“Yeah, that white belt fucked me up.”
You know the conversation.
You get off the mats, someone asks how you went, and you tell them exactly how it was.
“I got absolutely fucked.”
No shame in it.
We’ll spend hours analysing why we can never finish a heel hook on that one guy. What went wrong, what we should’ve done, where we got caught.
But ask that same bloke what interest rate he’s paying on his mortgage?
“Fuck knows.”
Or ask when he last reviewed it.
“Probably when we got it.”
And if you suggest having a look?
“No, we don’t need any more money. Repayments are tough enough.”
That’s not even what you asked.
We do some strange things.
At Kemps, we deliberately put ourselves under pressure.
Jiu-Jitsu. Kickboxing. MMA.
You get tired. You get uncomfortable. You get humbled.
Sometimes you’re stuck underneath someone, you’re running out of ideas and you’re genuinely contemplating your life choices.
And eventually…
You tap.
You reset and go again.
There’s something good about deliberately doing hard things.
You get out of the house. You’ve got your mates around you. You’ve got something to focus on. Even if you’ve had a shit day, you turn up, get a sweat on and usually leave feeling a little better than when you arrived.
That’s part of why Movember makes sense around here.
Looking after your mates. Looking after your own head. Being willing to say, “Yeah, mate. I’m not doing so great.”
Because sometimes you need to tap.
Sometimes you need to say, “I’m stuck.”
But there’s another kind of pressure.
Some pressure makes you stronger. Some pressure just weighs you down.
Getting smashed by a brown belt?
You chose that.
You signed up for it.
A mortgage you’ve had for years?
That’s a different story.
And yet we’ll happily tap when we’re stuck under some bloke twice our size.
But when we’re stuck with a mortgage we know might not be right for us…
We just keep paying it.
For years.
That’s the weird part.
On the mats, you recognise a bad position pretty quickly.
You’re stuck. You’re running out of options. You know it’s time to reset.
With money, we’re sometimes happy to stay there because we’ve been there for so long.
The direct debit comes out.
The repayments get made.
The mortgage keeps ticking along.
So unless something obviously changes, there’s not much forcing you to ask:
“Is this still the right position for me?”
And that’s the thing.
You don’t have to change anything just because you take a closer look. You don’t have to borrow more money or refinance.
You can just find out where you stand.
Your mortgage might be perfectly fine.
There might be a better option.
Maybe nothing needs changing at all.
But wouldn’t you rather know?
It might take ten minutes to have a look.
A bad position is a bad position.
Whether you’re underneath a brown belt or looking at a mortgage you’ve had for years, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is recognise you’re stuck and reset.
And this Movember, there’s a good reason to do it.
If you settle a mortgage through the Kemps MMA network between 1 September and 30 November, Mascaro Finance will donate $500 to the Kemps MMA Movember team.
Last year, the team raised $6,825.
This year, we’re going for $13,650.
So keep doing the hard things.
Keep training.
Look after your mates.
Look after your head.
And if your mortgage has you stuck in a bad position…
Sometimes it’s better to tap.
Mascarofinance.com.au/kemps
