Spending Time With Grandkids Quotes

It was too much. I raised my hand and said, “There’s no universe in which I can consent to that.” I had spent two years promising Texans that if they voted for me I would fight with every breath in my body to stop the out-of-control spending and debt that is bankrupting our kids and grandkids. I

More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact: Buffett’s fortune isn’t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child. As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him. Consider a little thought experiment. Buffett began serious investing when he was 10 years old. By the time he was 30 he had a net worth of $1 million, or $9.3 million adjusted for inflation.16 What if he was a more normal person, spending his teens and 20s exploring the world and finding his passion, and by age 30 his net worth was, say, $25,000? And let’s say he still went on to earn the extraordinary annual investment returns he’s been able to generate (22% annually), but quit investing and retired at age 60 to play golf and spend time with his grandkids. What would a rough estimate of his net worth be today? Not $84.5 billion. $11.9 million. 99.9% less than his actual net worth. Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years. His skill is investing, but his secret is time. That’s how compounding works. Think of this another way. Buffett is the richest investor of all time. But he’s not actually the greatest—at least not when measured by average annual returns.

We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay’s for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie’s daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, “I’m gonna go have a baby. See you all later!” For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we’d spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He’d created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me. I’ll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I’ll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look. After we admired the baby together, I fell asleep, and Jep took his newborn daughter out to meet the family. He told me later he bawled like a baby. Later, when she went to the hospital nursery, Jep kept going over there to stare at her. I think he was in shock and overwhelmed and excited. Lily had a light creamy complexion and little pink rosebud lips, and she was born December 26, 2002. Despite the rough pregnancy, she was perfect. God answered our prayers, and now we were a family of three. We’d been married just a little over a year.

If our marriage were to go on just the way it’s been going, what will it be like for us in five, ten, twenty years? How can I build the self-esteem of my wife, who spends enormous amounts of time cleaning house and changing diapers? How can I help my eight-year-old girl learn to understand and control her emotions before the hormones start pumping through her body? When will my little boy and I need to have our first talk about sex? What kinds of things might my kids encounter in middle school—and how can I prepare them? How can I manage my career goals so that I’m available to my high school children? What will my children need in a dad when they’re in college? What kind of a husband will my wife need when she hits menopause? How can I help her through that passage? What kind of traits will my kids and grandkids cherish in a grandfather?

Mornings they get up late, eat breakfast in their cottages, then cross the road and spend the day gathered on the beach in front of Pasco’s place, one of about a dozen clapboard houses set on concrete pylons near the breakwater on the east end of Goshen Beach. They set up beach chairs, or just lie on towels, and the women sip wine coolers and read magazines and chat while the men drink beer or throw in a fishing line. There’s always a nice little crowd there, Pasco and his wife and kids and grandkids, and the whole Moretti crew—Peter and Paul Moretti, Sal Antonucci, Tony Romano, Chris Palumbo and wives and kids. Always a lot of people dropping by, coming in and out, having a good time. Rainy days they sit in the cottages and do jigsaw puzzles, play cards, take naps, shoot the shit, listen to the Sox broadcasters jaw their way through the rain delay. Or maybe drive into the main town two miles inland and see a movie or get an ice cream or pick up some groceries.

Fort Myers is a place without context. A clod of swamp torn from the hands of the Calusa and Seminoles, drained, razed, and carbon-copied from the cities surrounding it. A bit of Tampa. A bit of Miami. We’ll name it for Abraham C. Myers, a Jewish Confederate colonel who’s never actually been here. We’ll call it Fort Myers. It’ll be a stop on the Tamiami Trail (see what we did there?), a place to rest, not a place to stay. The people who spend time in Fort Myers, here on Florida’s southern Gulf Coast, are from Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota. Meaningful places. They fly south each winter to escape their frozen hometowns. They use their pensions to snap up parcels of this copycatted paradise a quarter acre at a time. They build ticky-tacky houses picked from catalogues, three-twos with pools shaped like jelly beans for the one week of spring when the grandkids visit. They landscape their yards with exotic ornamentals from Asia and South America, sprawling invaders that take over the native species, swallowing this land, this sun, as they multiply unchecked. They call themselves “snowbirds.” They arrive in a great migration each fall. Come spring, they flit off to where the grass is greener, unwilling to tolerate the summer’s choking heat. Unwilling to endure the season’s house-rattling thunderstorms and bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Unable to imagine summer here could be more; as sweet as lychees, as bright as mangoes glistening in the sun. Come spring, they fly back to their real homes up north, where people are Somebodies.