Dave Mull

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Category: Faith & Family

  • Keep Your Own Score

    Golf has been teaching me things my whole life. I just didn’t always have time to listen.

    Lately, with the kids getting older, I’ve found my way back to the course. And I keep noticing that everything I love about the game is a lesson that works off the course too.

    You keep your own score. Nobody checks your math. The game only means something if you’re honest, and not the honesty that shows up in competition. The kind you practice when it’s just you, your ball, and a bad lie nobody saw.

    You play against yourself. The course doesn’t care what you shot last week. Every round is a fresh test of patience, discipline, and how you respond when a good drive ends up in a divot.

    Some evenings I’ll walk nine with the bag on my back. At 45 it feels like a ruck with a scorecard, and there’s something clarifying about it. Just you, the walk, and the next shot.

    And there’s the adventure of it. A course you’ve never played is a new puzzle every time. New holes, new views, and often new people worth knowing. This game has taken me places I’d never have gone otherwise.

    It reveals people too. Four hours on a course will teach you more about a business partner, a client, or a friend than a year of meetings. How they handle a bad hole. Whether they count every stroke. What they talk about when the conversation goes quiet. Who someone is shows up somewhere between the first tee and the eighteenth green.

    Some of my favorite rounds lately have been with my son. Same course, same game, two generations keeping our own scores.

    A gentleman’s game that demands honesty, rewards patience, keeps you humble, and gives you four hours of real conversation in a world that’s forgotten how.

    That’s not just golf. That’s a pretty good way to live.

  • Thank You Dad

    My dad, Robert “Bobby” Mull passed away today (1/9/23). He did not want to have a service after he passed, so I wanted to share here what I would have shared with folks there about my memories of my dad but mostly focusing on all the things I’m grateful for. We grew apart over the last 5 years or so but I was able to spend a bit more time with him over the last 6 months while he was in a nursing home. I’m thankful I got to share a lot of this with him over that time so he knew I appreciated him. If you have a fun story with Bobby, I’d love you to share it in the comments below!

    My parents got divorced when I was 2, so I really have no memory of life with them together. My memories of my dad are mainly from the weekends I spent with him and time during summer vacation. I remember being excited for those weekends because we always seemed to do something fun or have some adventure. I especially remember the years he was single and it was just him and me on guys weekends.

    I remember our fishing trips, jet ski adventures, visits to gun shows, taking in figure 8 racing, squirrel hunting, paoli peaks ski nights, dirt bike rides, midnight White Castle runs, crazy euchre games, listening to your fire fighter scanner, river rope swings, water skiing, fish fries, cross town bicycle rides, trap shooting nights with grandpa, doing doughnuts in the snow, your passion for being a fire fighter, your love of my kiddos and so much more.

    Thank you Dad!

    Thank you dad for teaching me to fish and sharing your love of the water.

    Thank you dad for teaching me to hunt and sharing your love of being in the woods.

    Thank you dad for teaching me to shoot and have respect for guns and safety.

    Thank you dad for teaching me to ride a motorcycle and sharing your love of 2 wheels.

    Thank you dad for taking me car shopping and buying my first car together.

    Thank you dad for teaching me to water ski.

    Thank you dad for teaching me how to work on cars, change my own oil and change a tire.

    Thank you dad for teaching me to snow ski and taking me on a midnight ski trips to Paoli.

    Thank you dad for sharing with me some amazing cooking, especially the fish fry’s

    Thank you dad for sharing with me your love of adventure and doing fun things

    AND thank you most for loving me.

    You’re Son,

    David Anthony

  • Kids, Money and Their Future

    I’ve long wondered why we as a society do not talk much about or teach our kids about money at a young age. Of all the subjects taught in school, it’s rare to find places that focus on personal finance and investing. Not only are we not purposeful about talking about it, in many cases we do the opposite. We tell kids not to ask what things costs, or how much we make or how much money we have. We as adults grumble about going to work and earning it, we grumble about not having enough of it, we stress about it, we fight about tit and do we really think our kids aren’t learning from our attitudes around it? It’s no wonder that kids often grow up not only with a misunderstanding of money but also a tainted view of it. I think it’s time we do our kids a favor and make real change about how to discuss money, finance, investing and wealth.

    Why It Matters

    A study done by TD Ameritrade showed that 41% of divorced generation Xers said that money was a driving factor. Another recent study by Nielsen suggests that between 50% and 75% of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Which means that if you miss just 1 pay check you will have bills you can not pay. So for everyone that says money isn’t everything, I completely agree but it sure as heck is something and that something needs to be talked about. We also know the importance of starting young, not only in habit forming and understand but also because of the compounding effect that exists from how growth and interest work. For all these reasons and many more our youth deserve to get a better baseline understanding of how all of this works and not have to figure it out on their own in their 20s, post college with a lot of debt and stress already hanging on their shoulders.

    What Can We Do

    First, let’s take the stigma away by having more open, regular conversations about it with our kids. Share with them what you make, share with them what things cost, share with them the things you wish you knew when you were younger. Admit your mistakes and the things you learned from them throughout your life. You can also talk about work as a positive thing, something we should be thankful for. Instead of I HAVE to go to work lets flip it and say we GET to go to work. We GET to create something today, do something that adds value, earn a living to support your family. These are things to be grateful for.

    Second, let’s get tactical about sharing things like how a personal income statement looks and works. Have a personal balance sheet and help them understand the differences between assets and liabilities. Help them understand how credit cards work, the good and the bad and how easy it can get out of control. Share with them how discipline in life applies to financial decisions. Help them establish financial goals early and teach them about the effects of compound interest. Help them set up a custodial brokerage account or savings accounts and see what saving and investing looks like. Watch some YouTube videos, listen to podcasts or read blogs on the subject. Make it fun!

    Lastly, let’s put pressure on and talk to school administrators to bring in proven curriculum around finance and investing. I sometimes struggle to understand why we put our kids through hours of learning of the periodic table but almost zero on how to balance a checking account, how to buy stocks, how business works or the markets. We set our kids up with a primary focus of going into a job market, working 40+ hours a week for most of their lives until they can afford to retire without giving them tools to make that easier. Then if they are lucky they get a handful of years to be free to enjoy life living on social security, a pension (which few seem to get these days) and the money they worked hard to save along the way. That just doesn’t sit well with me these days. We should be teaching our kids how to build the life they want, how to chase their dreams, live with passion. How to create, innovate, add value and enjoy all of their days. Learning how money works early can make all of this easier.

    We can do this, our kids and the next generation deserve it. We will all be better for it.

    Related reading: What’s With the 401K? and Multiple Income Sources