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It’s still the same old story
A fight for love and glory
A case of do or die
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by
My biggest frustration with the fundamentals of personal finance is that they’re shockingly effective and shockingly easy to follow. As soon as I embraced those fundamentals, I went from financial moron to financial crackerjack in three years, and from there I went from financial crackerjack to financial rockstar (i.e., financially independent) in another eleven years.
During my transformation from 2003 to 2016, I never made a killer salary. The most I ever made was in 2006—$76,000. The following year, I got my first job in Charlotte after relocating from Long Island and took a forty percent pay cut ($45,000 versus $76,000). My household income during this time followed a similar pattern. Solid to semi-solid and then back to solid—but never spectacular. Our household income was around $95,000 in 2003. In 2006, it stood at $125,000. Then in 2007 it went back down to $95,000. When we retired in 2016, our household income was up again to $125,000.
And all during my transformation, Mrs. Groovy and I sacrificed nothing on the material front. We always had a nice, functional car. We always lived in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. And we always had plenty of money for entertainment and travel.
I don’t get why so many people struggle financially. I’m about as average as one can be and I figured it out. I slashed my housing and transportation costs with geoarbitrage and egotrage. I subdued my desire for stuff by cutting the cord. And I learned fairly quickly that the easiest path to wealth is to tread upon low-cost, broad-based index funds. So what’s the freakin’ problem?
But then I remembered an old girlfriend from college. Sandra Maria de Faria was an exchange student from Brasil and she loved the movie Casablanca. And she was always singing As Time Goes By. And here’s the line from that classic song that identifies the crux of the problem.
It’s still the same old story. A fight for love and glory.
Yes, every one of us, whether we admit it or not, is fighting for love and glory. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Who doesn’t want to be loved and be fawned upon by the masses?
The problem, however, is that the typical American isn’t very practical when it comes to pursuing love and glory. The typical American pursues love and glory via materialism; that is, the typical American is under the mistaken notion that to be loved and admired, one must have oodles of fabulous stuff. And if one can’t secure oodles of fabulous stuff with one’s income—no problem! Just spend one’s future income now and go into massive debt. The pursuit of love and glory thus turns into the yoke of debt slavery.
Okay, groovy freedomist, here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: How do we convince the typical American that materialism isn’t the best way to pursue love and glory? How do we convince them that the Cult of FI is the way to go?
I wish I knew. The truth is, I haven’t a clue.
Yes, the fabulous Mr. Groovy admits defeat. But I am pondering the situation. Perhaps in a few weeks, I’ll throw some ideas out there and see what the FI community has to say. In the meantime, here’s another installment of Talking Trash with Mr. Groovy. Have a great weekend. Peace.
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