Bison are one of the few animals that don’t hide or run from storms. They face it head on because they know this is the fastest way to get out of it. Bison can teach us a lot about money if we follow their lead.
How Can an Animal Teach Us About Money?
I think the Bison are onto something here. Their primal instincts are telling them to head straight into the storm because that will help them pass through it quicker. Being in the storm will be rough but getting out of it faster is essential to survival.
So what does this teach us about money? Plenty. Let’s start with what most people do then move on to what a bison would do.
What Most People Do
Imagine someone with $15,000 worth of consumer debt. Maybe they’ve been putting it off for a while. Every month they pay the minimum then try to sign out of their account as quickly as possible so they don’t have to look at it again.
How do I know about this? It’s exactly what I used to do so I’m very familiar with this unpleasant and stressful cycle.
Anyways, this person follows the pattern for months on end. Every month is the same, if not worse. There’s no progress made and the stress levels reach an all time high.
Not an effective way to deal with the issue and it’s kind of like running in quicksand for days, weeks, months, and years on end.
Unfortunately, this is what most people do—and it doesn’t work.
The Bison
Here comes the mighty bison moving headfirst into the storm. This is how we want to run our personal finances.
Consumer Debt
Consumer debt is suffocating, stressful, and generally uncomfortable. Many people tip-toe around it by paying the minimum and hoping it goes away.
Hope is not a strategy though, and definitely not one that will work to eliminate consumer debt. So what would the bison do here? Run straight into it of course.
This is how we should be handling consumer debt as well. Head straight into it and beat it. That means paying more than the minimum and using a strategy like the debt snowball, debt avalanche, or my favorite, the hybrid method.
For more on debt payoff, see a couple of my posts on the topic:
Once you’ve paid off the consumer debt, you’re done with it, and it’s forever eliminated from your life provided you maintain good money habits.
Saving
Saving money is hard. So many of us are conditioned to spend money as it comes in. Make $3,500 per month and spend $3,500 per month. Make twice that and spend that amount.
This is not going to move the needle and will keep you in the paycheck to paycheck cycle indefinitely.
To change this, attack saving head on like the bison. Save a certain percentage of your money each month and keep doing that. Very quickly you’ll be out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle and have some real money to your name.
It may feel weird, or you might be a little nervous at first. Just start though, even if it’s only $25 a month. The idea is to take action and build up the savings muscle.
Investing
As challenging as saving can be, investing is even more so. A lot of that I believe is because we’ve been given so much bad information about investing.
Things like:
- Investing is only for the rich
- You’ll lose all your money when the market crashes
- There’s not enough money to invest
- Investing isn’t worth it because of inflation
- And much more
Cut out the noise and bad information, and start investing. Much like saving, investing is building up the muscle and being consistent. Run into it like a bison and don’t worry that you don’t know everything you need to know.
Not sure what to invest in? Start small and find something to put your money towards. A great start is simply putting your money into a low cost index fund.
You don’t need fancy brokerages or advisors to get going. Once you start learning and gain confidence, you’ll learn what you need to learn.
Think about when you first learned to drive. You focused on driving the car in a parking lot. Then when you were good at that, you took the car into the street, and eventually the freeway. You weren’t focused on driving from San Francisco to New York on your first day.
Investing is much the same way. You’re not going to go from not investing at all to a sophisticated syndication because that’s past your abilities. You’ll work your way up to that if that’s something you want to do. Don’t try to go from A to Z with investing, start with A to B.
Conclusion
You have to admire the bison for the way they approach life. Run into the storm rather than away from it. Face challenges head on, don’t just sit there and hope it gets better.
Money can be scary and intimidating, I get it. Paying off debt, saving, and investing isn’t easy, but certainly not impossible. Millions of people around the world have taken the journey, and you can too.
