Category: Happiness

Why Are You Mad At Your Computer? It Doesn’t Care. Plus: A Deeply Meaningful Poem

“They would’ve learned to wear skins, adopted stoic mannerisms, learned the bow and the lance.” – Star Trek

hardwood

Okay, it was really only one color.  But it was a LOT of ink.  Staining and painting.  Stainting?

I rarely saw Pop Wilder mad at any living human being, at least I rarely saw him mad after I reached the age of ten.  And I assure you that I deserved it every single time he was mad at me – drawing on the hardwood floor in ink under my bed wasn’t a particularly popular move – especially since Ma and Pop only discovered it the night before we were supposed to be out of the house so that the new owners could move in.

Oops.

Perhaps his even temper with people was learned.  After being in banking for decades (and having me around for years), I imagine he’d seen everything, including frogs swimming in the World War I helmet his father wore.  It might be that he believed the worst of people, and that way when they weren’t horrible, they pleasantly surprised him, and when he found ink on his hardwood floor and the family photo album soaking in the bathroom sink (I promise I had a good reason)?  Or spray painted the fender of his brand-new car?  Well, that was to be expected.

So, Pop Wilder was a mild and even tempered man and perhaps even a saint for not killing me.  The one exception to him getting angry was that he would get mad at . . . things.  Chainsaws.  Cars.  Snow machines.  The blinking light on his VCR.  In fact, the only time I ever heard him drop the f-bomb was when he was referring to his computer.  He said it not long after I’d introduced him to the future The Mrs., and in her presence.  “It’s . . . it’s all f****d up.”  Honoring Pop Wilder’s tone and frustration make it a form of punctuation in our house when things have just gone completely wrong but in a comical and hopeless manner.

But what I do know is this:  the computer didn’t care.

fbomb

Ahh, the United States Swear Force in action.

Dead Roman Marcus Aurelius nailed it when he wrote, “Pray to change yourself, not your circumstances.”  Marcus wasn’t referring to what was in his control.  Being an Emperor of Rome, Marcus could control a lot of things, but that’s not what frustrated him.  No, Marcus was referring to those things he couldn’t control.  Marcus was going to grow old and die, and he couldn’t change that.  Marcus would be resurrected as shoe salesman in Savannah, and he couldn’t change that, either.  Marcus wanted to change himself so he took those things that he couldn’t control and not react to them.  Why complain about gravity?

stonehead

Marcus Aurelius, with a hipster beard before it was cool.

The computer doesn’t care that you’re mad at it.  The computer won’t change if you speak harshly to it, though I hear Bezos is working on a computer that will buy random things from Amazon® that it knows you won’t like, just to spite you if you’re mean to it.  Honestly, most people don’t care if you’re mad at them, either.  The real secret is, however, that most things simply do not matter on any sort of cosmic scale.  I even wrote you, dear Internet, a poem about that:

The Unblinking Stars

The stars looked down.
When Julius Caesar was born, they looked down.
When Caesar defeated the Gaul, they looked down.
When Caesar died, they looked down.

For every man, for every empire.
The stars looked down.
Unblinking.

When continents split, and then recombined.
The stars looked down.
Nearly eternal.

At every time, at ever place,
Every ambition, every love.
Every betrayal.  Every loyalty.
The stars looked down.

Looking up at them, seeing into eternity.
I gasp.  I wonder.  I check the router.
Oh, good.  The Internet’s back up.
I wonder what just happened on Twitter?

spacekeys

I think that what sets us up to become angry about a situation is contained entirely within ourselves – there’s a way that we think the world should be, and when the world refuses to be that way, we get angry.  And the world doesn’t completely conform to anyone’s hopes and dreams.  From time to time, even I end up comparing my life to someone else’s life.  But I do this particularly awful thing:  I compare what they’re best at, to my accomplishments in the same arena.  Let’s take the business guy I knew.  He had tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, and even a vintage fighter airplane.  I don’t have tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, or any airplane that’s not a model kit that I made when I was a kid.

There’s a lot to envy, isn’t there?  I even think he had a pretty good marriage and smart kids.

Oh, and he’s dead.  And he died in a really dramatic fashion that probably left his widow with nearly no money after the lawsuit and attorney’s fees.  So if I’m going to be envious, I have to be envious of the whole person, not some small aspect of their lives.  It’s a big world and someone, somewhere has it all better than you.  They’re smarter than you, slimmer than you, with a really close, cool family.

And I’m okay with that, too.

One thing that helped me through my own personal envy was . . . cars.  When I lived in Houston, there were really nice cars everywhere.  And by nice, I mean cars that are worth more than my house.  I felt envy.  Then I thought about the car payment that they had to make (I read somewhere that most Mercedes® on the road are not paid for – they’re for show).  That made my four-year-old dad-four door car that I’d bought used seem a LOT better than the Mercedes® driven by the 27 year-old at the stop light next to me.

bitcoin

If you’re a billionaire crime-fighting superhero that found an amulet that gives you super powers but also covers your body in reptilian scales while flying screaming skulls follow you around?  I suppose it’s okay if you buy yourself something nice every once in a while.

To recap:

  • The situation doesn’t care. Don’t get mad at it, especially if it’s beyond your control.
  • Most things really don’t matter – don’t get hung up on the trivia of now.
  • If you won’t remember it next year? It’s probably meaningless.  Don’t sweat it.
  • Don’t compare yourself to others, unless they’re clearly awful in everything compared to you. Then gloat.
  • Expect that your children will destroy thousands and thousands of dollars of your property and at least a dozen priceless, irreplaceable heirlooms. And burn the counter with hot macaroni.  And write on the bathroom walls.  And . . . oh, wait, those were my kids . . .

