Heyo!!
Found another interesting email in my inbox this morning, and even though I had to re-read it twice just to make sure I understood it all the way (which I blame on lack of coffee, not brains!), it was the perfect pairing with another item I wanted to share with you guys today…
We’ll start with the brain dump by Wilfred Waters, who if sounds familiar is because we’ve featured him before when he showed us his 1-page spreadsheet on figuring out when you can retire. Which if you recall, included one of the most brilliant features I’ve ever seen in a spreadsheet – a tracker on how long you have until death! The perfect reminder to LIVE while you’re in there crunching all those #’s! ;)
Here’s his latest epiphany:
*********
Hey man,
I had a budgeting thought today that I wanted to share.
I think I’ve cracked the code.
Capitalism creates a numbers-driven life.
Each person is just a walking, breathing capital reserve expressed via a balance sheet.
Each person is their own defense against:
- Capital loss
- Their income and expenses sheet going out of balance (if that’s not repeating 1.)
It might look like people are brick layers and professors who need to know how to spell to participate in society, but actually they are each little engines for capital generation and, crucially, defense.
Their success at that can be gauged entirely mathematically via the sum of (things valued via) currency that they own.
The challenge then in a capitalist society is to:
- Be numerate, particularly regarding maths of capital
- Convince others to hand over their capital to you. This is because your value as a person increases with capital. So you need to come up with good ways to overcome individuals’ capital loss defenses, so you can have theirs.
This is not to say steal. Instead, create for example, marketing campaigns that distract people from a merely numerate approach to evaluating what’s in front of them. Through your campaign you can get people to effectively steal from themselves by forgetting that a facts and numbers based assessment is all that matters.
For example, you might shame them into thinking they’re not beautiful enough without your shampoo. Both the shampoo and marketing are just mechanisms to achieve capital transfer. You don’t have to care about shampoo, and your next such mechanism could as easily be a truck tire repair business.
Just like people in a capitalist society, company success is measured via your company balance sheet. After all is said and done, if the bottom line is black you have developed an effective capital transfer mechanism.
If you cannot speak in numbers, you’ll fail to participate fundamentally in a capitalist society.
And yet, what do most people end up hating at school? Feeling afraid of and confused about? The very language that they require to win in a capitalist, numerically reductive society.
The way to empower people, without changing the system, is therefore numeracy and not literacy. Otherwise we’re just raising lambs for the slaughter.
*********
What do you think? Is he on to something?
I told him I agreed that we DO need to understand #’s right in order to flourish in this great world, but the part he was missing – and a biggie – was that humans are, by nature, emotional. And we don’t always follow the “smartest” path whether the numbers show it or not!
You can be armed with all the information in the world, but if your brain is scaring you or exciting you one way over another (as we saw with last week’s “Should I pay down the mortgage or keep saving?” dilemma), the odds are good you’ll lean towards what your body is telling you. Everyone knows how to save more or earn more or pay off debts – it’s a basic concept! – but they still don’t do it if they’re not motivated enough.
It’s not until they get so pissed off with their lives – or extremely excited about the possibility of a better one! – that they start to finally take action. Same goes with exercising, or losing weight (usually – obviously there are exceptions), or stopping smoking, etc. You have to want it bad enough to overcome all those habits and pain stages!
But back to Wilfred’s point, yes – the marketers very much know how to win in this game of stealing our money, and unfortunately it won’t be stopping anytime soon.. (Though ironically, many of the people hawking these things are themselves deep in debt and in the rat race too? Do they not know or care they’re a part of it all??).
It does bring us to the 2nd item I really wanted to share with y’all though, and that is this epic video on “Happiness” by Steve Cutts. I hope you take the time to watch it as it’s only 4 minutes, but WOW is it spot on…
If you find you relate to any of these rats, let today be The Day you change that!!
(I don’t know why it says it “may be inappropriate for viewers” since there’s no cursing or anything (it’s a bunch of rats??) but don’t let it scare you away…)
Sums up a lot of lives we know, right? Maybe even our own at one point in time, or even now??? If it’s the latter, I hope you’ll wake up from it today and realize there’s a better way out there!! There’s so many routes to happiness that are not only free, but empowering!!
And here are a few of them, along with some of my personal favorite resources if you want to explore any of these further (which I hope you do – they’re crazy inspiring):
- Minimalism (own your stuff, don’t let it own you!!) –> BecomingMinimalist.com
- Essentialism (focus on the most important and eliminate the rest) –> Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Book by Greg McKeown)
- Consciousness (be awake in all you do!) –> CaitFlanders.com / Raptitude.com
- FIRE/Financial ass kicking (freedom > money) –> MrMoneyMustache.com / MadFientist.com / IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com
And then here’s my full blogroll as well if you want more: budgetsaresexy.com/blogroll
Again, the knowledge part here only takes you so far, but hopefully it’s enough to spark a little action and get you on your way to a more improved – and happier! – life.
