Jake's Take: Rocky - The Way Winning Is Done

Deriving financial insights from today's blockbusters and yesteryear's classics.

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There is hardly any other film series that has been as good, or inspired more generations with its tear-jerking rags-to-riches tale of love and determination than the boxing epic Rocky. One can extrapolate countless life lessons from the ground-breaking original 1976 film, and the five sequels that followed—lessons for business, morality, integrity, relationships—but when it comes to money management, one lesson holds the title.

It is a well-known Hollywood tale that when Sylvester Stallone wrote the original script for Rocky, numerous studios wanted to buy it as a starring vehicle for big name actors like Burt Reynolds, James Caan, and Ryan O’Neal. But Stallone, even though he was penniless and out-of-work, refused to sell the script without a guarantee that he’d also star in the film. Much like his character Rocky, he was determined to go the distance no matter what. Eventually he got someone to bite, and the film went on to win dozens of awards including the 1977 Oscar for Best Picture.

Rocky is the ultimate story of determination, of a man whose drive to win pushes him beyond his limits. In the film, Rocky takes a beating against boxing's champion Apollo Creed, and just when the crowd and the judges, and even Apollo himself, think Rocky is going to go down and stay down, he rises again.

It’s what Dave Ramsey calls it “gazelle intensity.”

Paying off debt is rarely a one, two punch. It’s 15 rounds with Apollo Creed. Along the way there are going to be setbacks, black eyes, broken noses, pain, and tears, but, as Rocky says: “It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”

Keep pinching’ :-)