Last week I spent an entire day watching cartoons. If you are in your 30’s and 40’s you may remember Saturday morning cartoons. When I was young, I used to wake up on Saturday mornings and watch Saturday morning cartoons while eating chocolate chip pancakes.
Sometimes when I need a reality check, or I need to clear my head, I watch cartoons. My life was much simpler when I was a child. I am sure that we all have our routines that allow us to escape our everyday lives and visit a much happier time in our life. Watching cartoons allows me to clear my head. It is just an added bonus I realized The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show actually has many valuable life and financial lessons.
While watching Wylie Coyote I learned that there are several financial lessons to be Learned from cartoons.
Here are some Financial Lessons that I learned from Wylie Coyote:
Focus on the Long Term. His lifetime goal is to catch the Road Runner. I am not sure why he is chasing the Road Runner, or what he would do if he ever caught the Road Runner. The point is, Wylie Coyote continues to chase the Runner because this is his long term goal. Having short term goals gets us by from day to day, but our focus always has to be on the long term. Of course long term is relative to each person. For a total commitment phobic such as myself, the long term is 5 years. However for others long term could be 25 to 30 years.
Don’t Look Down. Keep focused and keep your head up. As soon as we look down or start to doubt ourselves everything will fall apart. Our brilliant plans may collapse if we lose focus, and we definitely don’t want our finances to hit rock bottom.
Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks. Of course I am not suggesting that we run off of cliffs or rocket ourselves into the sky, but we need to take risks with our finances. Without risk there is no reward. Don’t be afraid to put up to 5% of your portfolio into an extremely high risk investment. If it works out your 5% high risk investment return could gain more than the entire other 95% of your low risk portfolio. And if it doesn’t work out, it was only 5% of your total investment portfolio.
Don’t Spend Money on Gimmicks. In every single episode of this cartoon Wylie Coyote buys some gimmick from the Acme Corporation to help him catch the Road Runner. Sometimes it is a rocket, sometimes it is a large trap, sometimes it is roller skates. Whatever the Gimmick is, it is always a waste of money because it never works, and he never catches the Road Runner. Gimmicks are always a waste of money. Whether it is a free toaster when we open a bank account, or guaranteed cash back on our investment, we should never give in to gimmicks.
Photo by Crawfish Head
Kristina Tahnyak
Tahnya is a Certified Financial Planner and former Investment Advisor turned marketing and communications professional She holds a degree from Concordia University, is debt free and currently works in the field of digital marketing.
Hi Wade,
Different investment strategies for different people, that’s what makes personal finance so great. It’s never the same strategy for any two people. I would rather take some risk with the possibility of dividends or capital growth before I pay extra taxes on interest earned.
I am a balanced growth investor which is generally considered low risk for my age group. I know that I should technically be willing to take some more risk in my portfolio but I just can’t be a “go with the flow” type of investment girl.