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Having that special dinner with friends at 23 is, for instance, more valuable than having a couple hundred extra dollars in your retirement fund at 73.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/all-the-personal-finan
ce-books-are-wrong/ar-AA11lHCj

I found this article about human psychology vs. logic when applied to budgeting and saving to be pretty interesting. The title of the article (the thread title minus the "?") is not the title I would have chose for it though, since nobody said that... other than the guy writing the article, I guess.

Humans are illogical. I get extremely frustrated sometimes with people I care about and the stupid way they handle money, but then I have to remember that I've got plenty of behaviors that they would also consider odd and probably find just as frustrating too.

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And everybody's situation is different, even if just in minor ways. It probably isn't good advice to make a blanket statement that everybody should save 10% of their income, no matter what their circumstances are. And I do like how the economist says that somebody would find a night out eating dinner with friends at 23 years old to have been a lot more valuable to them than a few hundred extra bucks in their retirement years when they're 73 years old.

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Personally, I'll never forget those early years working that first job and partying 6 nights a week. I've got a pretty good memory, and it's always fun to bring up things that happened back then when I see friends I haven't seen in a while and give them a good laugh about something they forgot happened or hadn't thought about in decades. But I should have at least saved SOME of that money. When the rug got pulled out on that gig, it was a lot of years of rough living until the next good gig came around.

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I say that, but at the same time if I had a big cushion from saving, who says I wouldn't have just wasted it anyhow and possibly not learned from my mistakes and changed my behavior so drastically? It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Not only was I blowing my cash on the newest tech, an expensive wardrobe, and high priced import beers while my friends were drinking Budweiser, but it wasn't so long ago where I did that very same thing, but in a much sadder and lonelier and pathetic way by squandering a good portion of my cushion getting nothing accomplished and isolating myself from the world and drinking myself into oblivion with high volumes of low quality beer. Something I wouldn't have even been able to do for 5 years straight had I not been saving all the money that I had to that point without losing my house and/or starving to death.

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And that wasn't even fun. There were no memories being made. No funny stories to tell.

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So... I get it. I get why I could never get my brother to put 2 dependents on his Payroll form at work so he wasn't giving the government a free loan every year because in his words "I'm not good at saving and it's nice to get that big check every year". I get why people do a lot of irresponsible things with their finances because they need it on a psychological level.

But how do you reach them? How do you get people who can't seem to find any balance reach an equilibrium that works for them, and makes their money work for them? Make them see that they don't have to spend their lives chasing money because they've already got more than they need coming in if they just did right with at least some of it?

I'd never wish my life on somebody to get them to do right with their money. And I know full well that had I not lived my life I probably wouldn't be as good with money as I am now.

Maybe another Great Depression is the antidote to the problem? And it wouldn't just be this problem either. Society kind of sucks in the 2020's. And as I get older I start thinking more and more that the behaviors of the generations that came before me and the things I took for granted about how the world "works" were all of the residual effects of an entire generation of people who, save for an elite few, were all objectively poor.

For all of the bad that comes with true hardship, there are good things that come along with it well. It can straighten out your priorities. It can get you to stop cycles of bad behavior that you could only get away with when things weren't difficult, and even spur you to adapt new and healthy alternative behaviors. It can bring family and community closer together. When we're all in it together, it could be a very unifying factor.

Idle hands, and all of that...

I dunno.

I'm just rambling.

This timeline kind of sucks and I'm just waiting for something to come along and change it.

And I find that I regret how much I took the past for granted, and how I isolated myself for so many years back in times that were much better than the society I found waiting for me when I finally crawled back out of the pit I'd dug for myself.

Well... I guess all I can do for now is continue to make improvements to my situation and quality of life while going out of my way to try to make things better for people in my small sphere of influence when the opportunity presents itself.

Maybe that's the best that any of us can do.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/all-the-personal-finan
ce-books-are-wrong/ar-AA11lHCj

I found this article about human psychology vs. logic when applied to budgeting and saving to be pretty interesting. The title of the article (the thread title minus the "?") is not the title I would have chose for it though, since nobody said that... other than the guy writing the article, I guess.

Humans are illogical. I get extremely frustrated sometimes with people I care about and the stupid way they handle money, but then I have to remember that I've got plenty of behaviors that they would also consider odd and probably find just as frustrating too.

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If the discussion is just about money, money is an easy metric.

A problem with people is that they're contextual.

