My cheapness makes for a funny running theme, and I can tell you it’s 100 percent real. As the country folks would say, I “get it honest” straight from the gene pool, as my dad, at his core, is cheaper than anyone you know. Oh, sure, someone has an uncle who lies, cheats, and steals his way to savings, and there’s a TV show that claims people really dumpster-dive for food and split two-ply toilet paper into one. That’s merely surface-deep cheapness, though. My dad’s motivations are much deeper.

Some are motivated to be cheap because they want to be rich or have power. Some are motivated because they actually have no money and, hence, have nothing to spend. Some people are just heartless jerks. My dad’s motivation outstrips them all. My dad is a desperate man—he has lived every day of his life in constant fear of “blowing it” and becoming poor. His motivation, not just in money but in every aspect of life, is security. As my dad would see it, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does buy security, and that is what makes him happy.

The trouble is that you can never be truly secure. If you’re cheap because you’re poor, you could conceivably make enough money to no longer be poor and no longer have to be cheap. You could vault out of the cheapness. There are people who declared bankruptcy, lived hand-to-mouth briefly, got it all fixed up, and went back to normal spending habits. I know people like that.

If you’re cheap because you want to be rich and powerful, you could conceivably reach a point of power and riches where you no longer need to be so cheap. It took three ghosts to get Ebeneezer Scrooge to that point, but it’s certainly conceivable that a mom-and-pop business owner could eventually experience great success, expand the company, and hand out some nice Christmas bonuses to employees. Or take a company public. Further, if you truly reach a high status of money and power, you’ve surely learned long ago that it takes money to make money. You’d understand the upside of risk, reward, and investment.

In those cases, the cheapness can wear away, but someone who is cheap for security will never reach that point. Security-cheap is the deepest bastion of cheap. Secheapity. It’s ingrained in you the same way something is when someone says they act a certain way because they had a bad childhood. The current circumstances do not matter. That stuff ain’t going away.

Just as bullies know there’s always someone bigger and stronger out there, security-motivated cheapness knows there’s no true safety point. The economy could crash, the monetary system could collapse, and further, no job is truly secure. (Health care can drain any bank account, but true cheapies would probably just skip the hospital to pass as easily as possible. My dad hasn’t been to a doctor in decades. What’s that tell you?)

When motivated by security, you fear each day is the one where it all goes south. We know people are most motivated when they’re most desperate. If you have secheaptity, you are desperate every single day.

Meanwhile, my mom is a self-styled efficiency expert, which really translates to “never waste anything ever, even if it’s growing mold.” She will kill herself to make the most of the least. Efficiency-cheapness. Echeapity. I’ll get into that at a later date, but suffice to say that I was raised in a vortex of secheapity and echeapity. (As a side-effect, my sister, in a protest, is as far removed from these habits as one can possibly be. Kids like to rebel sometimes, right?)

So, now you know that I, as the trainers would say, have built a solid base. Now I will let you in on a little secret: I make pretty good money working in this industry. It takes seven-day work weeks and many paychecks from many jobs, but that’s the motocross way. We all have suggestions and ideas on how this sport can be better, but I really feel the bottom-line of almost all of them is that this sport isn’t as big as it should be. That impacts the paychecks and, yes, security, at every level, from the athletes on down.

This, also, will be covered in many, many stories on this blog. (That’s a cheap plug, pun unintended, keep reading).

This sport is small. It could be gone at any moment. Further, the jobs I have now barely even existed as recently as 20 years ago. When you’re raised with secheapity, you see the limitations. You know there’s a dark cloud behind each silver lining.

So, there’s my cocktail. Secheapity combined with a career that I’m lucky even exists. This cheapness isn’t going anywhere.