Wait, what?  I’m Pop Wilder now.  When did that happen?

The Funniest and Most Meaningful Black Friday Post . . . Ever.  Now 50% off, Today Only.

“It’s Black Friday, the day when ordinary house moms turn into vicious bargain hunting animals, blinded by low prices, and eager to get the Christmas shopping done early.  If this was a zoo I’d say run for you lives, but this is Buy More!” – Chuck

fiztoot

Mabel’s family was upset with her on the drive home.  They used Apple® products and didn’t have Windows™.  (I’m sorry for that joke, but by way of explanation I’m a father.)

Like many people, I try to avoid the stores on Black Friday.  If I were a mullet wearing geezer with my toga full of elf chum (please don’t ask me to draw a picture of that, I’m not even sure what elf chum is, and now that I’ve written it I feel vaguely dirty), I’d say Black Friday is maybe the one real American holiday that most people agree on.  Christmas is great, but when was the last time a group of people attempted to choke each other to death to get a gift-wrapped package of underwear on Christmas?  Never.  But put a 50%-off tag on socks with a pattern of Iron Man® smoking a bong with Donald Duck™ on them?  Heck, I’d drop kick a calico kitten through a box fan for a bargain like that!  Sure, we have great holidays like Fourth of July, but nobody ever died in a riot for 2 for 1 fireworks.

Bargains!  Free stuff!  Perhaps that’s the new slogan of the United States – Free Stuff!  And don’t forget that buying stuff is easier than actual salvation or real effort to be a better person.  And even if you don’t like toast – that toaster is only $5.  You can learn to love toast.

Perhaps Black Friday not only our true holiday, it is perhaps our true religious holiday.

zombie

You can tell that these zombies aren’t leftists – they don’t appear to be lecturing anyone.

I’m not going to make fun of people who are short of cash and frugal and truly need the items that they buy, but that only accounts for a small percentage of purchasers on Black Friday.  As Americans, we have been conditioned to shop.  Until we drop.  And don’t let Debt stand in your way.  And I use the word “we” for a reason – I’ve done it, too.  No, I would sooner investigate my hotel room with a black light and then still stay there than go in a store the day after Thanksgiving.  But I do have the Internet.  And I’ve bought stupid stuff:

  • Dog Waxer – rechargeable! Never let your unwaxed dog embarrass you again.
  • Solar Powered Night Light – Works best on a sunny day.
  • Internet-Connected Underwear – With your app, you can check the temperature and humidity.
  • Night Vision Scope for Caulk Gun – Now you can apply your caulk, even in the dark.
  • Crossword Puzzle Book for Dogs – Just as it says.

So, yes, I’ve bought my share of stupid crap, which made me ask the question:  why do we buy useless crap at all?

  • Impulse: I see shiny things.  I must have them.  The depths of the brain, that part that grunts instead of talking and that never uses underarm deodorant that drives this fascination.  Just give it meat, scotch, and women and the impulses will go away.
  • Herd Mentality: I will fight you to the death for the toaster that puts the fuzzy face of Bob Ross on toast!  They actually make a toaster that does this and I am hoping that the Discovery Channel® has a series coming where people fight to the death for consumer items.  Makes me feel so, well, Roman.  Humans want to have the things that other humans have, which is why so many ex-wives exist.  I’ll just stop right there.

bob ross

What a happy little toaster!

  • Makes You Feel Better: Shopping really works to make you feel better – it gives you a sense of accomplishment.  No matter how hard your day was, and what tasks you face, there is a 100% chance that you can buy something and it will make you feel a little bit better.  It gives you that sense of control, no matter how poor your decisions were today, you can find a breakfast cereal or, say, 436 pairs of shoes.  You can make a choice and follow through.  People even have a name for this type of shopping – “Retail Therapy.”

therapist

The nice thing about Retail Therapy?  It costs about the same as real therapy, and you can still hate your mother when you’re done shopping for those 436 pairs of shoes.  So you have hatred and shoes left.  I call that a win-win.

Why not shop until you drop?  You can.  If it’s not a problem:

  • Well, if you’re going into debt for power tools just to chase the kids around with (a circular saw works well as long as you have enough extension cord) or sacrificing your ability to retire just so you can have a “Hello Kitty®” ashtray, it’s a problem.
  • If you have boxes of stuff you’ve never opened inside of other boxes of stuff you’ve never opened, it’s either a problem or a movie premise for Leonardo DiCaprio© for a movie called Inshopsion. There is a rule, however, that DVDs starring Burt Reynolds™ do NOT count in this category, so don’t even ask.

If you really need something to complete you, shopping isn’t it.  It’s short term, and only lasts until you’ve bought the next thing.  And the more crap you buy, the more confusion you bring into your life – sooner or later you have to spend more time managing the crap than it is worth.  Again, I know this from experience – my own.  And I still can’t find that spare kidney I bought on Kidney-Bay® on Black Friday back in 2012.  Maybe it moved back to the original owner.

How do you cut back?  Thankfully, the solutions are simple:

  • Replace shopping with something that’s a real achievement. Blogging for thousands of wonderful readers who have wonderful hygiene, immaculate mullets, and stunning good looks counts.  You know, as an example.
  • Look for real competition in the world. I mean, soccer was invented by European beatnik nudist jugglers to provide something to do while their berets dried and they drank cappuccino.  But, yes, even soccer will do.  Find something.
  • Bored? Learn to not be bored.  Take up chainsaw juggling.  European beatniks do it all the time between cigarettes and poetry readings.
  • One of the things we don’t thing about too much when we think about shopping is time. And time, my friends, is all we have, each day that ticks away is lost forever.  Plan your time to be and do something real.

