Peggy Pigasus was born with wings, just like all the other pigasi (the plural for pigasus).
But unlike other pigasi she couldn’t fly, because her wings were too small and her belly too big. Small wings and a big belly can’t stop a pigasus from dreaming though, and Peggy dreamed of flying.
Peggy didn’t just dream; she tried everything she could to turn her dreams into reality. She trained her wings to become stronger and she dieted to make her belly smaller. She learned to make herself healthy food at home. She stopped eating in restaurants, in diners, in hotels, in sandwich shops, and even in fast-food outlets.
While it didn’t help her fly, she soon noticed that these new habits were saving her money.
Then she started running to work every morning and running back home every night, flapping her wings in the hope that one day they would catch a gust of wind and take off in flight. It still didn’t work.
But because she wasn’t spending money on transport, her savings grew even faster. They grew so fast that she had to do something with them so she ran, of course, to the bank.
At the bank she met a man dressed like a wizard at a bad fancy-dress party, who called himself The Seven Dollar Millionaire. He told her that if she was saving $7 every day, it was enough money to become a millionaire. Peggy thought that it didn’t sound enough, but if anyone was going to know, it would be someone with that name—even if he was wearing strange clothes.
The Seven Dollar Millionaire explained that $7 a day becomes $2,550 in a year, and was the start of making a million dollars in less than fifty years. ‘That won’t make a million dollars,’ said Peggy. ‘Even in a hundred years that will only be $255,500!’
The Seven Dollar Millionaire could tell Peggy was a smart pigasus, so he told her about his magic trick, compounding, and how getting her money to grow 7% a year would make it double every ten years.
‘So after ten years of saving $7 a day, you’ll have $35,000 not $25,000,’ he explained. ‘After twenty years, that $35,000 will be $70,000. That doubles again to $140,000, and again to $280,000, and then your money can really begin to fly!’
‘Fly?’ asked Peggy.
‘Yes,’ said the Seven Dollar Millionaire. ‘After fifty years, the $25,000 you saved in ten years will be worth $560,000. Do that every year for fifty years, and you’ll be a millionaire.’ ‘If I can’t fly,’ thought Peggy, ‘then maybe my money can fly instead.’ And so she ran home (wings a-flapping, just in case) and created a special journal to track how much money she saved every day and how much she could take to the bank every week. And over time she wrote out all the secrets the Seven Dollar Millionaire told her.
Peggy’s journal was so useful, the Seven Dollar Millionaire adapted it for his own use, including pictures of her thinking, talking, and running when she was trying to fly. He even adopted her motto as his own: ‘Enwhay Igspay Yflay’.
It means ‘when pigs fly’ in Pig Latin, which is the language pigasi write their mottos in, because he knew that all our dreams, just like Peggy’s, can come true.