EXAMPLE: You have a $20 ticket to see a show, and $20 in your pocket. Standing in the lobby, you lose your ticket. Do you buy another and see the show anyway?

That's you, standing in the lobby and you lose $20 out of your pocket. Do you refund your ticket and go home, or keep your ticket and see the show anyway?

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If I had a $20 ticket in my pocket, somebody gave it to me. And if scalpable, I'm scalping it.

When my buddy took me to the casino for that awesome buffet after I helped with his exhaust fan, he gave me $20 afterward to gamble and told me specifically I'm not to put that in my wallet and watch him play and it was to be used for gambling purposes only.

My friends know me too well.

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When people think about what to spend their $ on, they think in silos. The old lady with six cats keeps spending money on her cats despite the fact that she's eating cat food herself. She never reconsiders the money she has (mentally) budgeted for "cats".

Since "I may want to retire someday" is an abstract goal, one way to break siloed thinking is to create an alternate possibility for that money. "Do I want this latte, or would I rather have (fill in the blank)? That takes spending out of one context and puts it an another. But it has to be an alternative that resonates. It could be a reliable car, independence, a vacation, buying a house, investment... it has to be meaningful to the person who is deciding and big enough so that it can't be decided on a whim.

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Yeah. And it's got to be small goals too. Abstract is BS pie in the sky thinking. It's fine to have abstract goals, as long as you buoy those with real-world, tangible goals that can lead to the bigger ones.

Independence has always been my abstract goal. I will never truly get there. But, at least in my case, it's a great catalyst to push forward on the smaller goals, even if rational minded me knows that true independence is an impossible goal*... and perhaps it's not even all that desirable a goal in some ways as well.

* Impossible, of course because of external factors like inflation and the government. But also because there are always times you're going to need a favor or to actually pay somebody to do something that is completely out of your skillset. And, of course, because everybody gets old before they die. I don't think you truly appreciate what life is going to start being like in the back half of your life until you step through that doorway in the middle. I won't whine about my issues now, but I'll just say that I can appreciate just how much harder it is to get around and do things when you're in your 70's than when you're in your 20's, even though I still barely have a clue what's in store for me.

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There's a problem with "saving money" tho, and that's inflation. Maybe I'll tackle that later.

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Oh... I know about it. I've talked in length about this issue before.

"Why aren't you working?", "Don't you want any luxuries in your life?" and my favorite "why do you chose to live like a pauper?".

Well, in reply.... "I'm doing fine with what I've got and the more I make the more I'm giving away to a government that does things I don't approve with it.", "Coming as close to independence as any non-elite at my age who didn't win the lotto or luck into creating a cash-cow empire IS a luxury." and "You need to buy a dictionary and look at what the definition of a pauper is."

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But you're talking about life in general, not just money.

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And everybody's situation is different, even if just in minor ways. It probably isn't good advice to make a blanket statement that everybody should save 10% of their income, no matter what their circumstances are. And I do like how the economist says that somebody would find a night out eating dinner with friends at 23 years old to have been a lot more valuable to them than a few hundred extra bucks in their retirement years when they're 73 years old.

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I already addressed that.

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Yeah. And I'm not sure we agree on this either. Some people could do right and save all of their lives, missing out on every dinner at 23 years old with friends and then the dollar collapses completely, so they're out the memories and the extra couple hundred bucks for food in retirement.

It's why I'm not all gung ho on accumulation and acquisition right now. I've got more than any financial advice from economists recommend to newbies to the saving game make their first milestone goal after they've spent the time and money to pay down all of their debt first. If inflation and/or a world shakeup in the USD destroys the value, I'm going to wish I'd done something better with my time than work for somebody else only to have a bunch of ones and zeros in a bank account that won't do anything for me.

As for "context" though... I sure regretted all of those bad money decisions when I was 23 and living in my grandma's basement with cats that like to pee everywhere without a dollar in my pocket most days. But 20 years later I don't regret those times at all.

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Personally, I'll never forget those early years working that first job and partying 6 nights a week. I've got a pretty good memory, and it's always fun to bring up things that happened back then when I see friends I haven't seen in a while and give them a good laugh about something they forgot happened or hadn't thought about in decades. But I should have at least saved SOME of that money. When the rug got pulled out on that gig, it was a lot of years of rough living until the next good gig came around.

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If your friends have forgotten those times, it probably wasn't as well-spent for them as it was for you, since it didn't create any lasting memories. Experiences are only good if the memories endure!