We have to shop.  We have to buy things.  But as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, any over used virtue becomes a vice.  Or was that Captain Kirk?  I’ll go check my 12 disc collection of Star Trek:  The Original Series Commemorative 32nd Anniversary Edition Complete with Pink Tribble Box Set.  I got it on Black Friday in 2009 on sale for $24.99.  It might be here over behind the Original Smokey and the Bandit 2 jacket.  Who knew that Burt Reynolds was exactly my height, but only weighed 155 pounds?  Thing doesn’t even fit around the shoulders.

smokeybanditjacket

Eastbound and Down.

Bonus:  Deliverance interview between Burt and Johnny.

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t be shy.  Or I will dropkick another kitten through a box fan.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

The Ant, The Grasshopper, Tim Ferriss, and Ben Franklin.

“Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.” – Archer

grasshopper

Thankfully I’m not alone.  Stupid Grasshoppers.

There are occasions when a simple question can punch you in your gut like a rabid Mike Tyson reacting to a paper cut that you just poured lemon juice on.  Here’s a question that hit me last week:

“What do you do with your money?”

“I keep it in the bank.”

“Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it?”

The above quote is from a conversation between Tim Ferriss (an author with an unusual fondness for the letter S) and Ryan Holiday (I’ve mentioned him before) –you can read the rest of the article here (LINK).  Holiday puts this exchange first in his piece – it’s pretty powerful, so powerful that it might even relate to issues we face as a country – not that I’ll solve those.  That sounds like it would be hard.

Working is good for you.  Producing value is good for you.  It says so right on the label.  But I worry sometimes about money being my goal instead of a way to allow me to work toward my real goals.  When I lived paycheck to paycheck, I was fixated on money – as a single dad with little savings, it was tough.  Did I focus on fulfillment?  No, I focused on keeping enough money in my bank account so I could pay the electrical bill, which is why it was 40°F in the house in the winter and 85°F in the house in the summer – air conditioning was for closers, and the kids were awful about closing.  Mainly awful about closing the window, but I digress.

coffeecloser

I had Alec Baldwin give the kids a speech about cleaning their room.  He fired them, but only after they cried.  But Pugsley got a set of steak knives.

When you’re in that condition, life is about that struggle for money.  I remember we’d eat Kraft® Macaroni and Cheese™ on the nights we weren’t having Hamburger Helper©.  On really good nights, we’d have actual hamburger in the Hamburger Helper©.  If an expense wasn’t absolutely required?  I’d avoid it.  Oil changes?  Why would you do that, there’s still some in the car?  What do I look like, a Rockefeller?  Stitches?  That’s what Super Glue® is for.

At that point in my life I viewed money as the end.  Everything was about making more of it or saving what I had.

When I really think about it, maybe the only common value we have left as a country is this secular religion of chasing money.  It’s like the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants, where the Ants work all summer to store food for the winter, but the Grasshopper uses a leveraged buyout to get money to buy the mortgage to the Anthill from the bank and bulldozes the Anthill to put up a Starbucks®.

Okay, that’s not the way the fable ended.  The first time I saw the Ant and the Grasshopper, it was the 1934 Disney® cartoon version.  They showed it at school on a field trip because movies are easier than teaching.  The end of the movie version of that fable had the Ants inviting the Grasshopper into the Anthill for the winter, provided that the Grasshopper played music for them and voted for FDR.  I was a horrible child – six year-old me thought the Ants were just incentivizing negative Grasshopper behavior and I thought he should have been left out in the cold.  Why?  Because even at age six I was heartless.

I would have enjoyed the original fable more.  In Aesop’s version, the Ants work all summer, and the Grasshopper plays all summer.  When it comes time for winter, the Grasshopper comes begging from the Ant, and the Ant tells the Grasshopper to die in a fire.  I find that a bit more satisfying than the Disney™ version, but I guess Disney© didn’t like the idea of having a cartoon turn into Silence of The Grasshopper where the Ants eat the Grasshopper with some fava beans and a nice chianti.  It could be that hordes of traumatized and crying six year olds isn’t good for business, unless you’re a therapist.

Thankfully, if the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant were real and happening today, the Grasshoppers would form a Grasshopper PAC and would vote in a pro-Grasshopper Congressbug that would immediately introduce legislation to tax the unfair profits of Ants.  Additionally, the Grasshoppers would also denounce the Ants for the culture they created that was the source of all that wealth.  It’s only fair, right?

Me?  All kidding aside, for most of my life I’ve been an Ant.  Working huge numbers of hours to try to provide for the family, build up some financial resources for the future.  Some years I worked in excess of 3,000 stressful hours to provide for the family – that’s an average work week of over sixty hours, every week for a year.  Some people work even harder.  The kicker?   There’s an alternate view of the Ant:  some felt that the Ant isn’t always the good guy, that his very industriousness was driven by the love of money.  In the words of dead-guy-with-a-comic-book-worthy-name-from-1690, Roger L’Strange (I swear I didn’t make up that name) about the Ant (spelling and capitalization in the original):

“Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name.”

In L’Strange’s oddly capitalized view, working too hard was itself a vice.  The poor Ant can’t get a break – everybody wants his stuff, but now he can’t even work hard without people piling on.

But L’Strange was right.  Maybe I worked too hard.  And maybe I am too stunningly handsome.

benedict

Okay, he’s not L’Strange, but Dr. Strange is cool.  And Benedict Cumbereberbatch Bandersnatch Cumberdoodle plays him well.

But the Ant and the Grasshopper might be the one fable that encapsulates the American dichotomy.  Are you a spender, or are you a saver?  Something tells me there might be another way.

