My father always had cash in his pocket. My mother always had a needle in her hand.

He was a natural salesman. He could walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with friends, orders, and somebody else’s lunch money. He made good money. Some months, very good money.

But here’s the thing… it never stayed long.

Easy come, easy go. With him it was more like “easy come, faster go.” If he had it, he spent it on a good dinner, a round for the guys, whatever the moment asked for. Tomorrow was tomorrow’s problem.

My mother was a seamstress. She earned minimum wage most of her life. She had no commissions, no good months, no big deals, just the same small paycheck for decades.

She didn’t make much. She just never let any of it leak.

Here’s how it turned out.

My father died without leaving anything. My mother, who never earned more than minimum wage, died with a decent amount in the bank.

The man who made the money left nothing. The woman who made almost nothing left something.

Beyond the Balance Sheet

It wasn’t only about money.

My father was never really a family guy. His friends came first for most of his life. He was generous with them in ways he wasn’t always generous with us. That was how a lot of men of his generation lived.

My mother was the opposite: a classic housewife of the ’70s and ’80s, who also worked. Dinner was on the table and the clothes were mended. Her whole world was the house and the people in it.

He spent his money and his time outside the house. She saved both for the people inside it.

So this is where you’d expect me to say Mom was right.

I can’t.

After my father died, my sister Carol, my wife Ana, and I worked on her for years. “Go travel, Mamis. Buy yourself something nice. Spoil yourself a little. You’ve earned it.”

Nothing.

She had the money. She just didn’t know how to spend it on herself. After a lifetime of saving for tomorrow, she couldn’t believe tomorrow had finally come.

That money in the bank was her love for us. I know that. But part of me wished she had spent a little more of it on herself.

Finding the Middle Ground

My father lived like there was no tomorrow. My mother lived like there was only tomorrow.

Neither of them got it right.

I’ve lived both of their lives.

For my first 26 years I followed my mother’s script: trade school, factory job, steady paycheck, safe. Then I came to America and went my father’s way, with risk, sales, and building something from nothing.

What I’ve learned, slowly and sometimes the expensive way, is that the answer sits between the two.

Build the safety net, because tomorrow comes for everybody. Then actually live today, while your legs still work and the people you love are still at the table.

You need my mother’s discipline and my father’s appetite for life. Either one alone leaves you poorer in some way.

So here’s my question for you:

Which one of my parents do you look more like right now, and what would it take to meet in the middle?

Warmly,

P.S. —  Neither of my parents could teach me the middle. I had to figure it out myself, the expensive way, and I wrote down what I learned in Nobody Told Me That.. Grab your copy here!

About Roger Magalhães

Entrepreneur | Speaker | Storyteller | Author
Different brands. Same high standard.

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