Financial Uproar

If you’re not reading the Carnival of Wealth put on by Control Your Cash every Monday, you are truly missing out. Most carnivals are as boring as the 14,389,452 personal finance posts about coupons. THEY ALL SAY THE SAME THING, YET YOU PEOPLE INSIST ON CONTINUING TO WRITE THEM. CYC actually reads each post they get in, and dispenses either praise or scorn, depending on the quality of the post. It’s entertaining, it’s legitimately funny, and it’s at least 79% better than every other carnival I’ve read, excluding the ones I’ve written, which are better than a threesome with two hot chicks while eating a cheeseburger at the same time.

While reading said carnival yesterday, I was brought to a certain blog post. There’s no need to link to the specific article, since a full half of personal finance blogs have written something similar. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Do you know what true wealth is? No silly, it’s not living in a nice house, or driving a nice car, or even owning assets that spin off enough investment income so you don’t have to go work for the man anymore. Nope. Moron. Wealth is being able to spend time with your friends. Wealth is spending time doing things you enjoy with the people you love. Wealth is being able to watch the sunset with your significant other. It’s all so sickeningly sweet.

With apologies to all one of you that’s still offended by bad words, (Hi Mom!) fuck the heck are you talking about man?

First of all, that’s not the definition of wealth at all. Wealth is purely a financial statistic. You may feel blessed that you’re able to enjoy a lemonade on your patio with your friends, but if you’re swimming in credit card debt, you’re some non-wealthy guy who happens to be drinking lemonade. Being lucky enough to enjoy meaningful experiences isn’t really belonging to an exclusive club either. Most of us manage to get close enough to people to do meaningful things with them. Being wealthy is meant to be an exclusive club, since it’s a representation of all the hard work you’ve done to get there. Or the hard work someone else has done to get there, if you’re an heir.

We all have different definitions of wealth. Some people think you’re wealthy if you have a net worth of above $1 million. Others think the magical threshold is if you can afford to quit your job and live on your investment income. Then you have the guy who thinks being wealthy is simply the ability to be able to have nice things, even if you finance them. Don’t listen to that guy. In fact, kick him in the nuts for me.

Have you ever heard the expression “I’d rather be happy than rich?” I’m sure you have, it’s been said by poor people for years now. I have all sorts of problems with that saying. First off, why do the two have to be exclusive? Isn’t is possible to be both happy and rich? How many rich people do you know who walk around brooding all the time? Sure, they have bad days just like the rest of us, but every single rich person I know is generally a pretty happy person. Guess what – their wealth doesn’t inhibit their ability to be happy.

If you’re a poor guy who’s looking for a closer relationship with your parents, or true love, or whatever, you’re going to be kinda bummed out about it. So you’re telling me that a rich guy looking for the same is somehow more sad because he’s got money in the bank? Yeah, no.

Whenever I hear people throw out sayings like that, I know they’ve given up on becoming wealthy. Maybe they just don’t have the knowledge to get ahead. Maybe they’re not willing to put in the work to get ahead. Or maybe they just don’t even think it’s possible. They look at their meager RRSP and throw up their hands. They’ll never get anywhere at that pace. So they give up, get into debt, buy more house than they can really afford (at least they’ll save money with a home insurance quote) and do whatever else they can to effectively shoot down their ability to grow wealth.

People who think that wealth is non-monetary are a big part of the problem. If everybody thinks that being wealthy is playing checkers with your nephew, then that’s all anybody will aspire to do. Getting wealthy is hard, yes. But so is anything worth doing in life. When you liken it to some sort of experience, you cheapen the word and all the work it takes to get there. Acquiring wealth is hard. Having fun with your friends isn’t. Don’t be ashamed to be rich. Don’t be scared to be rich.

And just think of how much better those experiences will be when you don’t have the underlying worry of having enough money.

I’m not saying acquiring wealth should be the be all and end all of your life. But if it isn’t, don’t justify like that. And don’t pretend you’re actually wealthy because of some experiences you’ve had. You’re just not that important.