There is a very important role of money in a free market economy.  It gives incentives for behavior that fills the needs and desires for others.  It’s a scorekeeper – resources flow to those who best used them to create economic prosperity.  It’s a rationing system for goods and services that doesn’t require the hand of government to make it function.  There are some pretty negative roles of money, too, but I’ll skip those for this post.

There is a way to be neither Ant nor Grasshopper.  If you’re working hard and understand why you’re working, that’s a start.  Paying bills is important, but trading your life away for dollars is really selling your soul.

benfranklin

As Ben Franklin said, “Dost thou love life?  Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

And I don’t think Ben was talking about the magazines Life and Time.  If he was, I guess that makes the quote stupid instead of powerful, and it’s unlikely that Ben read either Life or Time, since he spent most of his time on his phone or watching Netflix®.

The powerful question remains and is really a restatement of old Ben’s comment:  “Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it (money)?”

I’m blessed now to be able to view money is a means, not an end.  The results of the Tyson punch?  Spleen ruptured.  Thankfully it’s not something serious, like having to examine my life choices . . .

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

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So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this?  If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning?  If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance.  Meaning is working on something important.  Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better.  Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary.  The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better.  And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time.  And it takes persistence.  And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

  • Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place.  But it probably isn’t.  Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society.  How about being a prison guard?  Tough duty.  And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS?  If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck!  There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you!  (LINK)  Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job.  It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet.  Hey, at least you get paid, right?
  • Your family. This is a great place to get meaning.  But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat.  It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes.  After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone.  And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path.  I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder.  So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

meaning

In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work.  Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do.  But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes.  And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world.  And they didn’t even drink.  I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings.  If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right?  I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped.  Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down.  Rotary.  Lions.  Boy Scouts.  Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues.  Bowling leagues?  Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board.  The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down.  We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know.  We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core.  But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do.  Government likes this a whole lot.  Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid.  Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for.  A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down.  The reasons might form a future post.  And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant.  Thankfully there are other outlets.  Me?  I write this blog.  I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now.  Okay, okay, it’s not.  But traffic is heading that way.  At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day.  Which is as it should be.  Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming.  I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now.  So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On.  In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures.  Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females.  Or completely naked females.  But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes.  Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York.  He also had a secretary, Toby.  She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude.  In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer.  You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket.  Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game.  Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later.  Then, cashier.  Then a few scenes later?  Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed.  At first, joy in achievement!  Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager.  Finally, her voice got very small.  She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment.  It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you.  But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement.  Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway?  And how much time do you want to spend on them?  Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today.  But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption.  Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement.  It’s even encouraged.  Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it.  It’s certain to work, every time.  You can’t fail.  Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for.  And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty.  It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is.  It could be shoes.  It could be books.  It could be lightbulbs.  It could be PEZ® dispensers.  As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own.  We are our car.  We are our house.  We are our slacks.  We are our PEZ® dispensers.  This consumption has replaced civic virtue.  It has replaced the Lions Club.  It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers.  At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life?  If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life.  Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend.  If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway?  Now you have debt.  And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat.  And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah.  I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

Opportunity – Like The Truth, It’s Out There

“This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries.  All it took was the right mind to use it properly.  Oh, the advances I’ve made from alien junk.  You have no idea, Doctor.  Broadband?  Roswell.” – Doctor Who

roswell

Business Cat is ready for another adventure . . .

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck, Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)) I think that our financial system is in trouble due to debt, currency debasement, and structural benefit issues with things like Medicare®.  In fact, I think that it’s mathematically certain that we’re going to have at least one more catastrophic dislocation (fast or slow), and my bet is that it occurs between 2024 and 2040.  Could it come sooner?  Sure, you stunning optimist!

However, none of that means that you can’t give yourself the means to be comfortable despite the decline.  And if I’m wrong about the decline – which I really hope is the case – then you’ll be in better shape.  I mean, round is a shape, right?

So, how do you make a bunch of cash so you can snort Cuban cigars, or do whatever it is the kids are doing with Tide® Pods™ while being flanked by surgically enhanced Instagram models?

Start by doing something.

Action leads to opportunity.  Inaction might help your video game scores and Cheeto® consumption, but to really create a situation where you’re going to have opportunity, you’re going to have to do something.

Living in a big city is great for creating opportunity.  But living in a big city also involves living in a big city.  And the last time I lived in a big city, it was Houston.  Houston was great – I met a guy who gave me baseball tickets.  Baseball tickets that were right behind President Bush’s (the first one) seats.

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Yeah, I took this picture.  How cool is that?

H.W. and Barb were there that night.  Then President Bush took us to his house and showed me the actual documents from Roswell while The Mrs. and Barb arm wrestled in the kitchen and then played some drinking/fighting game from Mexico that involved tequila, a bandana, and knives.  H.W. shared the big secret with me in his study over snifters of brandy:  turns out what they found at Roswell wasn’t aliens, it was just dolphins with spaceships off on a drunken joyride.  No biggie.

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The real cover up?  They had actually found Eleanor Roosevelt’s underthings.

Okay, the Roswell stuff I made up.  But I did get those tickets and President Bush was there that night.  And nobody in Podunk, East Midwestia is going to have tickets like that.  Big cities breed opportunity to build connections based upon the sheer concentration of people.  If you’re young and looking for opportunity?  Big cities are it.  Although my brother, who is also named John Wilder, did meet Bob Denver when he stopped for gas in a town of 1,500 people.  My brother was working at the station that day.  Said he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, so, yeah, random meetings will happen.  But they’re the exception, not the rule.

