RPF0549-Its_Always_Cheaper_to_Feed_the_Meter_than_to_Pay_the_Ticket
00:00:00.000 | Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day
00:00:04.960 | presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now
00:00:10.480 | at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones.
00:00:14.720 | For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse,
00:00:24.080 | the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the message was lost. For want of a message, the battle
00:00:30.400 | was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
00:00:39.920 | Now perhaps you've not shod a horse recently, but if you've ever had the pleasure of being
00:00:49.280 | around a farrier while they put horseshoes on, I'd encourage you to take a careful look
00:00:56.080 | at a horseshoe nail. It's a basically insignificant little hunk of metal.
00:01:04.720 | Blacksmiths can bang them out pretty quickly. If you're not familiar with the methods of
00:01:13.040 | shoeing a horse, basically the farrier will come along and file down the horse's hooves,
00:01:18.320 | make it nice and make it shape it nicely, shape a horseshoe to the horse's hooves. And then they'll
00:01:23.040 | take a hammer and just a simple little nail and nail the horseshoe onto the bottom of the
00:01:27.840 | horse's hooves. This allows the horse to walk and to work on paved and rocky surfaces without
00:01:36.400 | wearing down their hooves so they don't go lame. It allows the horse to be more comfortable
00:01:42.080 | and allows them to do more work. It's a very important little piece of metal,
00:01:47.680 | but it's very insignificant. Now, of course, that famous proverb rings true,
00:01:54.960 | but here's my modern version of it. Here's a maxim that I made up that
00:01:59.920 | I think is worth your consideration today, and it's very simple.
00:02:06.240 | It's always cheaper to feed the meter than to pay the ticket.
00:02:10.240 | Again, it's always cheaper to feed the meter than to pay the ticket.
00:02:17.120 | Probably about a decade ago now, I made a firm decision that I was always going to feed the meter
00:02:22.800 | rather than thinking about how I would battle the ticket. I can name the street and the city. It was
00:02:32.000 | right here in South Florida. I had parked my car outside an office building. I was running in to
00:02:38.080 | pick up some paperwork from a client of mine. I knew it would only be a minute, and I think there
00:02:42.000 | was a minute or two left on the parking meter. Well, a minute turned into 10, and I came back
00:02:47.120 | to find a ticket on my windshield due to the expired meter. Now, of course, you've probably
00:02:55.520 | thought this yourself. What are the chances of the meter attendant coming by exactly at the time?
00:03:02.000 | When I run out, and oh, by the way, I'll be fast enough that if I see them, I can come out and beg
00:03:06.880 | for mercy, and they'll probably show me mercy. You've probably thought that too. Well, unfortunately,
00:03:13.280 | your experience is probably like mine. If you don't feed the meter, you wind up with a ticket.
00:03:18.080 | I, the office of parking tickets was a couple blocks away, so I just went and paid it right
00:03:26.000 | there, probably about 30 bucks, but I remember being really annoyed with myself that I had to
00:03:33.280 | spend 30 bucks when if I just spent 50 cents, I would have avoided the whole hassle. I would
00:03:41.120 | have saved the 30 bucks, and I would have saved the time and the frustration. Now, if you run the math,
00:03:48.960 | let's say it's 50 cents, how many times would you have to feed the meter in order to equal the total
00:03:58.480 | amount that you spend on the ticket? And what's the likelihood of your being able to park that
00:04:04.720 | many times without getting a ticket? If you think about it, I think you'll find that the math works
00:04:11.120 | out in favor of feeding the meter. It's always cheaper to feed the meter than to pay the ticket.
00:04:18.320 | Now, since that time, I have imperfectly endeavored to feed the meter, to be proactive,
00:04:28.480 | and to be careful and cautious in all of my affairs. It'd really be a shame to have an injury
00:04:36.000 | to one of my family members because I ignored some basic thing. I didn't replace the tires on time,
00:04:45.360 | and then the car rolled while driving on the interstate with a blown out tire. I didn't
00:04:52.400 | purchase the insurance coverage that was cheap to buy that would have protected me from thousands
00:04:57.120 | of dollars of loss. I didn't leave 30 minutes early to give time for any problems with traffic
00:05:03.760 | to make it to the important appointment. The potential examples are legion. I encourage you
00:05:11.840 | to consider your own examples. Consider your life, or excuse me, I should say, consider a friend's
00:05:18.720 | life. Think of a friend of yours who seems to always be struggling, always be behind,
00:05:24.560 | always be scrambling, in trouble with the law, in trouble with the authorities, in trouble with
00:05:30.720 | somebody, a dollar late and a day late and a dollar short, no matter when it is,
00:05:37.440 | grabbing money from here, grabbing money from there, and I ask you,
00:05:40.000 | does that person simply feed the meter, or do they try to take the risk and run the ticket?
00:05:47.920 | My experience has been most people who are always struggling and scrambling are that way
00:05:54.240 | because they don't ever stop and decide to feed the meter. But it doesn't have to be that way.
00:06:00.560 | You can indeed feed the meter. You can fill up the gas tank when it's half full, not when it's
00:06:10.240 | at the bottom. You can put money in the bank, set it aside in savings. You can think proactively
00:06:17.840 | about the maintenance items that'll keep your house from falling apart. You can think proactively
00:06:22.560 | about your physical health. You can plan ahead with your money so that you have some to spend
00:06:29.760 | on the things that you want to spend it. And if you do that, what you find is that it's always
00:06:34.320 | cheaper because you avoid the big expensive problems and you get better deals because you
00:06:39.520 | have money. You've been proactive. The 25 or 50 cents into the parking meter really is a bargain
00:06:45.600 | when compared to paying the ticket. You say, "But I just don't carry change in my car. I
00:06:54.800 | didn't have the money." Well, whose fault is that? It's not the parking attendant's fault
00:07:01.440 | that you didn't have change. It's your fault. So plan ahead. Feed the meter.
