In today’s Office Hours, Eric answers Charlotte’s question: “What movie taught you the most about money?”
Eric chose the movie The Ultimate Gift based on a book by Jim Stovall because of how it taught the value of money and how you can use it to make a difference. This is the opposite of one we often mention as more of a cautionary tale, which is Billy Madison.
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Welcome to Don’t Retire, Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with purpose and passion. I’m your host and Valedictorian Eric Brotman. Welcome to Office Hours, where we answer listeners’questions about personal finance, retirement readiness, and more. We received a question from Charlote, who asked, what movie taught you the most about money? Charlote this is now my favorite question we’ve ever received here at Don’t Retire, Graduate. And I can’t wait to opine on some of the cinematic history that’s taught me something about money. There’s so many ways to answer this question. We could answer it with things like Wall Street or Boiler Room or those kinds of dramas. We could look at a Jerry Maguire and scenes about money there. We could talk about other people’s money with Danny DeVito. There have been so many amazing movies that center around money. But what I’d like to do is I’d like to take a little bit more of a profound approach to this and share with you the movie that moved me the most and taught me about what money is, what it’s not, and how important it can be. And the movie is called The Ultimate Gift. It’s based on a book by Jim Stovall, who has written a couple of books that are simply amazing. And I absolutely encourage everyone listening to this to check out the book and to check out the movie. The Ultimate Gift essentially, is a story about a very wealthy individual who left behind an enormous estate, but left it with some very interesting instructions for a great nephew. And he wanted his great nephew to learn the value of money through all the different gifts the gift of love, the gift of charity, the gift of life, the gift of laughter. And every month for one year, there were exercises and challenges that this great nephew had to do in order to ultimately receive his inheritance. And his inheritance is an unknown to him until the end. And it is such a profound, beautiful story. It’s an amazing movie. It’s family friendly, and I absolutely, totally recommend it because it reminds us all that money, in and of itself, is not the important thing. What it can do for you, the freedoms it can create, the benefits it can create, the ways in which you can make a difference in the world are so much more important than whether you can get a fancier sports car. So even though there have been lots of movies about money, and many of them are funny, I actually think the most profound movie about money was The Ultimate Gift. I will say that the antithesis of the ultimate gift is the Adam Sandler movie billy Madison. And I sometimes joke with clients that you don’t want to turn your kid into a Billy Madison by leaving lots of money to a kid who’s totally unprepared to receive it. So there are a lot of lessons about money out there. Some of them are funny, some of them are profound, but this is truly my favorite question. So, Charlote, you win whatever award it is for the best question we’ve ever received. I hope this was helpful. I hope you will check out the movie, and I actually encourage you to read the book. The book is a great place to get started. It’s not a difficult or long read, but it is a beautiful story. And thank you so much for your question. That was fun to think about, and I hope folks will check that out. So if you’d like to send us a question which we might answer in a future episode of Office Hours, post it on our Facebook page or tweet us at brotman planning. I’d like to thank all of you for listening, and we’d love to hear from you. So please send us a message or leave us comments at don’tretiregraduate dot or anywhere on social media. You can also leave ratings or reviews on your favorite podcast platform, which are priceless to us. And if you like the show, don’t keep us a secret. Share it with friends and family so they can join you on your path to financial freedom. Thanks for coming to office hours. Be sure to tune in for new content every Thursday. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you, don’t retire. Graduate.
