“It was paper when we started...”

Photo by The New York Times I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.”

The best things in life are free

But you can keep them for the birds and bees

Now give me money

(That's what I want)

—Berry Gordy, Janie Bradford

It’s not often you’ll hear me say I learned a valuable lesson from Sam Walton, but today is one of those days.

Thanks to declining production and falling oil prices, I had to take a huge write down in the valuation of one of my properties yesterday. It was frightening and disheartening.

To be clear, this isn’t real money. It didn’t come out of my pocket, but it does affect my net worth. And banks tend to look down on reductions in net worth.

So, I’m grateful for the lesson I learned from Walton way back in 1987. After the stock market crashed on Black Friday, he lost about a half-billion dollars in Wal-mart’s market capitalization the following Monday. Walton shrugged off the loss. He said, “It was paper when we started, and it’s paper afterward.”

I remember thinking at the time, “That’s easy for you to say.” But the truth is, paper losses hurt about as much as paper gains help. That is to say, not much. I still own the land, and my taxes will go down because of the write down.