August 2018 – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Friends, Flexibility, and Value Creation: Keys to a Corporate Career

“The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.” – Office Space

I’m glad cats don’t run corporations. They like to play with their prey before they kill it.

The economy is changing. That’s a newsflash from every decade since Sunday in 12,241 BC, when Chieftain Brad Von Thundernose (he snored) invented bacon-wrapped shrimp. Unfortunately, Brad was allergic to shellfish, and puffed up like Elvis on carbohydrates. Brad aside, if you look back in the distant past to the year 2000 (which, for some of us, used to sound futuristic) you’d see that the largest five companies were:

Exxon-Mobil®
General Electric™
Ford©
General Motors®
Wal-Mart™

What were the largest five companies in 2018?

Apple™
Amazon©
Google®
Microsoft™
Facebook©

They’ve all changed. And these are the five biggest!

I’ve been fortunate to (so far) to be able do the same thing for most of my career, admittedly not with the same company. I’ve generally been okay doing it – in at least one place I’ve worked some things I set up literally saved the company a few years after I left. That’s nice – the thought that hundreds of folks still have a job because of something I did.

And at a different company, I saved a career. Pay attention and it might help yours, too.

Let me explain:

A friend of mine was offered a chance to move out of our department and move into recruiting. She took the opportunity. Then the economy took a downturn. And she didn’t get along with her boss. And was close to getting fired. I told her she was over thinking it – no way that they would fire her.

This particular person was smart, talented, and personable – not smelly, irritable, and brooding like your humble author. I checked around and found out how close she was to getting fired. The answer was very close to being fired – they’d started the 90 day clock before the final paycheck.

As a department head, I knew that she was better than many folks everyone that I had in my department. Her boss, however, “didn’t want to transfer a problem” and “this person isn’t a good fit with the company’s values.” That’s HR speak for “it’s personal.”

Thankfully, I managed to drag my boss into the idea that she’d be perfect for our department, and he was able to go up three levels of management to convince his great-grand boss that she’d be a great fit.

Today? She’s an executive VP, hauling in the big bucks (seriously big bucks), but she had to change career focus after leaving my group. Essentially now she’s a corporate ninja-nun who goes around the company smacking people’s knuckles with a metaphorical ruler

Do not make my friend angry.

Lessons:

Have friends that can help you.

In a big corporation if your intent is to move up the ladder, you need friends. Let’s face it, we all screw up. If someone higher up in the company can vouch for you when they’re looking for a designated victim, a highly-placed mentor (or sponsor, or friend) can tip the scales in your favor. That being said, if your role has put you in a spot where you were the designated bad guy (“no, you can’t spend that money for elephant rides, PEZ®, and pantyhose for the welders in the assembly line”) then sometimes you won’t be able to survive after your sponsor is gone.

Why do I put this one first? Despite how good you might be, having someone to cover your back is huge – it’s sometimes the difference between unemployment and the executive suite.

The reason they say, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? It’s true.

When you look above you in the org chart and don’t see anyone who would go to bat for you? Your time at that job might be short, my friend.

Be able to change what you do.

Chances are you have skills, unless you’re at the DMV, and heck, they have skills, too, if you count seething rage and the ability to take literally the worst possible picture of a human being. Understand that during your career you might have to take those skills and transfer them from making people who are attempting to get a driver’s license miserable to, say, making people who need a new license plate miserable. If I could write one thing on a billboard, the idea that “What you’re doing today might have no value in the future” would be second on my list. Sadly, “Do you know where my car keys are?” would be number one.

But it’s true. Just as Exxon-Mobile® has been replaced by Apple™ in valuation (and in my gas tank – sadly my car only gets four miles per iPhone®), the idea that you’ll spend your career doing the same thing is becoming less common. How many people started their career in nuclear engineering and ended up running a carpet installation company staffed entirely by nude circus clowns? More than I can count!

Be able to create value.

