The Barefoot Investor. Scott Pape

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I gripped my wife Liz's hand and continued driving down our driveway towards our family home.

      Two chimneys and a pile of rubble were the sum total of a lifetime of possessions.

      Her wedding dress. Tea cups. The few last remaining photos of her late father, who had died 10 years earlier. Butter knives. All of my baby son's clothes. All of his toys. Everything was gone.

      Overhead, a TV news chopper hovered. Later, it would land amid our dead and dying animals, and a reporter would enter what remained of our private family home and kick through the still-smouldering personal possessions that had made our little family us.

      At the time I was used to fronting the nightly finance news; that day I was the news.

      With the thick smell of everything burning, the sight of everything we'd worked for in ashes and a chopper buzzing around us, my wife erupted. She began screaming uncontrollably. Deep, loud groans of pain. Our baby son, who was strapped in his car seat, began bawling in sympathy.

      At that moment, when everything was falling apart, I looked in the rear-view mirror and said to myself the first thing that came to my mind:

      ‘I've got this.’

      That's the truth. That's exactly what I said. Don't get me wrong: I'm not some Bruce Willis diehard tough-guy character. Far from it. But if this was the lowest point in my life, there was something deep inside of me that knew I could handle it.

      And over the next two years, I did.

      The belly of this book came from that one moment.

      Because here's the thing: at some stage you're going to face your own financial fire.

      It could be when your partner walks out on you and the kids.

      It could be when you're sitting alone in the work carpark after the boss has made you redundant.

      It could be after you go to the doctor for a simple ‘check-up’.

      It could be your girlfriend telling you she's pregnant.

      It could be when you glance at your super statement and wonder how you'll ever afford to retire.

No matter what you face in the future, I want you to be able to look yourself in the eye and confidently say to yourself:

      I've got this.

      And by the end of this book, that's exactly what you'll be able to do.

Plant, Grow, Harvest

      After the fire, we looked at the devastation that surrounded us, and were totally overwhelmed.

      The smell gets into your lungs … into your brain.

      The day before, we had a ‘to do’ list. Now we had a phone book.

      With a million things to do, where would we even start?

      Well, we chose to … plant a tree.

      An apple tree.

      It wasn't a short-term fix, obviously.

      After all, you don't plant an apple tree on a Saturday and then come back on Sunday and stand with your hands on your hips and scowl:

      ‘Where are my freaking apples?’

      No, you don't do that.

      You don't pull out the sapling a week later and replant it on the other side of the yard where you think it's (maybe) sunnier.

      You don't stay up at night worrying that your golden retriever is threatening to lift its leg on the trunk.

      You don't nervously watch the weather on the nightly news and think to yourself, ‘There's no rain on the five-day forecast! El Niño will wipe out everything. This is a disaster!’

      You don't get desperate and google ‘How to grow a thousand apples a day, with one tree’.

      No, you just plant the bloody tree.

      And then you wait.

A year or so later it bears some apples (mostly hard, small and sour). Its branches are still young, so the weight of the apples makes it droopy. (It looks like a tree version of a fashion model.)

      And then you basically forget about it, and get on with your life.

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