“What’s that crackling noise… do you hear it?”
It was a blustery evening in Arrington, Tennessee – a picturesque unincorporated community about 35 minutes south of Nashville. After a great Thanksgiving week at my brother’s house, we were getting the kids settled in to watch Home Alone before bedtime.
That’s when the lady of the house walked in asking about the crackling noise. She was in the next room giving their 8-month old a bath and couldn’t figure out what the strange noise was.
Nobody thought much of it until my brother opened the attic door to investigate… and was greeted by a whirlwind of smoke, loose insulation, and 9-foot flames engorging themselves upon the exposed wood in the unfinished room.
Unflinching, he jumped into action. “The house is on fire! Everybody out!”
Slightly confused, the kids dutifully followed their mothers down the stairs and out into the cold night. I watched their exit from the door to confirm their safety, then I went to work evacuating everything I could think of.
First I grabbed our laptops out of the home office and rushed them out to the car, parked safely on the street. Then I ran back in and grabbed my briefcase, stashing everything I could into it. Phone chargers… the kids’ tablets… whatever else happened to be lying on the counter – I grabbed everything in reach and made my way for the exit.
On the way out, I passed my brother who was wielding a hand-held fire extinguisher and calling for his cat. Upon depositing my second round of salvaged possessions into the car, I dashed back to the house, determined to help save the cat.
“Joe, it’s too late,” my brother called from the curb as I approached the door. Ignoring his warning, I pulled my shirt over my nose and started in.
“Joe! Look at the house man. You can’t go back in… you’re not replaceable!”
I made it two steps before an ocean of black smoke flowed down the stairs and filled the entire first level of the home nearly instantly… taking my breath away in the process.
I was forced to heed my brother’s warning and retreat back to the curb. That’s when I finally looked up and saw what he was referring to:
It looked like special effects from a movie… but it was real. A fireball had engulfed the upper level of the house and was devouring everything with ravenous hunger.
The girls had the wherewithal to call 911 immediately upon exiting the house, and at least 15 volunteer firefighters dutifully responded. It took several hours, but they put out the fire before it could spread.
The home is basically totaled, however. There’s a giant hole where the living room ceiling used to be. And between the fire, the smoke, and the mixture of water and chemicals from the firehoses, very little of what’s inside will be salvageable.
It will take a major renovation to make the home livable again. And then it will need entirely new floors, carpets, appliances, furniture, and fixtures – pretty much everything.
Logistically, it’s a nightmare for my brother and his young family. But it’s only stuff… and stuff can be replaced.
What’s striking, and somewhat humbling, is how quickly the smoke claimed the home. We had no more than five minutes to evacuate from the time we identified the fire to the time it became impossible to breathe inside.
Had this happened later at night after everyone went to bed, it could have been tragic. I’m thankful that wasn’t the case.
To me, this serves as a great reminder of what’s truly important in life.
We talk about money and investing in these pages, and I’ve dedicated my career to those topics. But what I’ve been clear on from the start is that none of this is actually about money. Because money isn’t important.
What’s important is the freedom and security that money can buy for ourselves and our families – if we are good stewards.
That’s one of our core principles at The Phoenician League… and surviving the great Nashville fire of 2025 serves as a great reminder for me.
This experience also serves to reinforce my appreciation for good insurance companies.
For those who have attended one of our strategy sessions before, I usually talk about how we model our investment strategy on the world’s best property and casualty (P&C) insurance companies – the ones who have been in operation for over a century now.
In my presentations, I’ve always highlighted the P&C business model and pointed out that I don’t know anyone who has ever needed to use their homeowners insurance. Then we talk about how that gives the insurance company the opportunity to invest what’s called “the float” successfully.
Well, I can’t say that anymore.
But what I can say is that my brother’s insurance company has been great thus far through this process. He’s going to be made whole in time… which reinforces my belief that insurance is a cornerstone of an advanced civilization.
That said, my brother is fortunate that he had a strong financial foundation in place outside of the insurance coverage.
Thanks to the resources he had available, he was able to quickly rent a fully-furnished home nearby to minimize the disruption for his young children. Had he not been smart with his finances, he would have been in limbo for a week or two while the insurance company, the investigators, and the adjustors got a handle on the situation.
With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to join us tomorrow for our final Phoenician League strategy session of 2025.
We’ll go live at 5:30 pm Eastern. And our focus will be on how we can shore up our finances and make our money bulletproof heading into 2026.
Doing so will provide us with a solid financial foundation from which we can confidently make some advanced investments to create extra income streams for ourselves… and it will also put us in a position where we have the resources we need to handle any curveballs that life throws at us – like my brother is having to do right now.
I’m also excited to say that we’ll have a special guest joining us tomorrow. He’s a financial craftsman in his areas of specialization, and I expect we’ll have a great discussion about what’s in store for 2026 and how we can position our finances accordingly.
If you’re interested, I’d be honored to have you join us. Again, we’ll get started tomorrow (December 17) at 5:30 pm Eastern.
Our goal is to lay out a solid financial plan for the new year and to provide all attendees with actionable takeaways to make 2026 the most foundational year yet.
And I should add that this will be a true strategy session – we’re not doing fixed presentations with slides or anything like that. This is all organic.
We’re also going to test out the Riverside platform for this one.
Riverside is great for podcast productions, and it also has some functionality for hosting group sessions like this. But I don’t think anyone has used it as such… so we’re going to give it a whirl.
This is an experiment though, so I apologize in advance if there are any kinks with the platform.
The positive is that nobody has to register to attend. We’ll send out the session link to you by email tomorrow and then you can join with just one click if you like.
So I hope to see you tomorrow for our last strategy session ahead of the holidays. We’re going to have a lot of fun, and we’ll close out 2025 in style.
Joe