, too.

It seems that a combination of market shifts and various stock market and housing market collapses and we have (relatively speaking) overspent on our house; not to mention, we haven’t yet sold our old house, and we have a complete ‘rehab’ of the newbie about to begin …

… and, herein lies the problem:

We provided our architect with a brief to draw up plans for renovations to fit a $450k renovation budget, which he assured us was not only possible but eminently achievable given the modest (if you can call adding a room, updating a kitchen, and refitting 7 bathrooms ‘modest’), mainly cosmetic, renovations that we had in mind

Well, when the quantity surveyor came in with an estimate of $890,000 for the renovations to the house – – this not including the costs to rehab the pool, tennis court, and redo the gardens etc. – I found myself doing what everybody else does:

In a panic I went through my “wallets, handbags, coin jars” – by way of checking all of the statements on my various bank accounts – adding up the ‘bits and pieces’ to see if we have enough in the ‘kitty’ to handle the cost blow out … thankfully, we do [AJC: you know, sometimes a mill. or two just seems to ‘slip through the cracks’, but when you add it all up, it’s still there after all … phew!].

So, if you need to find a reason to be rich, it had better be a very, very good one, because money ‘issues’ NEVER go away …

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