At one place I worked, there was an employee that watered and dusted plants. That’s all she did. The company had a huge office, and it had plants on every floor. I had no idea that you had to dust plants, but, apparently if the plants live only by the dull fluorescent light of corporate America, you do. One day (when profits dropped from enormous to merely massive) the plant lady (and the plants) were gone. I think someone figured out that plants in the office building didn’t add a single dollar to the company profitability, so they let the plants (and the plant lady) become free-range.

One person in the company was notoriously difficult to work for and with, made business decisions like a drunken leper in a fish factory (I have no idea what that means, but it can’t be good), and smelled vaguely of gin and regret. I asked my boss, “Why don’t they fire him? He stands against literally every value that management says they’re in favor of.”

My boss: “But he makes SOOOOO much money for the company. Millions.”

That’s a huge defense. If you make piles of money for the company and can prove it? They’ll never fire you until the Grand Jury indicts.

In the end, my friend met all three of the criteria up above – had friends, had a flexible skill set, and could demonstrate how she made money, which is why she flies around on the corporate jet to eat bacon-wrapped shrimp. Thankfully, I was able to help her avoid being a free-range plant lady . . .

The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?

“There are 7 deadly sins, Captain.” – Se7en

So, here are the movie versions of sin. Except Pride. Is Pride really blonde?

Some time ago I read a book that my friend wrote (there is a link below where you can get it from Amazon – I make no money from that) about sin. I enjoyed the book, as well as one can enjoy a book that makes you feel absolutely horrible about how sinful and wretched you are. And I mean that in the best way – how often do you have the benefit of self-reflection on your faults? Thankfully, the author doesn’t leave you hanging, and gives you a path forward on the whole salvation from sin thing (note: he’s a priest, so the word “Jesus” just might be a spoiler). I heartily recommend the book.

Is sin at the problem with current society? Maybe. But first let’s discuss the sins.

As I recall (it’s been a while since I read it) one construct that Father Joseph used for discussing sin was the Seven Deadly Sins. He used the mnemonic “PALE GAS” to go through them. I’ll do the same.

Pride – Pride is the big one, perhaps the source of all the other sins. An example: If you’re religious, you’d accept that your intellect was given to you by God. If you’re not religious, you’d accept that your intellect was a happy genetic accident. In either case, no matter how smart you are, you’ve done nothing to be that smart, so taking pride in your intellect is, well, bad. That’s why pride is the primo sin – it takes all the glory for who and what you are and wraps it up into your own ego. It puts you and your ego at the center of the universe, when in reality no one thinks about you as much as you think they do. Unless you’re Donald Trump. Then people (from both sides) totally obsess over you.

Anger – This is also known as Wrath, but PWLE GAS doesn’t sound so good, unless you’re from some Eastern European country that uses colored wrapping paper for money and has a vowel shortage. Anger is feeling and wishing for unjust or excessive punishment – execution for parking offenses, that sort of thing, or punishing the innocent, just because they are weaker than you. Again, Wrath separates you from both God and reality by making the righting of wrongs (real or not) not about justice, but about you. You can see how Pride echoes here . . . .

Lust – Lust isn’t love, it’s a deep and intense passionate desire that throws morality, propriety, and sometimes legality to the winds. As sins go, this one at least (in some forms) is mutual, so it’s not as strong as pure Pride. In some forms, it’s considered the least serious of all mortal sins, but, you know, it’s still a mortal sin. Outside of religion, allowing Lust to drive your life tends to lead to a lot of poor decisions – just ask anyone in Hollywood®.

Envy – Like any of the sins, Envy has various gradations. First you are jealous that your neighbor has a complete set of PEZ® dispensers of every United States Secretary of Agriculture ever. Then you find out he has all of the United States Secretary of Commerce PEZ™ dispensers. Then you go all Cain on his Abel. Yup. Envy brings you farther from God, but it also fills you with hate.

Gluttony – Generally, Gluttony is considered more of a sin when your consumption (or overconsumption) of resources will starve someone else – but it really boils down to an unbridled passion for selfishness. Eating and drinking as the purpose of life, rather than to support it. It’s fairly obvious how this is both bad for you, and drives you farther from God.

