Some of life's lessons, financial or otherwise, can't be learned until literally 40 years later.
What monetary value could we have placed on a manicured back yard lawn in suburban Vancouver in 1970?
Thanksgiving Monday that year was the beginning of a week-long Turkey Bowl that introduced the rough-and-tumble game of football to our neighbourhood of 10 or so young boys.
I had been more of a road hockey kid until then, and hadn't tried football until that day. I was quickly fascinated by the fact that we were allowed to tackle and block and bruise our opponents.
John and Roy were the neighbour boys whose parents owned the place.
Their family helped teach us the basic rules of the game, and let us play all afternoon.
Their boys were called in for dinner after a while, but the game went on until dark when they returned.
The next day after school we played again until dark, and did so every day that week until the grass wore completely off the middle of the yard. We kids were upset about the worn out grass, which made it more difficult to gain a foothold when blocking or tackling an opponent, but John and Roy's parents never complained.
Rather, they looked on the whole thing with amusement and satisfaction. The grass took about a year to fully come back.
John and Roy's folks "bought" the experience of watching us boys ruin their back lawn. They paid for it in lawn care, mud tracked in to their house, greenery turned to brownery and so on.
Did they regret their purchase? It never even occurred to us boys at the time, but by all accounts, they didn't. They bought a wonderful memory.
Those cool fall nights could not have been spent more enthusiastically by the players or the parents. One thing was clear - we were more important than the lush green grass we had been playing on.
A couple of years earlier, my grandma bought me an apple tree for my sixth birthday - an innovative gift which probably cost her about $15.
She sat there in a lawn chair sipping lemonade and made me dig a huge whole in our back yard, then instructed me on how to plant and care for the tree - watching me do it all myself, and scolding me when I complained about the difficulty of the task.
It was really hard work for a six-year-old boy, and I resented her for the apparent anti-gift that took me away from a day of play.
But the tree produced apples and pies for generations, and is still a source of pride to my baby-soft hands.
The wise get what they truly want out of life from their money. Their goal is not to simply leverage their assets to finance that next acquisition. They have bigger dreams than that. They want to propel an idea to the next generation.
My grandma died sometime around my seventh birthday, but the tree and her lesson live on.
And every time I play soccer, football or baseball with my kids in my backyard, I smell that poignant mixture of moist grass and mud, and I am brought back in time. And I smile.
Mark Ryan is an advisor with RBC Dominion Securities in Prince George, member CIPF. He can be reached at mark.ryan@rbc.com.
