%%bloglink%%
Me my wife and our two kids have gone camping with our friends in the local mountains every year for the past few years. We usually go during August because the weather is typically warm enough to play in the lake during the day but cold enough to enjoy the campfire and s’mores at night. This year, however, turned out to be very different from our past experiences. First of all, my buddy who we refer to as the resident boy scout, did not go so my wife and I had to put our tent up by ourselves and if you have ever seen a Three Stooges show you can have some appreciation for how that went.
Mother-nature also added even more stress to the mix by replacing our picturesque sunny day with a light sprinkle followed by a heavy downpour. Luckily by that point we had at least finished putting up the tent but now our plans to go the beach were washed away, s’mores by the campfire likely not happening and both our kids were uttering the dreaded words “I’m bored”. (Whenever I hear those words I always picture a fuse attached to a bomb that was just lit and will either explode by the kids getting into trouble in an attempt to entertain themselves or my wife and I exploding at each other as each one blames the other one for being in this situation.)
Either way it was time to go so we piled into the car and headed to town for lunch, bowling and any other indoor activity we could do to wait out the rain. The rain eventually died, and that evening as the kids were snoozing in their sleeping bags my wife heard a noise from the forest.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Probably a rabbit or other animal” I murmured sleepily.
“There it is again. What if it’s a bear?” she asked excitedly.
“The ranger said bears don’t usually come around here and besides all of our food it locked away so just try to go back to sleep.”
“I don’t care what it is. Go out there and check it out.”
I was rolling over to look at her and try to calm her down when I saw “the look”. There was no mistaking it even in the dim light. It is part concrete, part fire, and part steel and there was no backing when your wife gives you “the look”. All the anger we had experienced that day when none of our plans seemed to work out came out in “the look”. I knew right then, bear or no bear, I was probably safer in the woods than to stay in the tent and challenge “the look”. Turns out, there was no bear or any other animal I could see but I still made several walks around the campsite just to make sure.
During the time I spent walking alone in the dark I tried to recreate how I had gotten myself into this position in the first place:
- Our past camping trips had always worked out great, so we approached this trip expecting the same positive results and didn’t even consider things might not work out.
- Stocks and home prices always go up so why would this time be any different?
- My friend the Boy Scout had been there every time to help me put up my family’s tent and I felt it had always been easy, so I didn’t prepare this time even though he I knew he wouldn’t be there.
- Doing the same activity can have very different results during different economic times.
- The town is close to our campsite and that is where we knew we would go if something went wrong. What we didn’t consider, however, is what to do when we arrived in town (turns out they didn’t even have a movie theater) or what signs to look for to make sure it was safe to return to the campsite.
- Rarely will there be an all clear sign to venture back in or a map to help you navigate the many harbors that appear from a distance to provide shelter from the storm.
My wife and I can now joke about this camping trip but as it was unfolding, the only time I saw her crack a smile was when she was sending me out to deal with the “bear”. Now before we go camping we do a dry run of putting the tent up and down in the backyard (what would it feel like to own stocks as they are going up or down), we check the weather forecast for the week even if we don’t see any clouds in the sky (are there potential storms brewing that others are aware of that might impact your investments), and identify alternatives if our main plans don’t work out (cash, bonds, CDs, etc).
What about you?
Do you have any stories about how you learned the hard way to plan ahead that you can look back now and laugh at?
Note: This article was originally written as a guest post on www.lbeeandthemoneytree.com
Lauren, the author of the site also helped edit the article.
