You Can Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

Image courtesy www.insidehobokenrealestate.com

Years ago, there was a well-known TV-commercial in the USA featuring an auto-mechanic smugly reminding the viewer : "You can pay me now..or pay me later!" to emphasize the motivation to "invest" in car-care and maintenance options that reduced long-term "invisible" costs on oft-troubled engine parts.

At the time, I was one of the few young-people who understood the deeper meaning of that message. The advertiser was essentially saying that "there are NO free-rides in the game-of-life". One had the choice of either ACKNOWLEDGING that truth in advance by carefully investing in long-term maintenance or paying "surprise" expenses when parts inevitably "wore-out".

Naturally, my peers thought I was being naive in searching high-and-low for work that featured regular payments into US Social Secuity at the height of the US "recession" of those years, but I kept reminding myself that even though I was working sleeplessly at boring, low-paying, work-a-day jobs for years, that what I was doing was preparing for some uncertain future where things might NOT be so easy (hehe) by working myself half-to-death during some of the most difficult economic-times in recent years.

At a time when my peers were making insane amounts of money as independent-contractors, this philosophy of "consistently paying into the future" seemed grossly foolish to them...only now that I have neural-damage from Multiple Sclerosis does the profound wisdom of this philosophy make sense to them, and accordigly, although my daily life is fairly difficult because of non-specific neuro-muscular paralysis, I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I, indeed, made the RIGHT descisions to use part of my income to help others for all those years, even though at-the-time I was frequently chided for being "idiotically hard-working" when everyone else was living "the dream" of NOT working (or rather, working very little).

Proving others wrong was NEVER my goal...but rather, keeping the commitments I had made to others to not "let the boat sink" in hard-times.

I think time has shown that I, in-fact, knew what I was doing. Again, I'm VERY thankful to friends and family who helped me weather all those years...and who continue to help me to this day...now that I can barely move!

Thanks! --mattergy