Avarice – This sin is also known as greed, but if we called it that, then the mnemonic would be PWLE GGS. And what does that even mean? Where lust is for a person, and gluttony is for food, avarice is for stuff. That just makes it worse. Pop Wilder described avarice best when he told me, “A farmer doesn’t want all the land in the world, son, he just wants that which adjoins his.” This pulls you away from God though making you focus on the things only of this world. This focus turns men into machines – focused only on owning (not creating) wealth. See reason number 53 that I don’t want to live in New York City . . . .

Yeah, it sucks to be a sloth.

Sloth – Sloth isn’t just about being lazy – Sloth is giving up. It’s abdication of responsibility for whatever reason, often as a result of the other sins, or through giving up due to depression or despondency (which used to be one of the eight deadly sins, but got voted off in the semi-finals). It’s obvious on how this sin hurts you whether you’re a believer or not.

I heartily recommend Father Joseph’s book, whether or not you are a Christian or an agnostic or an atheist. I think the truths that it speaks to are so fundamental in our society that this could be one of the better books on self-improvement available today. Seriously. I read this book, thinking I was doing okay. (Pride will do that to you.) Every page that I read I kinda cringed when it described me, something I felt, or something I was doing as tied into one of these sins. I promise you – there’s not a week that goes by that you (and I!) aren’t attracted to and tempted to commit each of these sins weekly.

Oh, and my copy is signed! (See, I just used my Pride to Envy all over you.)

And these sins are important whether or not you are religious because these sins and our universal-ish understanding of them in the Western world form the basis of Western culture. Are there analogues in Chinese Confucianism, Shinto, or the tribal religions of Africa? Or Islam?

I have no idea. And it would require like a zillion Google® searches to sort that out. But it’s irrelevant.

I do know that the culture of the West was founded on this shared concept of sin.

And we agree that these things are bad, right?

Have we managed to rebrand many of these sins as virtues?

“Check out my InstaFace® selfie!”
“He had it coming to him.”
“If it feels go, do it!”
“You deserve what the 1% have.”
“Have another piece of cake – YOLO!”
“We’re not Boy Scouts®, we’re here to make money.”
“Let somebody else do it. You’ve done enough.”

One of the virtues of the Seven Deadly Sins is that the common belief in them is the basis for a shared morality in a stable civilization. One can infer that that shared belief (beyond the salubrious Christian effects on your immortal soul, if you’re into that sort of thing) is beneficial because it evolved with Western civilization.

Can the West live without the concept of sin?

I’m not sure that it can. Let’s just take one of them: Envy.

The biggest evil of the twentieth century was communism. I’m not saying that because it’s an opinion – it’s an objective fact. More people died because of communism than any other ideological cause during that century – over 140,000,000.

Communism was built on Envy; the concept that “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” And Ivan needs Pyotr’s farm. And Ivan’s wife needs Pyotr’s wife’s new butter churn. And so on.

Nearly a billion people died from gluttony – it causes heart disease along with a host of other diseases.

Anger led to war and murder. 240,000,000.

So, deadly wasn’t a euphemism – outside of spiritual conditions, these sins actually lead to real and temporal misery and death.

So there appears to be some limited anecdotal evidence that virtue is better than sin.

Which brings me back to society. If society doesn’t agree on the same cultural precepts which have driven the creation of knowledge and wealth for several thousand years . . . nah, never mind. I’m sure it will be fine.

Health, Wealth, and Boundaries. Complete with fake IDs.

“We’re out of towels and I’m too old to go diving into lockers.” – Minor League

It would be nice to have Morgan Freeman narrate your life. Except for after you did stupid stuff. Or boring stuff. Nevermind – skip that.

A number of years ago my boss called me at 11pm. There had been an incident at work. As it was a Thursday and I was planning on taking Friday off, The Mrs. and I had already consumed the better part of a bottle of wine. I decided that I’d go to bed – certainly vacation was off.

In fact, I worked the next 45 days, straight. I averaged at least 12 hours a day, every day.