Each person is not just a walking, breathing capital reserve expressed via a balance sheet. We have our own hopes and dreams, and most importantly the CAPACITY to fulfill them with or without loads of money at our disposal.
But it does take energy and inspiration, so hopefully you leave this post today with a little more of each so you don’t end up like one of these ugly stinky rats! Hit replay on that video anytime you need another kick in the pants to snap out of it again ;)
There is a different way! And it’s in your power to change it!
******
Big thanks to LizWithLime for passing me along this video, as well as Wilfred for allowing me yet again to share his thoughts with the world… You’re two for two, good sir – hopefully it’s not another year and a half until your 3rd note!
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I think numbers just make it easier to keep track of everything. It puts vague terms such as “I’m financially ok” into black and white. There’s nothing inherently cold about numbers.
Oh, totally! I think you need #’s to sum up and explain a lot super quickly, but when it comes to *action* (either for or against yourself), it’s the *emotions* that very much play a vital role. The #’s are like the scorecard, but the game’s being played around our feelings and motivations ;)
I agree that all our decisions are based on emotions. Even when we think that we made a logical decision.
There was a study in which people were asked to pick among two chickens – one was supposedly healthy, and the other was tasty. And they switched the descriptions for half the people. Everyone picked the same one – the one that looked better- they just used the right excuse.
I wonder if the same would go for dating and putting pictures of beautiful men/women in front of you :)
At its core capitalism is competition. Sometimes it’s a more direct competition like in sports. And sometimes it’s more indirect. But ultimately, we’re all competing to have others give us money in exchange for the value that we provide society.
And I did a special post for that Steven Cutts video a while ago. What a great work of art.
I like that way of thinking about it… works the other way too with advertisers competing to GET our money!
I think numbers are one way to define your life, but I prefer adjectives. The vast majority of things that bring lasting happiness have nothing to do with numbers. Feeling acceptance, belonging, close relationships full of affection and humor and trust. Creativity, whether that be painting or singing or gardening or writing. Being at peace with yourself and your world.
Thanks for sharing, a lot to think about today. That video made me so sad… but then I’m a “country mouse”; I love to visit big cities but don’t understand how people stand living in them. I need space and green and quiet.
YES TO ADJECTIVES!!! LOVE THAT!
Totally agree, but your “but the part he was missing – and a biggie – was that humans are, by nature, emotional” statement was not missing from his description. Emotions are the main reason why those sneaky bastards are able to trick you into the transfer of capital. Developing immunity to those traps is a very important skill.
Also, I grew up in a so-called socialist country, but the only difference I see is if the government is the one who wants to “encourage” you for transferring your capital or private companies… The end result is pretty similar from the person’s perspective :)
I very much want to have lunch with you one day and talk about all this stuff :) Always fascinated by your comments and background!
We humans have emotions for sure. Not everyone of us is a calculator. I’m not gonna argue with that.
But I think that knowing the numbers well can help us better assess a situation and reign in the emotions that want to take over us. Math is not fun, but it is necessary.
Even as a money/numbers guy I think life is about more than each of our balance sheets. One can live a full and rewarding life without having accumulated much. In a way, my biggest realization since finding the fire community wasn’t that I don’t have to grow my net worth to the highest number possible. I just need to accumulate “enough.” Once I’m there, I can refocus on other areas in my life that are more important.
A-M-E-N to that.
Managing one’s own personal finances by tracking spending and net worth provide data points to can lead to proactive planning. The rat race video is a fantastic reminder that reacting to cultural or external cues, while alluring at first, will lead to misery and despair if one merely gets caught up in the crowd.
I think it’s kinda cool to think about yourself as a balance sheet or business. My husband would love that. Humans are now neater, cleaner and math dominates! But I would go CRAZY if that was all life was. We wouldn’t be much different from robots but that’s a whole other can of worms.
Haha yup…. And obviously I LOOOOOVE me some numbers and $$$ tracking, but just learned over the years that there’s so much more to life and actions than that. We do all kinds of crazy things as humans whether we know the mathematical outcomes or not :)
I’m definitely a numbers/analytical/logical guy. It’s one of the things that helped me FIRE when I did.
