Over Christmas break, my nine-year-old daughter taught me something about value—without realizing it.
It started with a penny.
She told me kids at school say pennies are worthless. One cent. Barely money. Not worth bending down to pick up.
So we dumped out the jar.
Hundreds of pennies we’d collected over the year, rolling across the table. I asked her a simple question:
“Are pennies actually worthless?”
She paused.
“They’re not worthless, Dad. They’re just worth one cent.”
That answer opened the door.
I asked how many pennies made a dollar.
Then five dollars.
Then whether five dollars could buy lemons, sugar, and cups.
She nodded. Of course it could.
“How much could you sell lemonade for?”
“Fifty cents.”
“How many cups could you sell at one of your soccer games?”
“Fifty.”
She did the math instantly.
Twenty-five dollars.
“So what did we turn five dollars in pennies into?” I asked.
She smiled.
“Twenty dollars.”
The penny didn’t change.
The way we looked at it did.
Where Devaluation Actually Begins
That conversation stuck with me—not because of money, but because of relationships.
How many people in our lives have quietly become “pennies”?
Team members we assume will always be there.
Clients we stop listening to.
Friends we no longer invest in.
Family relationships we treat as fixed instead of living.
We don’t mean to devalue them.
But devaluation rarely starts with disrespect.
It starts with neglect.
With assumption.
With complacency.
With “they’ll understand.”
Value doesn’t disappear—it erodes when attention does.
The Uncomfortable Part
Here’s the part most people skip:
Devaluation doesn’t start with them.
It starts with us.
We decide—consciously or not—what we invest in and what we step over. When we stop polishing the penny, it tarnishes. When we stop showing up, value fades. When we stop nurturing, compounding stops.
The relationship didn’t become worthless.
We just stopped treating it like it mattered.
The Question Worth Asking
So here’s the real inventory:
Which relationships have I unintentionally devalued?
Where have I been stepping over pennies with real upside?
And just as important—where do I need polishing to be valuable to others?
Because sometimes we’re not the investor.
We’re the asset that’s been neglected.
What Still Holds True
Small investments compound.
Attention creates value.
Neglect creates devaluation.
That’s true in money.
It’s truer in relationships.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
You start noticing the pennies again.