On Monday, we talk money.
The best way I can think to describe our money philosophy is Dave Ramsey meets opportunity…
My dad has long been telling us that “they sell cows everyday.”
Which is totally true.
What they don’t sell everyday? Land.
When land is sold the opportunity to buy it again most likely won’t come for generations. Land is location specific so sure they sell land everyday, but not land that works well in each of our operations.
Farming and ranching is also incredibly cash intensive. The time it would take to raise capital without the bank would be incredibly hindering. How do we grow as an operation? How do we grow our farm? How do we grow our cattle herd?
We choose to trade time for debt. We choose to include interest in our cost of doing business. We take the risk of borrowing and the expense of interest in order to grow. Not Dave Ramsey approved…
But here is where Dave comes in. When we have money we put it all toward debt. We are hustling like crazy to get our small notes paid off, then we move to the next. When signing a new loan, our first question is usually, “can this be paid early?” We do our best to live simply and keep our eyes on the horizon for money generating opportunities.
We have substantial debt. We also have substantial equity because this model has worked for us. We are lucky to have Bob the Banker on our team and as much as we love him, we’d really love to not need him one day.
We all use money. We should talk about money and share what works for us so that we can all grow our net worth.