It's the Principle of the Thing
By Joseph M. Kaiser

No, it ain't. It's the "PRINCIPAL" of the thing!

At some point you're going to bang up against a situation where you decide to stand firm "on principle."

Dumb.

I remember times when it wasn't the money that mattered, it was the principle of the thing and I'll tell you what, knowing what I know today I'd have eaten the principle thing in a New York minute.

Hey guy, it's a business. Stuff happens. The trick is to convert the sticky situations we all find ourselves in at some point and resolve them the best way we know how, keeping in mind that were not there to show our moral superiority or teach someone a lesson.

We're in it to make a buck, period, and sometime that means you gots to do what you gots to do.

Standing on principle, while noble indeed, makes little or no business sense when it ultimately ends up costing you money.

I once had a seller renege and it cost me a resale of the property I'd bought from her.

Big brick apartment building downtown I'd somehow figured out how to buy and incredibly, had lined up to flip for more than a hundred and twenty thousand dollars more than I paid for it.

Even better, I was scheduled to walk out of escrow with a check for nearly sixty thousand dollars (more money than I'd ever seen before).

But that wasn't even the end of the story.

I had it sold on a contract where they were paying me ten percent interest and I only had to pay eight.

That meant I'd not only have that sixty thousand dollars cash but I'd also be collecting another five hundred dollars a month for the next thirty years! How cool is that?

And my buyers were solid. They weren't pretend investors, they'd put up thousands of dollars in earnest money to show they were for real and they were eager to close.

Talk about heady times.

The lady I'd bought the place from wouldn't approve of my buyers unless I agreed to bump her interest rate a point. She had no right to require this and it made me angry when she did.

It was clear that she was trying to steal money we both knew was rightfully mine, and I refused to cower to her demands.

You did say she just wanted to raise the interest rate a point, right?

Sure, it's only a point, but she had no right to try to squeeze me like that.

She and I made a deal fair and square and I'm going to make sure she sticks to her end of the bargain.

Psssssssst, Joe . . . its a freak'in point.

I mean, why should I have to cough up an extra hundred and fifty dollars a month? That's my money and besides, a deal is a deal.

Dude, ITS A FREAKING POINT!!!

Forget her. I ain't doing it. (go ahead and say it along with me) . . . "it's the principle of the thing!"

Dooooooooooh.

Think I might like to do that day over? No doubt about it.

Have you done the math yet and figured out what that little moral indignation ended up costing me when my deal fell through?

Me neither . . . and please, if we ever meet in person and you decide to do the math, please don't tell me. Frankly, I don't want to know and I think "a lot" covers it well enough.

Summary

Standing on principle is overrated and as I discovered more than a couple times, expensive. We're in business to make money, not to show who's right and who's wrong.

Moral victories have their place and if moral victories are your thing, more power to you. Me, I'm taking the dough eleven times out of ten.

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