The Secret to Achieving Impossible Goals - Know Your Money | Episode 182

A rollover on a misty road. Two fatalities. One survivor left with severe brain damage and the brutal reality of starting life again from scratch. We sit down with Justin to tell the story of Ari, a young man who has to relearn how to talk, eat, sit, and walk and why the money side of recovery can be the difference between “getting by” and getting the best possible care. 

What makes this story hit hard is how practical it is. We talk about the cost of long-term rehabilitation, the value of having your financial life in order, and how good decisions made years earlier can fund better hospitals, consistent therapy, and even home care. If you have ever wondered what financial planning is really for, this is it: building options when your income, health, and independence are suddenly on the line. We also touch on the quieter pieces people avoid, like support networks, planning ahead, and why a bad attitude can become its own disability. 

Then the twist: they set a goal that sounds impossible, the New York Marathon. Training starts with a short driveway and ends with 42 kilometres of grit, including a breaking point on the Queensborough Bridge, a pizza stop, a wheelchair, and a stubborn decision not to quit. Along the way we pull out real takeaways on goal setting, resilience, and breaking overwhelming challenges into small “water points” you can actually reach. 

If the story moves you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a push, and leave a review so more people can find Know Your Money.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwan Wayner.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Know Your Money. Broman, good to see you today. Justin, back in the studio. Thank you so much. So exciting. Thank you. Yeah, well, you've got many stories to tell and many happy stories, and I'm sure you've got many sad moments that you've got to share with people. But you told us off about your uh experience in a marathon recently. So would like to share that with our audience?

Ari’s Crash And Rehab Reality

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah, um, Craig, so yeah, not so recently, actually quite early when I my practice started, um, I was given the opportunity to go do the New York Marathon with a patient of mine. Um, I'm gonna focus a little bit on his story first because it illustrates where money can make a difference to the outcome of a serious injury. Uh, because his his family had everything in order, luckily for him. So he could get the best therapy, the best hospitals. How old was he? He was late 30s. No, no, late 20s, early 30s. Family, wife, um, yeah, everything sets up beautifully. By his mom and dad were very astute with their money, and obviously he did the same thing. So I'm not gonna mention his name um for the sake of confidentiality, but he he ran a fishing program on Mnet Super Sport, and they were driving out one morning to go film the next segment to their fishing story, and unfortunately, heavy, heavy missed in the Broncosprite area, and they rolled their Land Rover. Uh two fatalities. One person came out fine, and uh Ari was severely brain damaged. And uh I got to meet Ari very soon after he got discharged from hospital and literally had to start from the beginning. As I said, parents were astute with their money that gave him the best care, they actually turned one of their rooms into a hospital room, and the therapist used to go there and see him. And I had to teach Ari and myself, the OTs speech service, literally how to talk again, how to sit again, how to eat again, and eventually we started to learn how to walk again. I

Choosing A Marathon Goal

SPEAKER_01 2:31

was then offered this opportunity to go to the New York Marathon and to run for a worldwide organization called Achilles. So Achilles is American-based athletic club or running club, and they they for the war veterans who lose lost legs or limbs, and just to keep them motivated to do events. And I find that if you've got a goal in life, you you can overcome quite a lot. Um so I said to Ari, you know, should we do the New York Marathon? Bear in a mind, this is probably it's within he's just been discharged from hospital, probably five months of me seeing him at home, because as bike nurses, we're not allowed to see people in hospital. So if he's been home five months, we're just starting to walk. Um we can walk maybe to the toilet without falling over, um, but he needs assistance everywhere he goes, and we decide we're going to do the New York Marathon in 12 months' time the following year. So Ari gets really, really excited. Yeah, exactly. The power of a goal. Ari gets excited and we start training. And literally, training is walking up and down his driveway in the city, which you know is no longer than 20 meters, and we do that once or twice and then he's exhausted, and we build up slowly to go once around the block, which is close to a kilometer, that takes us an hour. Um, but we've got this goal in mind. Eventually, the big day comes, 3rd of November 2005.