Stories are fun, right? Let me start off this post with a story.

I know a guy. Since I’m all nice and discreet and whatnot, I won’t mention his name. Anyway, before a long weekend, he decided he was going to take advantage of his time off and visit his folks. His parents live a few provinces away, so it’s a bit of a trek for him to get home. Wanting to maximize his experience, he decided to ask for the Friday before the long weekend off. And, if you can imagine, his boss had the audacity to say no.

What did he do? Did he go into work and perform well, feeling guilty of asking for time off for something that wasn’t really that important? Did he go into work and half-ass his day like most people reading this blog would do, pouting because his boss is such a jerk?

Nope. He called in sick. By the time his replacement was starting their day, his ass was on a plane heading across the country. This wasn’t an impulsive decision either. This was planned, almost immediately after the initial request for time off was denied.

Where’s The Line?

I would hope, if you have any sort of ethics, you would agree that this type of behavior is wrong. If not, knock yourself out hitting up kids for their lunch money and stuffing your pockets full of office supplies. Just stay away from my house.

Let’s look at another example. Say you’ve been sick for a day or two. It’s really nasty, and you feel as terrible as it gets. So work says don’t worry about coming in for the rest of the week, use it to recover. Well, it’s now Thursday, and you feel fine. You know somebody is covering for you, so there’s really no need to go back to work. What do you do? Do you go back and do the honest thing? Or do you relax and catch up on episodes of Pawn Stars? Now the line isn’t quite so clear, is it?

We can go down this slope all day long. Is stealing a pencil from work really wrong? Most people would argue that it’s just a damn pencil, and that you should just steal away. But what happens if a pencil turns into a stapler? And then the stapler turns into a paper shredder (try smuggling that out under your sweater) which turns into something else, and so on.

At what point do we draw the line?

Does Stealing From A Company Make Us Justify It?

Let’s say you’re shopping online for cheap car insurance. You input all your data, click the submit button, and a quote pops up on the screen. It’s hundreds of dollars less than the quote from any other company.

You take the steps to sign up for this insurance, when you realize that their algorithm is messed up. It’s giving you far too big of a discount for that defensive driving course you took 4 years ago. Would you keep on going with the process, telling yourself it’s okay because it’s a for profit venture that screwed up?

I’m willing to bet that most people reading this post would be willing to take the cheap insurance. Yet I’m also willing to bet that most readers would be honest with the cashier at Wal-Mart if she gave them too much change. If someone can explain the difference between the two situations, it would be helpful. Because, from where I stand, they both are pretty much the same thing.

If the Wal-Mart cashier gives you too much change back, nobody is getting hurt besides the big, bad conglomerate from Arkansas. The cashier isn’t out that extra toonie she gave you. (Canadian reference!) She’s not taken to the back and spanked for her faux pas, unless she’s really sexy and the manager is into that. She’s not out of a job, unless she screws up a lot, in which case she’d be out of a job because of incompetence.

I know a guy who specifically didn’t pay his satellite tv bill for as long as he could get away with it. I would probably lend this guy money, I don’t think he’d intentionally screw anybody. And yet, because he was dealing with a big faceless corporation, he had absolutely no problem milking the system for free tv.

In case anybody is wondering, he got tv for 8 months, basically for the price of 1 month, since he would mail them $20 when they’d really threaten to cut him off. I wouldn’t recommend his methods if you value your credit score.

The reason why people are willing to screw big companies (including the ones they work for) is because they view the big company as having all the advantages, having all the wealth, which they’re just a little guy trying to make ends meet. It’s unfortunate, and we shouldn’t do it, but we’ve all been guilty of it at some point, even just a little.

I’ll leave you with the best example of all. In late 2001, Martha Stewart avoided a $45,000 loss by selling all 3,900 shares of Imclone Systems right before they came out with some bad news, thanks to information supplied by her broker. She was later convicted of insider trading and sentenced to 5 months in jail. Her net worth at the time? Close to 1 billion dollars. That’s not such a good thing.