But even so, I still make plenty of decisions based on emotion. Sometimes I back-fill the logic of why I did something after I emotionally chose to do it. Now if that isn’t self-delusion I don’t know what is. :)
“Sometimes I back-fill the logic of why I did something after I emotionally chose to do it.” Powerful thought right there. I certainly have done this in the past; something to keep an eye on in the future!
Ultimately its our job to take every advantage or perceived advantage out of the system that we can. For us that could mean not falling prey to buying crap, and pursuing FI. Others in less fortunate economies or social structures it could mean different things.
As I was reading my mind kept playing the Mos Def song “Mathematics”:
“This is business: no faces, just lines and statistics
From your phone, your Zip Code to SSI digits
The system break man, child, and women into figures”
Also, the steve cutts “In the fall” video is profound as well. I think that one had more of an impact on me.
Oh cool, thanks! Never heard of the guy before this, so will have to check out his other stuff too.
I agree that an obsession with numbers can be taken too far, but it’s also essential for innovation and data driven progress. Things like anesthetics or insulin couldn’t have been invented without focusing on numbers based results. And it’s nice to live in a society where we can freely express ideas in places like this blog, where the only determining factor in it’s success is numbers/pageviews, not a government permitting it to exist.
If we are in fact, little engines for capital generation, at least we get to decide whether to spend, keep or invest that capital. It’s true, that an obsession with numbers can stifle creativity and risk taking. And sometimes the interplay of numbers and creativity, i.e. Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci are fascinating. It’s an interesting thing to consider, but to me, the bottom line is that we all get to determine our own balance of creative vs numbers driven pursuits.
No doubt about that! We’re very, very, fortunate here.
I’m going to have to disagree. Emotions play a big part as you noted. Ultimately it’s a question of motivation. Some of us are motivated by numbers. But that doesn’t explain those that dedicate their lives to volunteerism or low paying jobs that may benefit their fellow man. In that each person is different. Money (and numbers) is a tool, what you do with it is the important bit.
I think this is a pretty fascinating concept to think about. Running your personal finances like a business is a great way to motivate and incentivize yourself to hit higher savings rates and reach your goals. Everyone likes being in the black!
To your point though, emotions and personal experiences play a huge role in the decisions that people make, not purely the numbers. If people have had bad experiences with debt they may pay that off before investing more even if the numbers say to invest. That’s why it’s great that personal finance can be so individual!
Yeah it is, or else there’s now way I’d still have a blog because I’d suck with my $$$ if I didn’t pay attention to my emotions! :)
The overlooked concept in the idea that every person is just a walking Balance Sheet and P&L Statement and life is about convincing people to transfer capital, is the creation of capital. A fundamental principal of capitalism is the creation of value, hence creation of capital. It is not a zero sum game. Yes, there are finite resources in the world, but not necessarily finite value. How we use the resources available is more important than how much of the resources we have available is.
There is a capital item that does not list itself on a balance sheet for each individual, I call it Personal Capital. It measures abstract items such as a persons happiness, health, and life satisfaction. The concept is used to adjust for human emotion in a numbers game and can explain why people shoot for financial independence rather than just the largest possible balance sheet. I may gladly transfer capital assets for an increase in personal capital – my numerical balance sheet takes a hit, but my personal balance sheet can be greatly improved. Though to outsiders, all they can see is the numerical sheet and what appears to be a reduction in capital.
OOooooh I like that!!!! A LOT!!!
I agree with you – we aren’t just numbers. There’s more to life than net worth and a budget. Capital (money) is simply a set of tools used to pursue those things. That’s all they are – a means to an end.
If we were just numbers, we should only care about amassing as much wealth as we can.
But few people have that as their ultimate goal. They may want to amass great wealth, but it’s almost certainly in pursuit of something else – meaning, joy, security, philanthropy, etc.
To boil all of our decisions down to some pursuit of more capital is undervaluing what makes us human.
“If we were just numbers, we should only care about amassing as much wealth as we can. But few people have that as their ultimate goal.” — YES!!! EXACTLY!!!! And this blog woudln’t even exist because it would turn to $hit the second I prioritized $$$ from a productive community and you’d be typing to a ghost right now :)
Sure, everyone should know about numbers and personal finance. You’ll be constantly frustrated if you go through life expecting people to behave logically, though. People are not very logical.
The reason the video may be inappropriate for viewers is that it’s depressing! Alcoholism, opiate addiction, red light districts and the worst of them all – a scene from a gigantic corporate 9to5!
I know there’s a lot of talk in the PF community about how bad consumerism is but I think minimalism and FIRE are just other sides of the same coin – they are other routes that are promised to lead to happiness, but they’re not happiness. It’s more likely that you will find happiness when you can clear some stress out (which goes hand in hand with minimalism and FIRE), but you still need to find your happiness apart from it.
