Chapter 7 - The Financial Bootcamp
Two days after the phone call from Attorney Pendelton, three heavy cardboard boxes arrived at my apartment.
Inside were forty-eight copies of Personal Finance for Toddlers and Delusional Entrepreneurs, three spiral-bound ledger books, a pack of red pens, and a laminated poster titled THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WISHFUL THINKING AND CASH FLOW.
That evening, there was a tentative knock on my apartment door.
I opened it to find Trevor standing there, looking like a whipped puppy. He wasn't wearing his Christmas sweater anymore; he had on a plain gray hoodie, and his hair was uncombed. Behind him stood Mom and Dad, looking equally chastised.
"Can we come in?" Trevor mumbled, staring at his sneakers.
"Depends," I said, leaning against the doorframe. "Did you bring alpacas?"
"No," Dad said heavily. "The alpacas are at Gary's barn. Gary is charging us twenty dollars a day per animal for rent and hay. We're going broke, Oscar."
"Come on in."
I let them into the living room. They sat on my couch like defendants awaiting sentencing. I walked over to the kitchen island, picked up one of the spiral-bound ledger books, and tossed it onto the coffee table in front of Trevor.
Trevor flinched as if I'd thrown a brick. "What's this?"
"Your new job," I said.
"My job? I'm an entrepreneur!"
"You're unemployed with forty-two alpacas and a negative net worth," I corrected smoothly. "Uncle Silas died."
Mom gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "Silas? Your great-uncle Silas? We haven't heard from him in twenty years! Is he...?"
"He passed away last week," I said. "And he left an estate."
Dad's eyes lit up with the dangerous, glittering hope of a gambler who just saw a royal flush across the table. "An estate? Silas was always sitting on land up north! How much? Fifty thousand? A hundred?"
"One point four million dollars," I said casually.
The living room went dead silent. You could hear the hum of my refrigerator in the kitchen.
Trevor's jaw dropped so low I thought it might detach. "One point... million? We're rich?!"
"No," I said sharply. "You aren't."
Dad leaned forward, his breathing turning shallow. "What do you mean? We're family! Silas was my uncle!"
"Silas left the entire estate in a conditional trust," I explained, crossing my arms. "And the primary condition is this: for the next twelve months, not a single penny of that money touches your hands, your bills, or Trevor's alpaca sanctuary. Furthermore, if I want to inherit the executorship, I have to oversee a mandatory financial literacy program for Trevor."
Trevor blinked rapidly. "A what?"
I held up one of the red pens. "Open page one of the ledger, Trevor. We're going to learn how to budget for groceries without relying on my credit card."
Mom started crying, but this time it wasn't angry tears; it was the soggy, overwhelmed relief of drowning sailors seeing a distant lighthouse. "Does that mean... we won't lose the house?"
"It means if you follow the rules, budget properly, and let Trevor learn how the real world works, everyone will be taken care of in a year," I said. "If you try to pull any more stunts—if you break into animal shelters, if you buy miniature livestock, if you ask me for a single dime—Uncle Silas's lawyer gives the entire 1.4 million to the Alpaca Breeders Association."
Trevor stared at the ledger book as if it were a venomous snake. "This is medieval torture."
"This is probation," I corrected. "Page one, Trevor. 'Income versus Expenses.' Define both terms using words that don't involve the word 'venture'."
For the next two hours, sitting around my coffee table, the grand patriarch of the Bennett family and his entrepreneurial son learned how to subtract utility bills from a fixed pension.
It wasn't glorious. It was tedious, humbling, and agonizingly slow.
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And for the first time in my life, it felt like progress.
Little did we know, however, that someone else in the family was about to find out about the 1.4 million dollar inheritance—and she wasn't going to play by Uncle Silas's rules.
