My wife and I ended up buying a Dacia Sandero Stepway after all. The lady who had said that we couldn't buy a car without first going into debt for a month or so changed her mind. We couldn't get the exact car we had picked out. It had to be slightly different. But the new offer was cheaper by a few hundred euros, and there was no other difference than the car's colour and its variant. We were looking at an orange "expression" model, but we're getting a black "comfort" model. Apparently, it's cheaper by a few hundred euro to be comfortable than to be expressive.
I was advised by a friend to buy an LNG model, but we're sticking with gasoline. I'm a conservative soul. Besides, I don't like the idea of driving around with a bottle of highly flammable gas at great pressure. Furthermore, my experience with tax incentives like the one currently used to sell LNG cars, is that they disappear as soon as there's high adoption, and we're not going to drive the car so much that it will make a great difference to our wallets.
The car will be delivered fresh from the factory in a few weeks from now, and we're paying cash. We're not messing around with credit that has to be terminated at a certain date. I did that once, buying a piece of furniture in Norway, many years ago, and I managed to make it more expensive for myself by quite a lot simply by missing the cancel date by a few days. I don't want to repeat that experience. Especially since it turned out to be untrue that Dacia only sells cars to people willing to go into debt. The saleswoman was lying to us, and she almost lost a sale for doing it. Hopefully, she learned a lesson there.
As the saying goes: "If the lady wants to buy a hat, sell the lady a hat." That's rule one in any kind of retail sales. Don't push secondary products onto people who don't want them.
Anyway, I may have given my readers the impression that I saved all the money to buy the car by carefully putting aside a gold coin every now and again, and that I've now cashed in on my savings in order to make the purchase. However, this is not what happened. I've sold no gold in order to buy the car.
The car is bought entirely from a windfall profit made by my family's company in Norway. The company made an investment two years back that they financed by not paying a dividend last year. They then went on to make a profitable sale of a sub-division as well as an above average year of regular sales.
I was not in charge of any of this. I'm merely an indirect owner of a small part of the company, and I have virtually no say in any business decisions. When they decided to postpone the annual dividend by a year, my wife and I had to compensate by digging into our cash savings, which I had the foresight to put aside when I sold my house in Norway some five years ago. This means that we tapped into our savings a year ago, not to buy a car, but in order to keep our standard of living.
This in turn prompted my wife to go back to her old employer to make more money than she was able to make from her little business adventure. We had to rearrange things due to the decisions that were made in Norway. It was a little painful, but we were prepared, and things turned out well. The profit foreseen by the management team of my family's company turned out as planned and hoped for, and the shareholders ended up rewarded for our willingness to go along with it.
Now, we're in the happy situation that my income is back to what it used to be, my wife is earning a decent salary, and we got a windfall profit to spend on a car.
This illustrates the sort of economic planning that comes with generational savings. My family's company is 150 years old, and it was in its time bought with money that can be traced back several hundred years. We're talking 1600s, 1500s and even 1400s. This is old money.
But old money doesn't hang around magically without any effort or sacrifice. There's a mindset required for it to persist. There's always an element of luck involved, but the deciding factor is the willingness to let the capital grow. My ex-wife was eager to sell it all and buy a house back in the 1980s. If I had done that, I would have ended up with so many bills that I would soon have had to sell it again.
My ex never understood the difference between capital and cash flow. She never understood the point in living according to our income rather than our capital. Why not spend it all?
The answer to that question is now being told, loud and clear I presume. My three children in Norway are now the owners of valuable shares in a reasonably successful family business. This puts them in a position to cut down on debt and buy places for themselves to live. My part of the profits is enough for me to live off of, and even support my wife to a certain extent. All of this would have been lost had my ex had her way. My refusal to go along with that demand made her eventually intolerably grumpy, and we divorced, but I think my point is now more than clear enough to her, and to our children.
My children in Norway are treating the capital with respect. Even the one the most like my ex is behaving reasonably sensibly.
To top it all off, my two boys in Norway are growing the same kind of beard and moustache that I have, which I take to be a symbol of respect, much like my great grandfather (William) who ended up looking almost identical to his father. My great grandfather was financially much more successful than his father, but I suspect that it was his father who imprinted the common sense of my great grandfather into his head.
My great grandfather remained deeply reverent and respectful of his father his whole life, and the most likely reason for this is that generational savings is not only about saving up for the children. It's equally much a matter of good upbringings, and few things make a stronger impression than a good example, with proof that what we say is true, even if it takes a decade or two to materialize. My great grandfather's father was a successful man. His children too were successful, and my great grandfather had the additional luck of marrying the richest girl in town, with whom he ended up making a small fortune in what is now my family's business. I'm sure my great grandfather's father had a say in how that came about, and that his sound advice was followed by his son.
So, I'm buying a car for my wife, and I'm doing it with money that I'm receiving from past generations. My part in it is that I too have made some sacrifices and some moves required to keep the capital intact, and even make it grow. My largest contribution has in many ways been my inactivity. I've kept my fingers off the capital. The house I bought and lived in back in Norway was modest and within my ability to keep until I sold it at a profit. But that profit too has been turned into capital that's merely sitting there, patiently waiting for an opportunity to be invested in something that my youngest son here in Porto can take with him as his gift from his forefathers.
 |
| Constance and William |
Av Gustav Borgen – Norsk Folkemuseum: image no. NFB.49970, via digitaltmuseum.no., Offentlig eiendom, Lenke
No comments:
Post a Comment