Managing Unexpected Wealth and Reducing Unwanted Attention

After I finished the entire movie, Ijogbon, I wondered,

Could the person who spends excessively thinking that there's more where that came from and the one who hoards, because he's afraid he doesn't know how to get another, be considered the same?

Managing Unexpected Wealth and Reducing Unwanted Attention.png
Source
I don't know. But I do know that Arkad did tell his friends that;

Fickle Fate is a vicious goddess who brings no permanent good to anyone. The Richest Man in Babylon - Book by George Samuel Clason

He explained that;

She brings ruin to almost every man whom she showers unearned gold.

She makes wanton spenders, who soon dissipate all they receive and are left beset by overwhelming appetites and desires they do have not the ability to gratify.

Yet others whom she favors become misers and hoard their wealth, fearing to spend what they have, knowing they do not possess the ability to replace it.

They further are beset by fear of robbers and doom themselves to lives of emptiness and secret misery.

And if you look around, you'll find these two people in either our attitude towards money or other people. Especially when it comes to free money. Of course, there's a third category, but, let's see if this post will allow me to introduce them.

The truth is, I watched the children get into trouble after they found the diamonds and the owners came looking.

Their first instinct was to go on a spending spree, buying the latest gadgets and clothes as we would do if we stumbled into money especially the ones who didn't earn.

When the owners came looking, they only had to find the weakest link among them. The one who would want to show off his new status. Clearly, someone in their group had it in his genes to flaunt. And they were caught through him.

But after everything was resolved, I realized the children still fought amongst themselves over their newfound wealth. Again, this is something that we see happen every day. A closer look is often when a rich parent dies, and leaves behind wealth but did not have the time to write a Will. The children, the mothers, and other relatives are often engaging in bloodshed just to lay hands on a bigger portion of everything.

However, watch what Arkad said, those who hoard their newfound wealth because they are afraid they may not be able to get it anymore, soon, fall prey to thieves. A clear reason why people do not sit on a pill of cash.

Every movie script I have seen has pointed out that the moment someone knows you are sitting on a pile of money, their imaginations will fly left, right, and center, looking and building castles in the air as they think of ways to take it from you and own it. In the movie, Ozark, when Ruth Langamore found out Marty Barde had a lot of money and she started thinking up ways to kill him and take his client's money

So, sitting on a pill of money, or even revealing that you have a ton brings lots of attention. Another simple reason why people who win the lottery never see the light of day in terms of remnants pertaining to the cash. Soon, everyone who has a problem will come looking for them. Everyone with wild business ideas will come pitching to get a share of the pie. And of course, those who want to con the winner. Oh, I almost forgot the law, the IRS, who will always look for ways to tax the hell out of that earned income.

No matter which direction you turn, money brings a lot of undue attention. It's at that point in time that a lot of people's characters are revealed. You'll marvel at what lengths your friend would go to eliminate you in order to be the only one who takes everything.

It doesn't matter how little you have. You must learn the ways of having money, keeping it secret, and investing it.

In order not to have your life cut short, your business closed down, your family dissolved and disoriented, the secrets around building wealth include dealing with it with as much quiet as possible.

This brings us to the third category of people with money.

Arkad said,

Others there probably are, who can take unearned gold and add to it and continue to be happy and contented citizens.

But so few are likely.

Believe me, even before I remembered this part of my book, as I watched the children get into all sorts of trouble as a result of finding the diamonds, I wondered what could they have done differently.

If this wasn't a movie, if it happened in real life, how would they have gone about the discovery and been able to stay safe while building wealth out of the good fortune they stumbled into?

This was where I remembered Marty Barde and his philosophy, Money Laundering 101.

Again, this is where the question @readthisplease asked me on that post is answered.

Yes, I believe there are circumstances in which money laundering can be used for a good cause.

Normally, as children, we were taught to return things we find that aren't ours. Morality permits that. But with the kind of circumstances the children found themselves plus my experience with trust, they wouldn't be able to know who to trust with that piece of information. They wouldn't know if the policeman they report has been waiting for a payday or not.

So if they had the ability to keep the diamond a secret, swap them around secretly to other non-suspicious items, or fundings, like exchanging them for Crypto. They would have been able to move the money around in a way that it comes back in bits and pieces without raising any suspicions. They would be able to stay invested for as long as they wanted as long as none of them decides to say, "Fuck frugality, I am flaunting this guy"

Wait... What point am I trying to make with this post? I don't really remember what I wanted to do with it but I do know I was raising different financial angles in my head and I decided to share some of them.

You could boil it down to the understanding that a lot of people do not know how to handle a fortune. And if you are wondering what you could do if a fortune landed on your feet today no matter the form, the best way to avoid being robbed of your blessings is not to start flaunting your newfound wealth. You will draw unnecessary attention to yourself. And you might regret even finding this fortune in the first place.

Instead quietly build wealth around it, and do it as codedly as possible. This way your generation will be sitting on a pile of wealth that wouldn't have unnecessary people especially those looking for a payday sniffing around.