But oh man I was in traffic the other day and I could feel myself getting so stressed out. And I could see myself justifying just about anything because of the feeling of being trapped and insignificant. I am no better than those rats.
Well at least you’re a rat that KNOWS it’s a rat! Those guys in the video have no hope ;)
(And you’re totally right about all extremes really… Rarely do “all or nothing” approaches work, except for short term)
You hit the nail on the head when you respond that humans are emotional beings. I too tend to view myself as a business, with an income statement/balance sheet/cash flows because I like to know exactly how I stand.
BUT, humans are emotional — to be more specific, humans have certain cognitive heuristics, which are simple rules hard-coded by evolutionary process which, whether rightly or wrongly, help make our decisions. People want to fit in — its how we’ve managed to survive as a species on this planet. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_decision-making). So we’re susceptible to marketing tactics and salesman pitches — it preys on our hard-coded survival instincts that are not quite up to speed with the modern world we live in (but worked great 5,000 years ago!)
So, what’s my point? Well, understanding numbers is very important to live the life you want. But I would argue that understanding all the cognitive biases that affect the human mind is just as important. How many times have you seen incredibly smart people do incredibly dumb things? Understand the emotional part of the human mind AND the numbers game — that’s the recipe for success.
Every time I see “heuristic” now I’m always reminded of this post by Mustard Seed Money: “Is Your Heuristic Showing?” haha… Highly recommend ;) (And good points, btw)
If numbers were the only factors, than we would all be independent. We would live like Tebetan monks because that would make the most numerical sense, and then we would be FIRE’d fast!
But then, why would we want to be? What would the goal be? Why would we even care about early retirement? The fact is, human emotion drives our quest for this goal. His write up is fun as an abstract exercise but has no practical value because there is no motivation behind the concept. Even maximizing efficiency would be a goal, requiring some kind of motivation or purpose.
I recently sat down with a pretty well-to-do YouTube star (1.8 million subscribers and raking in money through clothing endorsements and other business ventures) and I’m working on a blog post about all the business/money wisdom in our interview (I wasn’t even interviewing him for that purpose, but it just seeped out of him). One of my favorite things that he said is that when people spend money they are solving a problem. This could be everything from back pain (spending money at a doctor or chiropractor) to entertainment (he mention that Game of Thrones solves his problem of wanting to engage in medieval fantasy in an adult fashion). Even when people mindlessly spend, they are solving the problem of boredom. If you can describe someone’s problem to themselves better than the customer could, and then provide the solution, they will happily pay you.
I think for the FIRE crowd, we essentially try to solve our problems using less money, in pursuit of solving a bigger problem: how do we pay for life’s essentials without being tied to a 9-5 job. How do we solve the problem of living the life as we want it, rather than what is dictated? So we find a way around the smaller problems, so that we can save enough to solve the bigger problem. I should probably refine this argument for a blog post of my own, but you get the picture.
I can’t say much more about this interview other than it was one of the most personally inspiring interviews I’ve ever conducted. (Maybe behind the 12-year-old who raised $10,000 to save his grandmother’s house from foreclosure during the housing crisis – a story I broke that went international.) I plan to have it up on my blog later today.
AHHH I WANT TO READ BOTH OF THOSE POSTS!!!
Will you email me the links to them later, please?
And yes – def. consider writing something up around your thoughts on this here – they’re very interesting, particularly this part –> “Even maximizing efficiency would be a goal, requiring some kind of motivation or purpose. “
Thanks J Money! The post has been polished and is up. I will email you the link!
The idea of motivation to budget/practice fiscal responsibility has been on my mind lately. I recently helped a friend with her finances, and as I went through her budget with her. While I of course found a few things to tweak and change, the biggest thing I missed the first time through was motivation. For me, I want to FIRE myself as soon as possible; so the more I save/earn, the sooner I reach my goal. So I’m working with her to identify her goals, which might be totally different than mine (I won’t go into details too much but “FIRE” didn’t come up.
We all have a why. Those numbers are there, of course, but we all operate based on our why, which can also and usually does change over time. I think I will explore this in a later post. Thanks J Money!
You know I agree with all that, sir!
I really appreciate your response: we are not just a walking, breathing capital reserve expressed via a balance sheet. Certainly I think big business thinks that way, and that’s part of why the divide between the haves and the have-nots has gotten so horrible. All the focus by those with the means is on separating as many people as possible from what they have, with no regard for the big picture. And that includes keeping wages low compared to the cost of living. But maybe that’s what I observed living in Honolulu where people spend millions of dollars on high-rise condos while we can’t even build a damn transit rail due to corruption. Maybe capitalism could benefit a bit from recognizing that people are humans, not just walking banks from which we each try to withdraw the maximum amount of money from without regard to the consequences. *Deep breath* Having said that,I do like crunching me a few numbers and seeing that I’m doing well, but for me, money is just something I need to be responsible about in order to do the things that actually fulfill my life.
