Advice Concerning a Small Investment

It didn’t seem like much of an investment when I made it in “The Land of The Morning Calm” back in September of 1968. An infant achieving 100 days of age in Korean culture was considered the attainment of one year of age. Infant mortality had historically been high there and on a child’s first birthday celebration (at 100 days) it was customary for the friends and relatives of the parents to bring a gold ring as a celebratory gift. Gold was at a fixed price of around 35 dollars per ounce in the United States but could be bought for around $17.00 per ounce in Korea, if I remember correctly. So as my time in Korea drew to a close, I purchased a small pure gold ring, placed it on my pinky finger, and soon afterward boarded the big red tail plane which would carry me home to the brown eyed girl. For a little over four decades that ring has laid in a safety deposit box with my mind occasionally calculating the return on investment. Perhaps one day I will pull it out and sell it to one of those fellows who twirl signs on the street corner, but maybe it will lay there for several more years before one of my boys says to the other, “I wonder where Dad got this.” It has turned out to be one of those small investments which proved to be of great value.
But the fact is, other small investments exceed the return of even the gold ring.
When I was small, our house had only two bedrooms downstairs and my sister and Aunt Ada slept in one of the bedrooms and my mom and dad slept in the big iron bed in the other bedroom. There were two bedrooms upstairs but neither had heat nor air conditioning and thus were not suitable for a small boy to occupy. So for way beyond when I should have been in my own room, I slept on a roll away bed in my parent’s room. It was one of those kind that had to be folded up in a U shape each morning and let out each night. For a number of my early years, even after the “den” had been converted into a bedroom for me, my mother made a small investment each night. She would call, “Buddy, are you ready?” which was really not a question at all but a declaration that “it is time.” On a few occasions I might have begged for a few minutes delay based on some book I was reading or later some T.V. program I was watching but for the most part, I was ready when she was. For the next 15 – 20 minutes we lay across my parent’s bed and read from the bible. A chapter each night. I don’t know exactly how long that continued, but it was several years and we read the bible through a few times in that period. Sometimes one chapter, sometime more if the chapters were small. We even read all the who-begot-who chapters, though I hardly understood the need or necessity, nor why a smart guy like God chose to include those in the book at all.
It seemed like a pretty small investment on her part then (I now realize that it was a rather large investment which demanded considerable commitment on the part of a working mother who toiled in a boiling hot garment factory all day, and cooked, cleaned, and canned garden fare at night – not to mention making the sewing machine hum to late hours.)
I am not totally sure how she would view the return on her investment, for I know I disappointed her numerous times, but from my viewpoint the return was large – huge – gigantic. My life to a great extent was shaped by those fifteen minutes each night, and my love for and opinion of her was molded by the unselfishness of that time.
I am pleased to say, the brown eyed girl invested the same kind of time in our own boys and in the same kind of way. I know that their love for and admiration of their mom in large comes from those types of investments which she also so unselfishly made. Thankfully, the return in terms of our sons’ spiritual, family, and business life is clear and unarguable.
For all of those years that I was a part of the General Motor’s Financial Staff, I was prohibited from giving advice to anyone concerning investments, but now I think it would be ok to give a little free advice. While I can’t necessarily recommend the purchase of gold as still having the potential of the kind of investment I experienced, since the climb in value may have peaked, I can certainly recommend the investment in time made by my mother and my wife and other Godly women I have been privileged to know. And at this time when a good investment in Mutual Funds, Stocks, or Certificates of Deposits is nearly impossible, and even Real Estate is no longer the sure thing that it has been for most of the post war decades, I can recommend an investment of fifteen minutes in bible reading as one that will pay huge returns – both for you and your children. Have a blessed day, Bob bob.chaffin@tpi.net