Passing Inheritance

Inheritance / Money or property that you receive from someone who has died.

My father first immigrated to the United States at age thirteen, when my late grandfather sent him to a boarding school in Washington. From thirteen to adulthood, my father lived with older his brother. His brother was a college student in Seattle at the time, so in many ways, my father had to raise himself—figure out how to make it in a new country as a teen boy. 

From a young age, my dad was my hero. My earliest memories of him are stereotypical, like the Bruce Lee story. He was an eighth-degree black belt attending a majority-Caucasian university in the late seventies to early eighties. He was never very academic, but he was always entrepreneurial. He started a martial arts class his freshman year of college, and made some money hustling uniforms and belts he would import from overseas. Not to mention the instruction fees he collected on top of that. He must have had over ten jobs by the time he was in his mid-twenties. His work ethic was creative and outstanding.

Before I even reached middle school, I adopted many of my father’s traits into my own life. His entrepreneurship was one of the most obvious. In 5th grade, I started my first business. I sold Air Heads. Back when Costco was still called Price Club, I would have my mom take me to Price Club on a Saturday and buy a box. I would disperse the box of airheads into three one-gallon zip lock bags. My two friends and I would slang airheads during recess and after school—seventy-five cents apiece, or two for a dollar. My little enterprise was killing it, raking in fifty dollars a week after candy commissions were paid to my friends. I was hustling.

I funneled this money into my next game: baseball cards and POGs (collectible cardboard bottlecaps). These was the biggest deal in the early nineties. I would buy boxes of each and sell them to my friends with lottery-protected picks. This hustle eventually went from candy to cards, to shoes and cars.

As I write this, I’ve driven a dozen cars in my lifetime. The majority of them nearly free for or for profit. This is near impossible to do in a market where the commodity depreciates quickly over a short time.

Here’s the lesson I learned from reflecting and observing my early childhood:

Money or property is one of the few things we leave our kids. But they inherit character, habit and values.

What are we leaving for inheritance?

On the next blog I’ll talk about leaving an inheritance that is worth more than money.