“Not just walking banks from which we each try to withdraw the maximum amount of money from” — Ooooh good analogy!!
I like what he’s getting at, but I feel as if it’s the other way around: A numbers-driven life leads to, or at least permits, capitalism. Numbers came first – we couldn’t have capitalism as we know it without numbers and the understanding behind it. Otherwards it would just be easier to trade some chickens for some wheat.
And the application of numbers, of money, to our life isn’t necessarily unemotional. We want to know how well we’re doing. With sports, how can you tell who’s winning without a score? Even with racing, where you could determine who wins without using any numbers whatsoever, we keep track of the time it takes to complete the race. So we think that the more money we have, the better we’re doing in life. Sadly, we often also believe the inverse – if someone has no money, or has a lot of debt, it must be entirely their fault and they deserve what life has in store for them.
Wow…this is a lot to take in on Monday! It is your rat race so you have to determine your finish line and how you will get there. We just had a conversation this weekend about student loan debt and how it is killing our children’s American Dream of home ownership because they are $20K to $150K in debt from school. Those kids were sold on that they all have a right to an education by teachers, peers and our last President. When he stated the Federal Government would help all he forgot to mention nice and loud that it was not an entitlement that it was a LOAN. A loan that will have interest and payments for several years while you are trying to get on your feet! Bottom line if the loans are paid back it is “We The People” that paid that bill because our Government is funded by “We The People”. Who would have thought that those highly educated people just wanted you to join the rat race they are in.
Man, that video stirred me up a little bit. Even as someone who’s deep into personal finance I still make mistakes. My emotions still get the best of me, although I have a positive net worth I carry over $16K in debt. I’m more pumped than ever to just get rid of all my debt. I don’t want to depend on a job I’m miserably in to chase a false dream.
Thanks for sharing J$! I needed this on a Monday ;)
Good!!!! And don’t get too hard on yourself either – we all F up! What matters is that you make many more WINS than FAILS over your lifetime, haha… (or at least win BIG when you do and fail smaller, haha….)
Interesting post. You have brought up many good points. I often catch myself thinking in numbers. How much do I have and how much do I need? How much does something cost and can I find it cheaper? My mind is conditioned to focus on ROI, compound interest, percentages, and ratios.
The rats video gets me every time!
Thanks for the blog recommendations. I *love* Raptitude – I think you turned me on to that one when you shared “Depth Year” and I’ll need to check out Cait Flanders since you listed hers in the same category ;)
Oh good!!!
Yeah Cait and David from Raptitude are good friends too so you’re in good company :) In fact, just got off the phone with her last night – like a breath of fresh air! Hope you enjoy!
Steven Cutts video is awesome, I somehow can relate to it, but I’ve escaped the 9-5 rat race this year…. :)
Cheers from Bucharest, Romania!
Romania! Nice!!!
And congrats on the great escape :)
I went along with everything until the writer made the comment “we are just raising lambs for slaughter!” The message then seemed to bend towards an extremist view – which in my opinion is “not” a true reflection of life – I think a good life is about balance, a blend of numerical and literary skills are essential in all aspects of life. Think what a world would be like if people only spoke numbers.
Me: Hi, how are you?
You: 4, 5, 1456/56…293983556
Me: How lovely.
D.
Okay, that was good haha….
OMG! So weird that you included that Steve Cutts video! I stumbled upon him myself just a few days ago! I looooove his stuff. I like the ‘Happiness’ video, but I also like one called ‘Man’ (link below), which, in line with this post, is exactly what is happening to the world when capitalism gets out of control. Like you said, we are emotional beings and we need things like nature and functioning eco-systems for true happiness. It is not just that we ‘want’ to be around nature, but rather it is an innate, primal need. We can’t just turn all of our natural resources into ‘stuff’ to sell. As I’ve said before, achieving financial prosperity is easy, but achieving primal prosperity in a capitalist driven world is much harder these days.
As always, J, you are spot on with your insights! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU
One more thought on the happiness video with the rats. Lily Tomlin has a quote, something like: “Even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
That’s why for me personally, it just feels more intentional to say that I dropped out of the rat race, rather than ‘retired’ from the rat race. :)
BOOM – Love it.
But do you know what I’d love even more?
You blogging again :)