If I were fixated on opportunity, yeah, I’d move to a big city.  But it’s not my cup of tea.

bobdenver

Okay, this might be fake trivia . . .

When doing something:

Don’t quit your job, unless you already have a lot of money, or are certain your crazy scheme will work.  Or unless you have nothing to lose.  When Jeff Bezos quit to start Amazon.com, he had enough money and enough connections that he knew he could restart if Amazon failed.  But for every Bezos, there are tons of people like Davos Riggins.  Who is Davos Riggins?  I don’t know.  He didn’t do anything.

A minor bragging point – I found a name that returns zero hits on Google® on the second try.  Ha!  And apologies to Davos Riggins if you really exist.  But you have to admit you’ve squandered your potential.

Don’t borrow zillions of dollars to put your idea into practice, unless bankruptcy can’t hurt you.  And even if you win?  The debt will make your company less profitable.

What can you do to create opportunity in life?

Depends on you.  One of the things (not the only thing) I do is write.  Before this post, I’d written 229 posts comprising 316,000 words in the last 18 months.  Why?  I enjoy it.  Also why?  It’s doing something – it’s using the Internet to create possibilities that didn’t exist before.  And after 229 posts?  I still have dozens of sticky notes with topics that I want to write about – I have more topics than time.

But that’s my thing.

What about you?

  • Build something cool. Sell it at a flea market.  Or on EBay™ or Etsy®.
  • Start a company that to help people find PEZ® dispensers. Oh, that was how EBay© got its start.  This is a lie.  A sweet, beautiful lie (see comment below), but a lie nonetheless.  And now I owe doughnuts!
  • Start a social network that only allows communication via cat emoji – suggested name? Snapcat©.
  • Write a list of 100 things you’re good at.
  • Write a list of 100 things you like to do.
  • See how the lists overlap? I bet there’s opportunity there.
  • Go to conferences and meet new people.
  • Meet their friends, too. They know someone that can help you.
  • Learn from your losses.
  • Start again.

Regardless of the way the world is going, you can thrive.  You really can.  If you imagine the US economy as a swimming pool, each gallon of water in the 40,000 gallon pool would be worth $5 million dollars.  And that’s every year.  And it’s not counting all the pee in the pool from when you had your nephew over.

Would you miss one gallon out of 40,000?  No.  Nobody would.  And just like the pool, the economy doesn’t care.  Not even about the pee.

There’s room for you to be as successful as you want to be, if you’re willing to sacrifice your time and location and fail again and again.  And even when you win, you won’t be satisfied.  That’s the biggest gift yet – the quest.  If you’re good at it, if you like doing it, if you can make money at it, and if it changes the world?

That’s a start.

A good one.

Seven Deadly (Financial) Sins, Together For The FIRST TIME!

“Deserves got nothing to do with it.” – Unforgiven

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Actually not my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.  That would be Outlaw Josey Wales, or ANYTHING he did in the 1970’s.  But I do know my limitations . . . .

When it comes to my life, I’ve made mistakes, like convincing George W. Bush to attack Iraq.  I should have remembered – never get involved in a land war in Asia.  But those mistakes aren’t the ones we’re discussing today.  Today . . . we’re discussing the Seven Deadly Financial Sins, at least after I put on some spooky music to scare you into never sinning.  Oh, I did discuss the Actual Seven Deadly Sins, and you can read that post here (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?).

We’ll start with the worst sin:

Debt

Is debt a sin or the result of sinning?  I’m not going to sit and argue it – these aren’t really sins you go to Actual Hell for anyway.  You just go to Financial Hell.  So, I’m calling Debt a sin.  And I’m calling it a result of sin.  It’s the “Y” of Sin – sometimes a vowel, sometimes not.

Debt is really, really bad for individuals.

Why?

With debt, you get what you want, now.  Like a brand new Corvette®, or a rare 1621 A.D. PEZ® dispenser originally whittled by Galileo while he was in prison for stealing cable television.   I’m sure that was the best deal I’ve ever made, only had to pay $500 for it!

But now you have the object of your desire.  And you have to pay for it.  That’s not a problem.  You only borrowed $50,000 for the Corvette™, right.  You’ll pay (for a seven year loan) about $680 a month at 4% interest.  Not bad!

But of that, your first payment will contain around $170 in interest, money that you’re paying the bank, every month.  $1,800 in interest in the first year.  The total interest you’d pay in this situation is $7,400 over the life of the loan.

Now let’s say you buy a house for the average price in the country, $200,000.  Your payment on a 30 year loan would be a little more than $1000 for principle and interest, with a whopping $750 of that being interest in the first month.  In the first year?  About $8,800 in interest payments alone.

Sure, you have a house and a car, but you’re paying nearly $1000 a MONTH just to borrow the money in the early parts of the loan.

How much income would be required to fund this?  Your tax rates will vary, but I’ll assume your tax rate leaves you with about 70% of your money after you’ve paid all of your taxes.

$17,000 in pre-tax income would be required . . . just for your interest payments.  Toss in the principle, the taxes and insurance?

$50,000 in pre-tax income to pay for taxes, insurance, and the full payments.  Some people work a whole week and don’t make that much money!

If you make the median family income of $59,000, you have the princely sum of $9,000 before taxes ($6,300 after taxes) a year to buy absolutely everything else in your life.

“Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage:   Pay cash or do without.  Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.” – Robert A. Heinlein

Is there a place for debt?  Sure.  Businesses use it to expand.  Families use it to create a reason to divorce.  Or buy a really cool PEZ® dispenser.

The least bad debt?  Mortgage debt.

Worse?  Credit cards.

Worst?  Student loan debt or money you owe to mobsters.  But I repeat myself.