During that time, we worked really hard. Stressful situations daily. New decisions daily. But the team met all the goals that were set on that first day, and then some. We even ended up at budget. But 540 work hours in 1.5 months is about 225% of a typical work week (40 hours).

I break my time into a triangle:

Work – Ideally, work should server multiple purposes. It should put money in the bank and food on the table. Another, very real purpose of work is to create value for society. A well-run business generates wealth for the owner, sure. But the jobs that it creates can generate wealth for a community. And most businesses can’t stay in business unless they serve a need in the community. A power generation plant has to make power to stay in business, but if it operates well and efficiently, it produces power at a low cost, which allows people to have the relative luxury of electricity cheaply, so they can read this blog, or watch Green Acres®.
Family – As a husband and father, taking care of my family is a primary responsibility – it means more than the money from work, it means being there to be dad – both as a bad example of the kind of dad you don’t want to have, as well as teaching children responsibility through situations that force them to figure things out. I mean, what 12 year old shouldn’t know how to make a fake id so he can buy smokes?
Personal Health – If I’m not healthy, I’ll die, and that makes it hard to shower consistently. Also, I won’t be able to lead my family, or work amazingly long hours. Health may be its own reward, but it also supports the other two legs of the triangle.

I’d say “bad dog,” but I am out of beer . . . and thanks to practice and parental neglect, Pugsley makes a much better fake ID.

So during this 45 day period, a big stretch of the triangle was possible. Heck, I was in the best shape I’d been in for at least six years. Life was good. I’d focus on work, but put my second focus on family. Personal health can wait, right?

And during those 45 days, I didn’t exercise like normal. Also, I don’t eat lunch (I hadn’t since fifth grade) and in those days just worked through lunch. But we had team meetings (complete with lunch) pretty much every day. It turns out I can gain 2 pounds a week just by eating lunch more than once. Yeah.

So, forty five days later, we finished. And we were exhausted. And 45 days later? I entered into yet another work death-march that lasted a year and a half.

Yeah, and that second death-march ended with 45 days straight, too. And then time required for activities related to The Boy and Pugsley multiplied. It seems like when the work demands went down, the family demands went up. And I could safely ignore the health demands, right?

My take on this is that I’ve set my boundaries too far towards work in the past, but the bright side is all the hard work and family stuff seems to be paying off.

But it’s always (a bit) irritated me that Hollywood types get so buff. I saw Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 12 (or whatever) this last weekend, and it’s undeniable that the man is in great shape, not only for his age, but for any age. Cruise was certainly in better shape than he was during his early movies. He’s seven or eight years older than Simon Pegg, but manages to look ten years younger. I guess maybe Scientology® might pay off, if you can deal with whole “completely made up” parts.

And Tom Cruise has a luxury that most of us don’t – he has the ability to spend 2,000 learning to fly helicopters so he could do it for this movie, plus countless thousands of hours of training. I’m lucky to get 250 hours a year to myself for training. And more power to Cruise! But most people don’t have that option. The iron triangle of work-family-health keeps showing up.

In the end that’s part of why I named the blog wilderwealthywise.com – it focuses on that triangle of important things in the average person’s life. Wealth buys time, and time buys health. And health . . . buys more time (on Earth). And with health and time? One would hope that you can end up with wealth.

And then you could have Morgan Freeman narrate . . . but hopefully not these lines:

It will all be worth it. Now, back to the elliptical . . .

How much money should I save? Depends on if you want to be free . . .

“Lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete, I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. It’s OK.” – Fight Club

Alia S. Wilder, showing her prowess at falling into debt holes.

My daughter, Alia S. Wilder, texted me today.

“How much money should I be saving? Is 20% enough?”

My response?

“Depends. I’m going to try to end a World War. Are two bombs enough?”

Oh, sure, the question sounds simple, but the answer is more complicated. Unless you’re Japan.

“Is 20% enough?”

Certainly, and certainly not.

Savings is good. I’m throwing that out there as an absolute. Saving money represents potential. If I use my money to buy a pile of PEZ® today, well, when they come out next week with the President™Millard Fillmore® Commemorative MegaPEZ© dispenser? I won’t be able to buy it.