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They remember. But sometimes they need somebody like me around who never got married and had kids and never had a reason to forget the younger years.

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I say that, but at the same time if I had a big cushion from saving, who says I wouldn't have just wasted it anyhow and possibly not learned from my mistakes and changed my behavior so drastically? It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Not only was I blowing my cash on the newest tech, an expensive wardrobe, and high priced import beers while my friends were drinking Budweiser, but it wasn't so long ago where I did that very same thing, but in a much sadder and lonelier and pathetic way by squandering a good portion of my cushion getting nothing accomplished and isolating myself from the world and drinking myself into oblivion with high volumes of low quality beer. Something I wouldn't have even been able to do for 5 years straight had I not been saving all the money that I had to that point without losing my house and/or starving to death.

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Experience can be a harsh teacher. Maybe some people need harsh experiences to change.

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I think everybody does. Or at least, everybody stands to benefit from a bout or two of really rough times in their life so they can appreciate the good times.

This is why so many people hate hollywood movies right now. None of the things we're seeing are earned. Magical McGuffinzes making perfect people even more perfect is not an interesting story. Nobody cares.

And maybe if everybody had a run in with bad luck once or twice in their life it would eliminate a lot of the "Karen" behavior out there and people would just be nicer to each other.

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And that wasn't even fun. There were no memories being made. No funny stories to tell.

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Who says we aren't telling funny stories about you?
j/k!

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Oh. I'm sure there were. And I'm sure it was deserved.

Did you see a thread I created in April of 2016 where I said that I'm 100% voting for Hillary Clinton?

I don't remember posting that, but it certainly was me. I even doubled down on it too.

Thanks to Jaynez for digging that one up.

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So... I get it. I get why I could never get my brother to put 2 dependents on his Payroll form at work so he wasn't giving the government a free loan every year because in his words "I'm not good at saving and it's nice to get that big check every year". I get why people do a lot of irresponsible things with their finances because they need it on a psychological level.

But how do you reach them? How do you get people who can't seem to find any balance reach an equilibrium that works for them, and makes their money work for them? Make them see that they don't have to spend their lives chasing money because they've already got more than they need coming in if they just did right with at least some of it?

I'd never wish my life on somebody to get them to do right with their money. And I know full well that had I not lived my life I probably wouldn't be as good with money as I am now.

Maybe another Great Depression is the antidote to the problem? And it wouldn't just be this problem either. Society kind of sucks in the 2020's. And as I get older I start thinking more and more that the behaviors of the generations that came before me and the things I took for granted about how the world "works" were all of the residual effects of an entire generation of people who, save for an elite few, were all objectively poor.

For all of the bad that comes with true hardship, there are good things that come along with it well. It can straighten out your priorities. It can get you to stop cycles of bad behavior that you could only get away with when things weren't difficult, and even spur you to adapt new and healthy alternative behaviors. It can bring family and community closer together. When we're all in it together, it could be a very unifying factor.

Idle hands, and all of that...

I dunno.

I'm just rambling.

This timeline kind of sucks and I'm just waiting for something to come along and change it.

And I find that I regret how much I took the past for granted, and how I isolated myself for so many years back in times that were much better than the society I found waiting for me when I finally crawled back out of the pit I'd dug for myself.

Well... I guess all I can do for now is continue to make improvements to my situation and quality of life while going out of my way to try to make things better for people in my small sphere of influence when the opportunity presents itself.

Maybe that's the best that any of us can do.

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I know people who make the same stupid decisions over and over, no matter how existential. A former carer, who was so emotionally traumatized by childhood sexual and other abuse she spent the rest of her life (and her money) chasing after love from unreliable people and drinking to dull emotional ache. Or our former gardener who, in a huff, quit one good gig after another despite having been homeless for years. Help never acted as a springboard. Or JO73. Despite being a talented guy, he avoided reality until he couldn't and lost a house.

We ordinary people live in a system that is dedicated to yanking whatever rug we managed to put under our feet. If you have a job, it'll take the job. If you have savings, it'll erode them through inflation (at best) or "bank bail-ins" (at worst). If you have investments it'll crash them. If you have precious metal it'll confiscate it.

Ultimately, it's not about money, it's about survival. I think you're hoping that a crash will bitch-slap people people into prioritizing their decision-making, but I wouldn't count on it.

And now I have to get back to surviving.

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