Have I sinned?  Yes, I have.  But that day in January of 2001 when I paid off my last non-mortgage debt except for student loans?

Priceless.  And marriage harmony went up 41.7% that day.

Fear

Had I continually invested all of my spare cash into the market, say in a nice S&P 500 fund?  The cash that’s sitting in the bank, gathering only a little interest?

I’d be retired today.  Smoking nice cigars and drinking good scotch.  With an airplane.  A cheap one, but an airplane.

Dang.

I’ve successfully predicted 11 of the last three recessions.  That may not be the most useful talent I have.  I will note that I at least come by it honestly.  One set of great-great-grandparents decided that they wanted to get out of Germany because they saw the increasing militarism in society and figured that war was coming, so they’d get out before it got bad.

They left Germany in 1880, 34 years before World War I and assimilated the heck out of themselves – one of them was Eisenhower’s grade school teacher – how American was that?

I’ve said before that being right too early is the same as being wrong, but in this case?  I have all of my cash.  And my great-great-grandparents avoided the mess that was post World War I Germany, where, I hear, the Internet was horrible.

Greed

Okay, I did play with some great stocks during the teens.  Several of them doubled within a month of me buying them.  And I kept riding some of them right into the ground.  I turned $20,000 into $40,000 into $5,000.  Which will be a great tax write off, when I finally sell it.  Will someone please cue the sound of a forehead repeatedly hitting a desk?

Waste

In a recent post, I mentioned that the most expensive food is the food you don’t eat.  I’ve done the math:  when we go out to eat at Taco Bell®, we spend around $40.  How much steak does $40 buy?  A lot.  How much steak gets wasted around the Casa Wilder?

Zero.

And we can’t eat steak every day.  I mean we could, but we can’t.  But when we have to throw out food, I feel horrible.  Maybe it was the way that Great Grandma McWilder would talk about how fortunate we were to NOT BE STARVING when I wasn’t finishing lunch.

And Great Grandma McWilder came through the Depression on the “nearly having to eat your shoes” side, so she knew how to put a guilt on you.  And waste was the sin that she preached against daily.  In her house, it if had any use?  She’d save it and use it.  Thankfully she didn’t die in her sleep and eat me (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).

That would have been one big waste of an amazing blogger . . . .

Lust

I think the most evil word in the English language is “deserve.”

  • “You deserve a nice car.”
  • “You deserve health care that someone else pays for.”
  • “You deserve that stereo – you work so hard.”

When raising my kids, I wouldn’t allow them to use that word.  When you do, you create a foundation for your desire for an item, which in Actual Sin terms would be Lust.

Needs

Modern life has increased the level of needs that we have in an amazing fashion.  If you look at the following list:

  • Electricity
  • Internet
  • Phone Service
  • Mobile Phones
  • Natural Gas
  • Multiple Cars for a House
  • Cars
  • PEZ®
  • Air Conditioning
  • Netflix©
  • Facebook™
  • Faster Than Light Travel
  • Wireless Keyboards

None of those things were invented before last Thursday.

Okay, they were here last Thursday.  But how many on them didn’t exist before 1990?  Before 1950?  Before 1900?

These things aren’t needs.  They’re nice – some of them amazingly nice.  You can live amazingly well without them, as humanity did forever before 1900.

Reassess your needs** – not only of the services above, but of anything that doesn’t make your life better.  Half the games that are available on the smart phone are designed to sell you or sell something to you.  Either way?  You lose.  Except for Candy Crush®.  That’s just fun*.

*I have never played Candy Crush™.

**If you don’t want to have electricity and your wife disagrees, it would amuse me if you used me as a source.  It would NOT amuse me if she came to my house to complain.

Sloth

I’d write more about this . . . but I’m just not feeling it.

Just kidding.

Don’t ignore your money or financial situation if you’re lazy, like me.  I put in place systems so I wouldn’t forget to pay bills monthly.

It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you because, you know, we’re cool, right?

It’s a calendar.

Pay your bills on time.

Otherwise?

You get what you deserve, which will be penalties, fees, and interest.  You can use deserve in this case.  Because you deserve it.

Sinner.

The Paradox of High Standards: Making You Happy or Killing You?

“I don’t suppose you’d find it up to the standards of your outings. More conversation and somewhat less petty theft and getting hit with pool cues.” – Firefly

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It’s important to have standards – like licking and sticking standards.  Stick to your guns!

I was watching Tony Robbins™ over a year ago while working out at the gym.  I like to watch videos when I do the cardio machines – it seems to make the time pass more quickly.  I’m not sure that’s a good idea since (at least subjectively) that makes my life shorter.  Perhaps I should fill my underwear with sand before I get on the treadmill – that might make it seem a little lot longer. But I digress.  Going from memory, Robbins® was talking about if you wanted to change your life, you had to raise your standards.

What is the result of a change in standards?  Well, if Robbins© is right, changing your standards changes the way you view the world.  And if you raise your standards, well, you’ve changed your life for the better, right?

No.

You’ve changed your life for the better if you’ve raised your standards and changed your behavior in such a manner that you are moving to meet those standards.  If you change your standards of, say, your new pants size?  And your new standard is a 32” waist (451 meters)?  Great idea!  But you don’t change your daily habit of 86 Krispy Kreme® delicious glazed donuts?  What has your new awesome changed standard given you?

Nothing.

Wait, worse than nothing.

Frustration.  Which leads to death.  Okay, after decades.  But it still leads to death.

With all apologies to Mr. Robbins® (the host body) and the symbiotes/parasites that are his amazingly immaculate hair (no actual human has hair like that, so I expect that his hair is a separate living entity, perhaps responsible in some psychic way for his charisma), changing standards without changing actions just breeds a sense of impotence, anger, discontent, and, when present in relationships?  Divorce or an end to friendship.