If ever there was a head that was made to be a PEZ® dispenser it’s Millard Fillmore, who looks exactly like Alec Baldwin. Fillmore, when running for reelection (he became President when Taylor died) won only . . . Maryland, which is the only State to be named after Mary Poppins©.

I won’t go too much into detail, but Alia S. Wilder has debt. Mountains of it. Not the Himalayas. Maybe more like smaller mountains, like the Alps.

Should you save money when you’re in debt, or pay off the debt? Yes, save money. Save money until you have at least six months’ worth of living expenses in cash available to you.

Why six months? Given six months’ worth of time and space, you can make miracles happen. You’ll be able to work your way through the emergency. Oh, and the emergency? Yeah, you’ll have one. You’ll get a flat tire and accidently run into the town statue of Tom Petty and then it won’t back down, but will be freefallin’ over onto your 1972 VW® Bug™. And then? You’ll have to pay, or they won’t allow you to come ‘round here no more.

So, emergencies happen. Even Petty ones.

And if I were young and had debt, the first thing I would do is build that emergency fund. There’s nothing worse than having no money and no options when an emergency strikes. Not if. When.

After that, I’d save money in my 401K, if the company offered a match.

401k’s are awesome – generally you can save 6% or so of your salary, and the company will match some percentage of that – say, 50%. And there is no place on Earth where you can get an immediate 50% return on investment, unless you’ve managed to marry into the royal family of England. Then? Yeah, that lip gloss and the Pilates class paid off.

So, you’ve got an emergency fund. You’re taking full advantage of 401k matching. Next?

Get rid of the debt.

Debt is perhaps the most evil thing we allow in society today except for Harry Potter© themed AR-15s. I mean, I like guns, but Harry Potter™ guns? But back to debt – it allows stupid current you to sell future you into slavery. You have to pay the debt. Mortgages and car loans are bad, but the worst? Student loans.

You can declare bankruptcy and get rid of mortgage and car debt. But in order to get rid of student loan debt? You have to pay it off or die. I’m not kidding – that part isn’t a joke. Student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Like herpes, it’s almost forever. Unlike herpes, you can pay it off.

Why is debt so very bad? Well, for every dollar you have in debt, you have to pay interest. So, if you have $100 in debt, and are paying 5% interest, you have to pay off $5 every year. No problem, right?

Actually, that interest is insidious. Let’s pretend it’s a house, and you owe $200,000. At 5% interest, that’s $10,000 a year. That $10,000, divided by 12? In year one that’s most of your mortgage payment. Your debt remains – you only pay a little bit off in the first year.

Interest on debt destroys your happiness.

In a logical world, you’d pay off the highest interest rate debt first. That gets rid of the most interest, right?

Nah. Pay the one that you can pay off first. The smallest one. That allows you to feel good about digging yourself out of the debt hell you dug yourself into. Then? The next biggest one.

And this works. How do I know that? I’ve been there.

When my first wife and I decided that a mixed marriage wouldn’t work (I was human, she was a demon from hell) we mutually decided that she should move out. Nice!

She handed me a plastic grocery sack. In the grocery sack was a half a cubic foot of bills. She then handed me a checkbook.

“I don’t know how much money is in there.” Meaning the checking account.

She walked out the door.

I pulled the first bill off the stack. It was a credit card statement from a gasoline station.

It was over $700. And my soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t paid them anything in months. Sadly, this story kept repeating as I went down the pile. I had massive debt.

I started paying them down. One at a time.

Seven years later? The only debt left was my mortgage. I remember the day – it was January 15^th. I remember writing the check. I felt like I was Batman™ Kirk©. Like if Batman® had a starship, or if Kirk™ could fight anyone in a realistic way. Yay! But paying down those first few cards and bills was huge. It gave me a sense of control. It was saying that I could take small bites and make them matter.

But one day you sign the last check to pay off the last debt, and you realize that you’re no longer working for someone else – every dollar you’re making is going to you or things you want.

And at that moment you’re free.

So, is saving 20% enough?

I have no idea. How soon do you want to be free?