Nine Hours To Halfway

SPEAKER_01 3:55

We're in New York. Um, we shipped across to Staten Island in the New York Marathon. The the um physically disabled runners start two hours before the main runners. Okay. So we get a kickoff and we start, which is so, so nice because you get to see all the world's famous runners run past you. And we start this marathon um arm in arm because Ari loses his balance quite frequently and he's falling over, and I'm correcting him, and we walk, we walk, we walk. But a person with a head injury very often has quite high muscle tone. So his arms are getting quite cramped and his legs are spasming every now and then. So that we sit on the side of the pavement to stretch him and we go next goal. Each goal is like the next water point. Long story short, we start at 8 a.m. in the morning, freezing in Staten Island. We cross over that bridge and we're heading into Queensborough. We're going over that Queensborough bridge. And for those of you who watch a lot of American shows, that's the big bridge that they show in the TV series. So there's four lanes on top, four lanes at the bottom. We hit that bridge probably at 3.30 in the afternoon. So we've been walking for a long time, man.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

We're only at the halfway mark. And uh we are a dead last, but we don't know we're lost. We do now realize that everything's gone quiet around us, but we don't know we're lost. So the bridge is roughly three kilometres long. Ari now on the bridge. Ari's starting to curse me now. Why do we pick this stupid event? This is a dumb event. I'm telling him, listen, Ari, your kids are gonna look up to you for the rest of your life. This is a major achievement. So I'm trying everything I can do to motivate him. The cops, in their wisdom, open up the bridge. So now I've got four lanes of traffic heading towards me. Oh yeah. I've got the anti-suicide fence on my left and the Hudson River below us. And uh Ari's throwing tantrums. And I tell you what, if it wasn't for that fence, I probably would have jumped over and been a statistic. So I coerce Ari over, we get across the bridge, and he's not only mentally fatigued, he's physically fatigued.

Pizza Break And Wheelchair Push

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Um, I'm a bit exhausted from trying to hold him upright. I see this little street cafe pizzeria. So I take Ari in, we sit down. A lot of uh spectators see our New York Marathon t-shirts and they say, Well done, I'm doing the marathon. And I tell them, we're still doing the marathon. And uh there's some jokes thing they say, well, good luck finishing it. You know, um Ari is looking at me and says, We're not finishing this. I'm saying, No, we're all finishing. So don't worry, we're gonna take a break. So we order a pizza, I grab a beer to calm my nerves down. Ari's not allowed to drink because of his medication, so he has a coke, and we share this. And meantime, I phone the hotel because he's wheelchairs there, and I say, guys, we got 16 kilometres still to go. I mean, we've been out there for nine hours, I think.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Um, they whip, someone brings me a wheelchair, so I bring the wheelchair into the rooms, into the restaurant, so I put Ari in. And then he sees the rest of our party go one way, and I continue on the blue route. The reason I say blue route is the marathon's marked with a blue line, so you know exactly where you're going, even though the streets are got traffic on now again. And I start run, pushing Ari home or to finish the marathon. And he, I'm still trying to convince him. He's telling me we're not finished in this marathon. I say, Ari, we're finishing this marathon. We've traveled all this way, we trained for a year, we've finished this marathon. So I ran, pushed him in the wheelchair for probably eight to ten kilometres. We then come up to um Central Park, and Central Park's much longer than it looks on the movies. So we got about seven kilometers to go, and we've caught some people. And there's a there's a there's a group of people in front of us that are helping a lady with Parkinson's. They literally walk 20 metres, sit down, just sit in a chair, and they go, I look to Ari, I say, Ari, we're gonna complete this marathon and we're gonna complete it properly. So I had an assistant, he takes a wheelchair from me, and Ari and I start walking again. And I say, Ari, if one thing is going to do, we're not coming last. So we we pass this lady, and the long story short, he's 13 hours later.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So Ari and I finished the New York Marathon.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

And um the following year he went back, we did it a lot quicker, and he finished the marathon. But the importance of a goal is paramount. We had

Money Mindset And Closing Advice

SPEAKER_01 8:05

something to look forward forward to and something to aim our therapy towards. He had the financial backing to do something like that. And I think the my story is twofold. So when I tell the story to other people, I say, when life gets you down and it's really a tough time, just sit down and take into perspective what's happened. Grab a pizza and a beer, look what you've already achieved, and cut down the rest of life in small little chunks, and you'll be able to complete the event. So the importance of friendships and circles and support is vital. But if you look at the whole arch and story and the success of Ari completing the marathon much quicker next year, it was because his family were astute with how they invested their money, how they looked after their money, and how Ari could get the best therapy out of the whole situation.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

But I think he didn't just get a therapist, he also got a person that helped his mindset and helped him achieve that goal. And that is the gold in it in itself, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Well, he got you to getting it's not about the therapist.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Oh you know, a therapist, it was you as a therapist.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Well, the only disability in life is a bad attitude. Just thanks for that story. Really great. Thank you for telling us. Cheers. Awesome. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growth.fp.co.za. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.