High Standards + Poor Execution = Sadder Than Johnny Depp’s Bank Account

Let me give an example:

Let’s say I have a standard that includes having a spotless bathroom.  One where you could eat chateaubriand off the tiles (and had an Alexa® speaker that told you what chateaubriand was) with the Queen and she’d be excited to come back for dessert.  A bathroom where the towels were laundered by angels in heaven with unicorn blood as the soap.  I mean a really clean bathroom.  Really clean.

Okay.  I now have this standard.  Cool.

But I hate cleaning, and I’m not really good at it.

So my standard is a really clean bathroom.  But The Mrs. has to clean it.

Sadly, The Mrs. is neither an indentured servant nor someone who is easily cowed.  Did you think I’d marry a weasel-woman?  Nah, could have had dozens of those.  I need a woman with fire in her eyes!

But if I expect The Mrs. to clean the bathroom to my “dinner with the Queen” standard?  Never going to happen.  And the result?

I’d be angry at The Mrs., for something she never promised nor intended to do.  If this continued through other aspects of our relationship?

We wouldn’t have a relationship.

And I understand that.  If we expect more than the other can or will give?  We don’t have a relationship.  But some standards really are important.  How can you tell which ones?

When it comes to standards:

  • What standards are you willing to fight for? Real fighting, not Twitter® or online petitions.
  • What standards do you actually control? If you don’t control it, how will it happen?
  • What is the consequence of the standard not being met? If nothing, then . . . what?

Focus on standards with consequences that have meaning to you.  That you control.

You do control your pants size.  Are you willing to fight for it?  Does it have consequences?

The questions above really do have consequences:  if you spend your life being upset about things you don’t control, and that you can’t change, and that don’t impact your life?

Even the stupid dead Romans had this one figured out:

“Today I escaped anxiety.  No!  I discarded it because it was within me in my own perceptions, not outside of me.” — Marcus Aurelius (stupid dead Roman)

I guess Tony Robbins© is just not fit for a toga.  And his hair would a little tiny toga, which would be cute, but really, really creepy.

Read This Blog or I’ll Shoot This Car and You’ll Feel Guilty Forever

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger.  I will teach you to confront it, and to face the truth.  You know how to fight six men.  We can teach you how to engage six hundred.  You know how to disappear.  We can teach you to become truly invisible.” – Batman Begins (The good 2005 one, not the earlier crap.)

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If you don’t read this blog, I’ll shoot this car.  Then wouldn’t you feel guilty?

I sat staring at the ceiling in the darkened apartment, the lights from the parking lot casting shadows on the walls.  I couldn’t sleep.  I tossed and turned.  Finally, I resorted to reading.  I’d read every night until I literally fell asleep with a book in my hand.  I remembered, in particular, reading a big, heavy hardcover at the time, one that was about 1053 pages long.

I was being eaten alive inside.  I was wracked with guilt.

What was I scared of?

Well, I hadn’t finished my master’s degree yet, but I had moved halfway across the country and started a new job.  No one was asking me about my degree, but I knew that dreaded moment was coming soon.  “So, John Wilder, where’s your degree?  We need to see a copy.”

This was impossible.  My thesis wasn’t even written yet.  And I had moved halfway across the United States and taken a new job.

My torture continued.  Outside of the lack of sleep, the guilt from knowing that I hadn’t finished my degree sent a chill down my spine (or is it up my spine?) every time I thought about it.  At work.  Shopping.  Waxing my moose statue.  Finally, after a week or so of this torture, I went in to my boss, who was only five or so years older than me.  We started off talking about the work I was doing.  At the end I brought up the degree.

John Wilder:  “Oh, and one other thing, I’m not quite done with my master’s yet, I still need to finish and defend my thesis.”

Boss:  “Whatever.  I’m not even sure the company cares.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.  We hired you, not a degree.”

And that was that.

In that moment all the fear left me, and I felt silly for worrying about it, and even sillier for keeping it bottled up inside of me, eating away at me like a Kardashian at an all-you-can-eat waffle and cream cheese covered bacon buffet.  Sometimes that horrible truth you have bottle up inside of you . . . is no problem at all.

This has been the norm in my life:  if I confronted the problem, or was honest about it upfront, the problem (most times) went away.  And when the problem didn’t go away, fixing it because I was honest and upfront was easier than the times (in the past) that I’d waited to confront the issue.

Guilt is a cousin to Worry, and not the good kind of cousin that brings a twelve-pack to your backyard barbeque and then offers to watch your kids so you and the wife can go have a dinner out.  No.  Guilt is a bad cousin that shows up at 3am, kicks your dog, and eats that steak leftover you have in the fridge while talking with its mouth full and smelling vaguely like a wooden barroom floor near a Marine base.  But Guilt and Worry are related.

Worry is paying for the future problems you might have, whereas Guilt is worrying about the repercussions from past actions.  Let’s be real:  I wasn’t worried so much about not having the degree (I did finish it a year later) but was really worried about having moved halfway across the country only to be fired and become economically destitute – a warning sign for future people to say, “don’t be like that idiot.”  I had done the deed.  Or in this case not done it.  My question was what would happen once I’d been found out.

And most of the time your imagination can create future consequences far scarier than they ever would be in normal reality.  Unfortunately, I’m an imaginative guy.  I can go from getting a “C” in a college class to getting kicked out of school to living in a squalid drug den and smelling like Johnny Depp in about three steps.

The choices (if you don’t want to eat yourself up alive inside) are simple:  confront the guilt, or, better yet?

Don’t do things that make you feel guilty.

