by Matthew Bon

Created on: May 08, 2009   Last Updated: May 19, 2009

Am I the only person who loves this recession? It really is amazing to me to find that we have so many complainers out there. When in the history of your life do you have the opportunity to lose your home AND your job all within the same month of each other? Actually, I'm not the biggest fan, but there are definite reasons why I love the financial difficulties that we are going through right now.

In the year 2005, I began a real estate investment business where I was an absolute genius! I could not imagine that there was a single soul in the real estate industry that had ever thought of what I am about to divulge to you. Are you listening? Move in closer. The secret ingredient to my real estate recipe was to buy a home, wait for a month, and then sell it. It was both brilliant and awesome, which I like to call, brillawesome. I remember reading and listening to Robert Kyosaki say that he learned all he needed to about investing by playing and game of Monopoly, and what I was doing was absolutely playing with Monopoly money. It is too bad that in 2008 the man with the bald head, top hat and sweet moustache told me to not pass go.

After a few months of crying like a baby and rocking myself to sleep, I began to realize the importance of this lesson taught by this dramatic failure. My family and I have needed to make some serious changes, but necessary changes. During the bull market, I was making several hundreds of thousands of dollars and would splurge it on things that I thought we needed. Such necessities included a BMW, a wakeboard boat, and a hummer mini for my daughter. Of all three purchases, the hummer for my 4 year old was the most difficult to get rid of. I thought she lost the circulation in her knuckles because they were so white from me prying her fingers away.

We have downsized our home, which has brought us closer together as a family. This was much needed as our familial priorities were slowly diminishing as we focused on materialistic things. I have found a new job working from eight am to five pm providing my family with a consistent income. I don't know if you have ever worked for yourself and then worked for someone else, but what a nightmare. And by nightmare, I'm talking about me.

We have reduced our expenses significantly in order to be able to survive in a completely different world that what we were used to just a couple years ago. My daughter has asked when she will be getting her little mini hummer electric car back and my response is, take your skeeter out and pretend that you are driving the hummer. In actuality, I have spoken with her on a very serious level explaining the financial difficulty that we are facing at this time and that all family members need to work together. Now my daughter is smart, but trying to explain the financial crisis on a 4 year old level is not easy, especially when she's asking questions like, Daddy, what is capitulation?

So like I was saying at the beginning with my facetious undertone, this recession has been great for us. What better way to bring a family together than to give them struggles? This is an opportunity to grow, to improve ourselves personally, and to set an example for future generations.

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