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.
Why Sleeping Dragons Save Money
“Do you know why your father sends princes to steal gold coins from the dragon?” Charlie asked the princess.
“Because any prince who wants my hand in marriage must prove himself to be both brave and clever,” the princess replied, as though it were a line she had heard repeated a dozen times. Because she had.
“No,” croaked Charlie. “It’s because he knows that the princes who are stupid enough to attempt it will die trying, and the ones who aren’t that stupid will just go away, and never come back.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a dragon,” said Charlie, as though that was the end of his answer, “and it wants to keep all that gold for itself. And why do you think dragons like gold so much?”
“Because it’s shiny and it makes pretty jewellery.“
“You think dragons like jewellery?” Charlie asked.
“Who doesn’t?” asked the princess.
“Dragons don’t care about jewellery, Charlie assured her. “Dragons save up gold because they live for a really, really, long time.”
“How long?”
“Actually, no one knows, princess, because no one has ever seen a dragon die of old age. They only die on the rare occasion that a prince gets very lucky. Even dragons don’t know how long they’re going to live.”
“But why does that mean they need to hoard so much gold?” asked the princess.
“That’s a really good question, princess,” Charlie said, thinking he might finally be making some progress.
“Dragons need to save so much gold because they only know how to save, not how to invest, and because they don’t know how long they’re going to live, they don’t know how much they need to save,” Charlie explained.
“But no one knows how long they’re going to live,” said the princess.
“That’s right,” said Charlie, “But, we can use the magic of compounding to make our savings last forever.”
The princess jumped up at the mention of the word magic. “Are we going to learn magic now?”
“No,” Charlie disappointed the princess. “First we need to learn how to collect the things we use for that magic, savings, and how to protect them from the wicked witch of the world wide web…”
“Really?” asked the princess. “We are going to learn how to defeat wicked witches?”
“Really,” Charlie said. “It’s in the next chapter.”
As they looked out of the window again, Charlie could tell that the princess was a little confused.
“Why did you say chapter?” asked the princess. “Are you getting all of this from some book?”
Yes he was. This book.
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.
