I was watching some videos on YooToob the other night.
Found a really cool series called “Gaming Historian” — cool if you’re a video game nerd, like I.
Anyway, one episode was about the old Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros 2.
Nintendo released the video game in Japan, but… when they tested in America, it was deemed too difficult. I think the play tester described it as “cruel.”
So… Nintendo of Japan went back to the drawing board and came up with a new version just for the U.S. market.
Result: the Super Mario Bros 2 game released in America is a “fake”. It’s actually a modified version of the Japanese game Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic.
What they did was replace all the Arabic characters in Doki Doki Panic with Mario and his friends.
They also swapped out a few incidental things.
But here’s the interesting part: Nintendo never mentioned what they had done.
Instead, they decided to pass off Doki Doki Panic as Super Mario Bros 2 and… the American public was never the wiser until… a few years later when Nintendo fessed up.
Kind of reminds me of how the financial services industry was formed.
Here’s what I mean:
Life insurance companies were the original financial planning firms.
They essentially invented the industry and had several products which were intended to form the backbone of the industry: endowments, life insurance, and annuities.
This system worked just fine for most Americans until the early 1980s when Ted Benna used an obscure tax loophole to create the first tax deductible savings plan.
From there, the industry exploded, taking over the financial planning industry and inventing the narrative that investing was “true” financial planning and that insurance was an unnecessary expense at worse and a necessary evil at best.
And… most people agree with the idea that investing = financial planning.
Me?
I think it’s more like a bewb job.
It looks pretty, and it’s functional, but it’s still not the real thing.
Funny thing is… today Benna has abandoned his mutant hellbaby and puts most of his savings into… whole life insurance and annuities. In one interview he even admitted that 401(k)s have morphed into a monster he never intended.
Anywho, why does any of this matter?
I dunno.
Maybe it doesn’t… unless you’re primary concern is making sure your savings is there for you in the future when you need it.
If you want to get back to basics, and build a savings plan that really works, then hop on my email list and I’ll show you how it’s done.