Duh.

What is Wealth? Is it More Than Money?

“Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

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This may be the most important philosophical question of our lifetime, especially if you’re haulin’ oats.

The other day I was listening to the radio and the hosts (Walton and Johnson) were discussing wealth.  Since actual radio around Casa Wilder consists of a single AM station broadcasting crop reports and lean cattle futures and an FM station that is “All Hall and Mostly Oates, All the Time!”  Therefore?  We listen to radio stations on the Internet.  Walton and Johnson are out of Houston, but we also lived in Alaska, so we also often listen to a station we like out of Fairbanks.  Obviously, when the radio in the bedroom says it’s -40°F and the kitchen radio says it’s 85°F, there’s likely to be wind and a rainstorm down the hallway.

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Maybe I misheard that lyric?

Anyhow, Walton and Johnson were discussing wealth.  They mentioned that a recent study showed that, in Houston, a survey said that to be considered “wealthy” you had to have $2.5 million dollars in net worth.  To be considered “well off” you only needed to have $1.4 million dollars – which is quite a bargain – many people work a whole year and don’t make that much money!

After a bit of research, I found the source of the story:  Charles Schwab®, the investment firm.  You can read the study here (LINK).  In San Francisco (according to Schwab©), it’s even more money than Houston to be considered wealthy:  $4.1 million.

Looking at the best numbers I could find, the median household net worth is about $100,000.  To be in the paltry $2.5 million Houston-wealthy club (versus the expensive San Francisco $4.1 million club), means that your household is in better financial shape than 96% of American households.

But that’s the problem with this survey – since, at most, 4% of the people taking the survey would be considered “wealthy,” most of the people taking it have about as much idea about how much money it requires to be wealthy as a monkey trying to understand Nietzsche.  I mean, apes read philosophy, but they just don’t understand it, Otto.  And I imagine people who aren’t wealthy don’t understand that, either.  The answer is just a bit more complicated . . . .

I’ve done about 70 posts on wealth, but I need to step back and ask that question:  what is wealth?  To say it’s purely a number is to show that you don’t understand wealth.  Money represents not a fixed number, but a possibility.

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If you measure wealth in love . . .   

What is wealth?

Wealth is time.  In fact, if you go to the basic equation – your life is made entirely out of time – nothing else.  Your life literally is the sum of the things that you do with your time.  So wealth is doing what you want to do with your time, which means doing what you want to do with your life.  It’s entirely probable that a Wall Street investment banker with $10,000,000 in the bank from a job he hates and shrill wife with more implanted silicon than actual original equipment is less wealthy than a hunting guide who lives in a log cabin in Alaska who has less than $5000 in the bank.

In my case, I’ve traded a LOT of time for money in the past.  My theory was to work hard while I was young so that I could build my career so I could save enough money so that my family would be secure in the future.  You would say that working all the time is not a very wealthy (or in some cases healthy) thing to do, except . . . I loved the job I was doing!  In many cases it was stressful.  Difficult.  Uncertain.  Long hours.  And when I did an awesome job?  Yeah, it was like winning the World Junior Baking Championship.  Not that I can bake, or even that there is a World Junior Baking Championship, but I think you know exactly what I mean.

I watched the documentary Lynyrd Skynyrd:  If I Leave Here Tomorrow this weekend, and those guys simply loved playing music.  They’d do it all day long, even when they weren’t getting paid.  Being a rock star was awesome, sure, but it wasn’t the point.  They were wealthy as soon as they could get paid for playing small clubs.  Arenas were just the gravy.

And, yes, I’ve said in the past (and still maintain) that to support yourself, support your family you might really have to suck it up, buttercup, and work jobs you don’t like because an Alaskan hunting guide has really crappy health insurance and his spouse has neurohemoblastaphobia which can only be cured by a mouse egg (before the baby mice hatch) extract that’s been strained through bigfoot hair and breathed on by an honest politician.  Yes, it’s as expensive as it sounds.  Then you have to work the job you have rather than a job where you play guitar all day.

Wealth is freedom.  Could you quit your job tomorrow without having a new one and still meet all of your obligations?  For most people, the answer is no, either because the obligations are too high or the amount of cash they have is too low – 60% of people in the country live paycheck to paycheck.  However, sometimes it’s self-inflicted.

Some people trade their freedom for a car payment.  I’ve seen people who purchase a $60,000 pickup, and then have to pay $1,200 a month in car payments.  I don’t know about you, but my 4,000 square foot house has a payment of less than $1,000, so it’s not making me freer to be tied to a depreciating asset that I have to pay $14,400 a year for.  Plus insurance.  Plus whatever taxes the state would extract for a $60,000 vehicle.

I have a pickup.  It cost $6,000.  I paid with cash.  It didn’t cost very much because the car dealership was having a hard time selling a stick shift.  The truck runs fine.  Engine is a bit small, but 95% of the time it’s just being driven by a teenager to school and back.

But if your idea of wealth is a $60,000 pickup, I’ll never be wealthy in your eyes.

But I can be free without a $60,000 pickup.

And, no, I’m not a radical get rid of stuff and never buy anything sort of person – I’ve probably got more books on some topics than any library in my state.  And, I’ve bought more than my share of crap in my life, but very little of it has made me happy, and very little of it has made me a better person.  Except for the PEZ®, of course.  And I’ve been on some incredible vacations.

Wealth is time.  Wealth is freedom.  And your wealth is determined by things you “need.”

The less you need?  The wealthier you are, and the more choices you have.

oatsplan

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

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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

nunslap

Do not make my friend angry.

Lessons:

  1. 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.

  1. 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!

clownmeme

  1. 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 . . .