Financial Survivorman

My kids are into the TV show Sur­vivor­man. It’s not usu­ally a show I watch but, I did catch a bit of an episode where the star and a buddy got them­selves lost in North­ern Ontario (on pur­pose) to show what hap­pens to hun­dreds of hunters every year.

Because of a “mis­take” their GPS was left on and the bat­ter­ies died, high­light­ing how mod­ern man’s reliance on tech­nol­ogy can get them into trou­ble. Later on in the show, while the hunt­ing buddy was unsuc­cess­fully hunt­ing and fish­ing, the sur­vivor expert was find­ing food and set­ting snares. An inter­est­ing note about the snares, his expe­ri­enced hunt­ing buddy had never set a snare in his life, and didn’t know how, even though he car­ried snare wire with him on all the trips. The sur­vival expert won­dered what his buddy would do if he ran out of ammu­ni­tion or his gun malfunctioned…

Now, you may never be in their sit­u­a­tion, but the show really got me think­ing about how there is a real les­son in this show for everyone.

If you’re like most peo­ple, you rely on your pay­cheque. What would you do if you lost it? Worse yet, you couldn’t work? Would you be lost, able to feed yourself?

In the show, on the 6th day they finally hunted a wild bird, but it was the sur­vival expert who found them snakes, frogs and plants that fed them until then…it wasn’t the glory kill, it was the lit­tle things that kept them going.

You’ve read about pas­sive income, you’ve thought about it, it’s not the same as get­ting in on a hot IPO, but it could keep you alive when things go wrong.

Are you will­ing to learn the skills required to sur­vive when the things you rely on fail? Hav­ing a pas­sive income may not be sexy, but it can save your butt. Rental income, div­i­dends, roy­al­ties, whatever…it doesn’t mat­ter the source, as long as you have it.

Iron­i­cally, as the ground search and res­cue was on their trail, the two guys were push­ing them­selves hard to find, a clear­ing so that they could sig­nal the helicopter…effectively putting dis­tance between them and their res­cue. Had they under­stood how Search and Res­cue works, they may have been found much sooner.

When faced with a loss of a pay­cheque, how do you react? Are you effec­tively putting dis­tance between your­self and the solu­tion? I know many peo­ple who’ve done the wrong things to make them employ­able, they go with a gut reac­tion instead of try­ing to under­stand what they sys­tems wants them to do. Are you giv­ing in to depres­sion? Think­ing of going back to school? Grab­bing the first job that comes along? Are your stan­dards of what you’ll accept too high?

With­out under­stand­ing how the sys­tem works, your plan for suc­cess may be counter productive.

The final point of the show was an unsur­pris­ing sta­tis­tic; most hunters, when finally found, refuse to acknowl­edge that they were lost in the first place. Their pride refused to allow them to admit their mistakes.

Most of the peo­ple I know rarely admit to mak­ing finan­cial mis­takes. They don’t feel they need their jobs. They aren’t in spend­ing trou­ble. They are in con­trol of their lives…

It’s time to stop lying to your­self. You may be a suc­cess­ful per­son, but can you sur­vive? The expert hunter, or the sur­vival expert…after watch­ing the show, I know which one to emulate.

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