To celebrate the launch of our new book, Happy Ever After: Financial Freedom Isn’t A Fairytale, we are posting excerpts from the book, specifically the fairytale segments of our favourite spoiled little princess being taught about money, savings, and investing by her talking pet frog, Charlie Croaker.
How To Get Out Of The Woods (If You Don’t Even Know You’re In Them)
The princess woke up lying on her couch by the window. She didn’t know when she had dozed off, but it felt as though it had only been a light, fitful sleep as she could remember all of the strange things she had dreamt.
She had dreamt about Jack making lots of money from investing, even though his beanstalk had been a disaster.
About Dick Whittington using his cat as a business to generate something called passive income.
About a wicked witch who had control of the whole wide world, using a web, or a net, or something like that.
About dragons that saved gold coins because they didn’t know how long they were going to live.
About how Cinderella wasn’t saved by a prince, and worked hard to save herself instead. About how princes weren’t charming and wouldn’t save the day.
And she had dreamed about a frog that talked but didn’t want to be kissed – and at just that moment, her pet frog Charlie jumped on to the windowsill, as he always did when she was thinking about him.
She paused, wondering if he would speak. He looked back at her for a long time and then, very thoughtfully, croaked.
“Phew,” the princess sighed out loud. “It was all just a dream.”
Charlie croaked again, but this time the croak sounded a bit more like a word. “Seriously?” croaked Charlie again.
“What?” asked the princess.
“I leave you to snooze for half an hour and you decide that everything we spoke about is just a dream?”
“Well, it’s easier to believe in than a talking frog,” she explained.
“Yeah, lots of people find it easier to believe in fairytales than reality. It’s easy to hope that if you don’t take responsibility for your own life, someone else will do it for you. It could be the king, the government, a handsome prince or your company pension.
“Or it could even be future you, who you think will be different from you today, that future you will start saving and investing later, when you’ve changed. But it won’t happen. Only you, today, now, can change and take responsibility for all of these things.”
“Wow!” said the princess.
“Yes,” said Charlie. “It’s that serious.”
“No,” said the princess. “Wow, that was a long croak.”
When Charlie had stopped being literally hopping mad, he asked the princess what she had learned about life in the real world.
“Life in the real world is muddy,” said the princess. “And difficult. And princes don’t save you from that. Only you save yourself from it,” said the princess.
“And do you remember what you need to be free?”
“I need twenty five times my spending to be free, and while I can get that by making more money, I will probably get there faster by increasing my saving and lowering my spending.”
“And?” Charlie asked?
“Being happy ever after needs freedom, and to be free, I need to have enough money to choose the best path. I’ll need to earn my own money, and not think it’s just for spending now, it’s there for my future as well.
“The more I save, the less I will spend and the less I will need to save, because I only need to save 25 times my spending. There’ll be evil witches along the way who want to make me spend, but there’s also magic on my side too, compound investing, which can make my money grow faster. Once it’s at 25 times my spending, it should last forever, and then I will always be free to choose my path.”
“That’s pretty good, princess,” Charlie had to admit. “Good summary.”
“It is, isn’t it?” the princess agreed. “Which makes me wonder why it took a whole book for you to man-splain that to me?”
For the first time in his life, croaks failed Charlie.
“Frog in your throat, Charlie?” asked the princess.
“Erm, I think you’ll find it’s called frog-splaining,” Charlie finally managed to ribbit, “and it’s all very well knowing what you have to do, but you also have to start doing it. Given that you already know everything you need to know, now would seem like the best time for Happy Ever After to begin…”
In the illustration on the cover of Happy Ever After, we show our princess at the start of some forests. She doesn’t know what she’s about to walk into, and she definitely doesn’t know how to get out of the woods once she steps in.
Like the rest of us.
The goal of Happy Ever After is to show a way out of the woods, to shorten the path so we aren’t lost and looking for help our whole lives. I wrote it for my daughter, the inspiration for the princess in the stories, to understand how she can make her own way in the world, and never feel lost. I hope you can use it to do the same for your little princesses and princes too.