00:07:10.080 | Almost every major problem that people face can be traced back to a couple of small decisions,
00:07:20.880 | which at the time didn't seem so important.
00:07:22.960 | But yet if you'd made a different choice at that time,
00:07:30.000 | there may very well have been a different outcome down the road. Not everything,
00:07:35.360 | but most things are that way. You didn't go ahead and replace the tires
00:07:46.640 | and you suffered the catastrophic accident that resulted in physical injury to you and your loved
00:07:52.560 | ones. You didn't plan ahead and call a cab and you wound up in prison or you wound up losing your
00:08:02.080 | money. You didn't plan ahead to get ahead on time and so you were speeding. And then that speeding
00:08:11.120 | ticket turned into not only the cost of a ticket, but perhaps the loss of a bunch of stuff. I was
00:08:16.480 | thinking when it comes to speeding, I always think of that case a little over 10 years ago in the
00:08:20.480 | United States here. It was called United States versus $124,700 in US currency. It was one of the
00:08:29.600 | cases where the police stole the guy's money because they thought it was drug money. If memory,
00:08:35.040 | if my details are right, this Mexican guy was traveling from Chicago, I think back to Mexico,
00:08:40.720 | and was passing through the middle of the country somewhere and gets pulled over for speeding.
00:08:46.560 | And poor guy, he doesn't speak English, the cop doesn't speak Spanish. They're going back and
00:08:52.000 | forth, but he consents to a search. Back to why do I spend so much time trying to teach about
00:08:56.320 | standing up for your rights? Never consent to searches. No, I don't consent to searches. No
00:09:00.480 | searches. So the guy consents to a search. Cops go through his vehicle, find in his back seat a
00:09:07.600 | cooler with money, $125,000 in it, in cash, and it's wrapped in foil, aluminum foil packages.
00:09:14.960 | So they bring in a drug dog to sniff it. And of course, since all currency has drugs on it,
00:09:21.200 | then they say, "Okay, the drug dog signaled, hit to the money that it's drugs." So therefore,
00:09:28.480 | they impound the money and they steal the money. That's what the cops do. They do it down here in
00:09:31.680 | Florida. They steal the boats, the cars and whatnot from anybody who's supposedly involved
00:09:37.600 | in the drug trade. So they have no other evidence that this guy did anything wrong other than the
00:09:44.320 | fact that he's carrying cash, and the fact that he's carrying cash is suspicious. So the case goes
00:09:48.960 | to trial, and the Mexican guy testifies at the trial that he and several of his friends, they
00:09:57.120 | were planning to buy a refrigerated box truck in Chicago. And so he had flown up there to buy the
00:10:02.720 | truck with the money, and he had flown up there to take delivery of the truck, but the deal had
00:10:08.240 | fallen through and they weren't able to buy the truck. And so he was traveling back to Mexico,
00:10:12.160 | and I think he was driving because he had heard that you aren't supposed to fly with more than
00:10:15.600 | $10,000. Because of course, if you actually have money, you are by definition suspicious.
00:10:20.560 | So he was driving instead. Well, the case went on to appeals, but the legal barrier of the cops
00:10:29.920 | stealing your money in the United States is very, very low. And so the cops kept the money and the
00:10:34.400 | Mexican guys were out, all because of speeding. Now, who knows why, just the point, I always think
00:10:41.280 | of that when it comes to speeding. Is this worth $125,000 for me to be speeding? The answer is
00:10:47.280 | usually no. I'm not going to tell you whether I carry $125,000 around on my backseat in a cooler
00:10:54.320 | wrapped in aluminum foil or not, that would be unwise. Point is that little decisions,
00:10:59.440 | little things often have a big set of consequences. Think through and study the stories of tragedy and
00:11:07.040 | disaster. Somebody loses their money, loses their house, the house burns down because you didn't
00:11:12.960 | check the wiring or didn't do it right, or whatever the circumstances are. Today, I challenge you with
00:11:21.200 | this one simple thing. Take my Maxim, steal it and burn it into your head. It's always cheaper
00:11:28.560 | to feed the meter than to pay the ticket. Again, it's always cheaper to feed the meter
00:11:36.480 | than to pay the ticket. What can you do today to feed the meter?
00:11:45.920 | What can you do today to be proactive? Whatever you know to do today, start doing it. Don't wait,
00:11:58.560 | start doing it. Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention,
00:12:05.280 | and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and
00:12:11.040 | strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals.
00:12:16.720 | Before you go, three simple requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in
00:12:22.800 | today's show, make a plan to take action on it. Listening does lead to learning,
00:12:29.840 | but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action
00:12:35.680 | that leads to a life change. So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in
00:12:43.440 | today's show and share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending on you to be a
00:12:49.920 | co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share.
00:12:57.360 | That helps the person that you are engaging with, and it also helps you because teaching
00:13:03.440 | others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.
00:13:09.440 | Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining
00:13:14.880 | financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for
00:13:20.240 | this work voluntarily. Come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron, and you can sign
00:13:26.080 | up there to support the show at whatever level you feel is right for you. This is a voluntary
00:13:31.200 | support. That's my Patreon page. You can support me with a dollar a month, five dollars a month,
00:13:36.400 | ten dollars a month, any number that seems right to you. But if you're gaining financial benefit
00:13:41.280 | from this show, and if it's achieving financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your
00:13:48.160 | financial support at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.
00:13:51.360 | Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day
00:13:58.400 | presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets
00:14:03.680 | now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones.