Stop Listening to “Them”

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If we learn anything from the Wuhan virus pandemic, I hope to God it’s this: We have to stop listening to “them”!

Who are “them”? For the purposes of this post, “them” refers to the people who have established our conventional wisdom. “Them,” or better yet, “Them People,” are the cool people, our thought leaders. They’re the people in positions of authority who tell us what’s proper and standard and what’s verboten.

Them People aren’t bad people. They just have rather severe blind spots. And their notions of what Americans should pursue and value have left millions of Americans in financial tatters and ill-equipped to handle even trivial emergencies (i.e., needing to come up with $400).

Sadly, Them People aren’t going to change. They’re too smart, driven, cocooned, and full of themselves to ever question the rules they have written for society. The only thing that is going to save you from “them” is you.

With that said, here are five financially-related areas of life that you need to ignore “them” with extreme prejudice.

Housing

Here are some of the features of my current home:

• Hardwood floors
• Quartz countertops
• Stainless steel appliances
• Dishwasher
• Ice maker
• Pantry
• Vaulted ceilings
• Central air
• Gas fireplace
• Screened-in porch
• Two full bathrooms
• Walk-in closet in the master bedroom
• Three 50-inch flatscreen televisions
• 148,000 square foot lot (3.4 acres)

I mention these features because they were almost completely alien to the homes of my youth. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, these were the household features that my family and I had to “endure”:

• Carpet and linoleum
• Laminate countertops
• White or avocado appliances
• No dishwasher—until I was in junior high. Prior to that, we washed every glass, dish, utensil, and pot by hand.
• No ice maker—again, until I was in junior high. If you wanted to sit back and watch Bonanza with ice in your drink, you had to deal with cumbersome ice cube trays.
• No pantry
• Eight-foot ceilings
• A window air conditioner—but only for the downstairs at first. We didn’t have window air conditioners in our second-floor bedrooms until we were in high school.
• No gas fireplace
• No screened-in porch
• One bathroom
• No walk-in closet in any bedroom and no master bedroom
• One television
• 6,000 square foot lot (0.14 acres)

I put “endure” in scare quotes for a reason. The housing of my youth was perfectly fine. In fact, by world and historic standards, the housing of my youth was positively luxurious.

Them People, however, believe otherwise. They see my current house—an HGTV house, for lack of a better term—as the only housing suitable for a human being, and anyone who falls short of this standard is living in abject squalor.

Them People are effed in the head when it comes to housing. HGTV housing should be aspirational. It shouldn’t be the default. Most working Americans, especially young working Americans, don’t have incomes large enough to rent or own HGTV housing and still build wealth (i.e., being able to invest at least 10 percent of their income in the stock market). Convincing working Americans that there’s an inextricable link between the quality of their homes and their self-worth is one of the surest ways I know to retard their net worth.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my HGTV house. But HGTV housing should be the reward after several decades of discipline and thrift. HGTV housing isn’t something you deserve. It’s something you earn.

If you have a modest income, don’t over-house. You’re not a loser if you reside in “substandard” housing. There’s nothing wrong with living in a trailer and there’s nothing wrong with a refrigerator that lacks “a meats drawer, a crisper, and an egg area.” Just say no to HGTV housing and use the money you’ll save to fund a Roth IRA.

Don’t allow “them” and your vainglorious current self to screw your future self.

Education

We busted out of class
Had to get away from those fools
We learned more from a [ten-minute YouTube] than we ever learned in school
—Bruce Springsteen, with a little poetic license from yours truly

Do we need people with skills or people with bachelor degrees?

Here’s a thought experiment for you. You’re the hiring manager for a mid-sized tech firm, and you come across a very peculiar applicant. This applicant doesn’t have a degree. But he did get 1540 on the SAT and got accepted to MIT. Furthermore, he took ten programming courses at MIT before he dropped out, and he received an A in every one of them. Now a question. Every other applicant you have for the programming position you’re trying to fill has a computer science degree from a middling college. Who are you going to hire? The best applicant with a computer science degree? Or the loser who dropped out of MIT?

Them People say we need people with bachelor degrees. I say hogwash. For most people, pursuing a vaunted bachelor’s degree is a colossal waste of time and money. And this will become even more obvious when the dust from the Wuhan virus pandemic settles. We were broke long before the pandemic hit (the national debt pre-pandemic was $23 trillion), and we were suffering from stagnant wages long before the pandemic hit (the term “income inequality” didn’t enter our political lexicon for nothing). The post-pandemic economic environment is going to be even weaker. Forcing post-pandemic young people to pay for 40 courses when they only need 10 to 15 for an entry-level job in most fields will be an affront to common sense and decency.

If you care about your financial health, you can no longer abide by Them People’s definition of higher education. The cost per useful credit hour of higher education is just too dear. Now more than ever you must be exceedingly mindful when it comes to consuming higher education.

With that said, here’s The Groovy Guide to Consuming Higher Education Wisely:

• If you didn’t score at the 80th percentile or higher on the SAT or the ACT, the bachelor’s degree isn’t for you. You don’t have the mental chops to handle true higher education. Many four-year colleges will take your money nonetheless and hand you a phony-baloney degree if you manage to endure eight-plus semesters of their inanity. But that really isn’t going to help you—indebtedness plus an absence of concrete skills doesn’t equal big bucks in a post-industrial economy. Nope, if you don’t have a better than average brain, trade school or community college is your best bet.
• If you did score at the 80th percentile or higher on the SAT or the ACT, and you want to pursue a bachelor’s degree, avoid a residential four-year college like the plague. Staying home with mom and dad while you’re pursuing a BA is a great way to hack the cost of room and board.
• Favor the public four-year college over the private four-year college. Five years into your career no one will care where you went to school. All that will matter is your competence and achievements. Paying a premium for a private four-year college is a waste of money.
• Never borrow more than half your projected starting salary. If you’re a nursing major and first-year nurses make $50,000 annually, don’t borrow more than $25,000 to obtain your nursing degree.
• Finally, don’t be afraid to go rogue. Do what our imaginary MIT dropout did. Go to a four-year college and just refuse to take any course that doesn’t pertain to your major. In the end, you won’t be college-degreed, but you will be college-educated. And something tells me that more and more businesses in our post-pandemic economy are going to care less and less about a fancy piece of paper. Verifiable skills will once again take the top spot in the hierarchy of employer wants.

Wealth

There are two kinds of wealth: “bubble” wealth and real wealth. Bubble wealth is nothing but glorified paycheck-to-paycheck living. You have a lot of fabulous stuff, but it’s solely dependent on your job. Lose your job and that fabulous stuff goes away. Real wealth, however, is much more sturdy. Your stuff, whether it’s fabulous or not, isn’t dependent on your job. You have a lot of savings and income-producing assets to backstop your stuff.

For whatever reason, Them People are enthralled with bubble wealth. They see the outward signs of wealth—the fancy cars, the fancy clothes, the fancy trips, and all the other fancy crap that exudes refinement and is Instagram worthy—and they get weak in the knees. And they want you to be just as shallow.

Don’t. Bubble wealth is fool’s gold and should be avoided at all costs. Here are three reasons why:

1. It leaves you vulnerable. As previously noted, paycheck-to-paycheck living is the epitome of financial risk-taking. An illness, a shift in consumer preferences, a worldwide pandemic that shutters a large chunk of the economy—anything that can separate you from gainful employment can also separate you from whatever consumerist empire you’ve managed to build.
2. It sucks you into the rat race. Routinely buying stuff you can’t afford is a surefire way to wind up being owned by your stuff. You will find yourself working just to keep your stuff around and in good working order. Hello, soulless existence!
3. It’s ultimately unimportant. Standing up for your convictions, having a loving family, and making your corner of the world a little less “poor, nasty, and brutish”—those are the things that matter. Who on his or her deathbed will be proud to say that he or she sacrificed all that mattered so that he or she could keep a meaningless job and buy meaningless stuff?

Real wealth isn’t easy. Very few people can quickly get rid of all their debt and build an investment portfolio that’s worth more than 25 times their annual expenses. Real wealth is a decades-long slog. But it can be done, even by those with modest incomes. Just read the following two books and do what the authors say to do.

Status

“You were cool when he was talking about drugs. But now that he’s doing normal shit, he ‘fell off.’”
—Preach

In the below clip, two YouTubers, Aba and Preach, review another clip of some Uber passengers disrespecting their driver. Apparently, the Uber driver was once a rapper of some renown, and now that his rapping money is gone and he’s toiling in a “lowly” job, the Uber passengers are experiencing a delightful case of schadenfreude.

“Who raised you?” asks Preach in his epic rant.

That’s a great question. And sadly, I know who did a large part of their “parenting”—Them People.

Them People have a twisted notion of status. Only those with money or a glamorous job are worthy of admiration and respect. Everyone else is scum.

I know well of what Preach speaks. For 21 years I worked for a highway department in a wealthy suburb. And I saw the disdain in people’s eyes as they observed me shoveling asphalt or picking up roadkill. And even though I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, those scornful looks still hurt.

Don’t be like those misguided Uber passengers—or those misguided suburbanites during my public service career. Anyone who does honest work and does it well deserves to be admired, respected, and saluted.

Self-governance

There are two types of governance that can guide your life—other-governance and self-governance.

Them People are big on other-governance. They believe the job of protecting you from your innate wretchedness falls primarily on one-percenters, corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats. And because of this, Them People have worked hard to create an elaborate safety net of laws, regulations, and programs. Need money? No worries. Somewhere in those many levels of government that blanket your life there’s a program that can help you. Just get in line. Getting screwed by corporate America? Again, no worries. Evil corporate America is surely violating a regulation. And if it isn’t, Them People will make sure a new-and-improved regulation is added to the next gargantuan Omnibus bill proposed by Congress. Just wait.

Over the past 50 years, the footprint of other-governance has grown immensely. And, yet, despite all the wisdom and help dispensed by this avuncular colossus, the typical American has never been more inept at managing his or her life. This is especially true when it comes to money. Seventy-eight percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, for heaven’s sake. Throw in the opioid epidemic, the obesity epidemic, the out-of-wedlock birth epidemic—and the myriad other epidemics that confound American life and batten on poor decision-making—and one could easily come to the blasphemous conclusion that our huge investment in other-governance has been an unmitigated disaster.

By emphasizing other-governance over self-governance, Them People screwed up royally. No amount of other-governance can overcome inept self-governance. If you want to thrive in America, your number one priority has to be this: FIX YOURSELF.

How do you do that? Simple. Embrace the following self-governance checklist. Abide by these ten rules every day and you’ll not only be fine but you’ll also wind up being a social, physical, and financial dynamo.

The Self-Governance Checklist

1. Shower
2. Make your bed
3. Exercise
4. Work—either to garner more money or to garner more knowledge and wisdom
5. Save—either by funding an important saving goal, reducing debt, or honing your frugality muscles
6. Don’t smoke
7. Avoid self-sabotage—don’t take education for granted, don’t procreate irresponsibly, don’t commit crimes, and don’t fool with drugs or marinate your liver in alcohol
8. Avoid refined carbs and sugar
9. Be kind to strangers
10. Be loving to family and friends

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is my scorn for “them” justified? Or am I being a hyperbolic butthead? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.