Hello!
Welcome to DDBS.
This is a great place to start.
Below, you will find a collection of stories that I’ve gathered and generalized for your enjoyment.
You may recognize some of the stories. I’ve done my best to make them entertaining so you don’t bore of reading them again.
Sometimes when I’m writing about a trap, I’ll refer back to these stories as a way to explain why.
Let me explain:
Sometimes, the best way to understand why something is the way it is is to have experienced something personally.
Stories help with that. Listening to a story is the most powerful method of activating our brains and understanding cause and effect.
Listening to a story turns the story into your own idea and experience.
As in, instead of attempting to explain why something, I’ll just say “Remember the story about the guy who did the right thing?” as a reminder.
So enjoy!
People and their jobs
How would you answer these questions:
What’s your job?
Why do you have your job?
What does it provide for you?
What would happen if you got laid off tomorrow?
Would you want that to happen?
What about your family, friends, coworkers, Facebook friends, and people you follow in Instagram?
How many of them would answer mostly the same way?
Whether we like our jobs or not, we need them.
We need them to get money to pay our bills.
If we lost our jobs, we’d try to find another source of income.
Whether we make $20,000 or $1,000,000, we need to get money to pay for things.
- We need the income from our jobs to cover our life expenses.
The job stories
The little salesman that could
People and money
These may be very personal questions to you:
How much money do you have?
How much do you make?
What do you buy?
Do you want more?
Do you owe money?
Do you feel like you have enough money?
How do you feel about your answer to the above questions?
My answers to all of them would be either “not enough” or “yes.”
We feel weird talking about our financial situation – how much we make, have, and owe.
I’m not sure why it came to be that way, and it may or may not be the root cause of why we don’t learn very much about personal finance and constantly struggle with it.
In America,
- 75% of millennials are stressed about money, along with
- 76% of Gen Xers, and
- 77% of parents.
- 31% of adults are “struggling to get by.”
- 46% of adults could not cover a $400 emergency expense, or would cover the cost by selling something or borrowing.¹
What the hell is going on here?
I’m not quite sure, but I’ll bet it has something to do with the strange – and rather unhealthy – relationship we have with money.
We want money so badly that we’re willing to trade a significant chunk of our lives to get enough.
And when we finally get enough, it turns out not to be enough and we need to get more.
I have no idea how or why we got to a point where so many people have missed the point of money.
They must have not had the class in school where they teach you that a piece of money is no different than an inch.
Don’t you think?
After all,
- 75% of millennials are confused about or don’t understand what money is or how it works because their parents give them everything,
- 76% of Gen Xers, now nearing middle age, still haven’t spent the little bit of time it takes to figure it out. Meanwhile,
- 77% of parents haven’t taught their kids about money because they don’t get it. Is it a coincidence that these percentages are so alike?
- 31% of adults are spending more than they make and don’t know where all the money they got in their last paycheck went.
- 46% of adults will soon be shit out of luck. Whoops.
The money stories
Companies
As we shift our discussion to companies, we must remember that we are really still talking about people. A company provides sustenance to a bunch of people all working their asses off trying to make their company successful.
But recall the story about the high level executive who was replaced by Melvyn. She, although having worked at the company for nearly 40 years, did not have the power to control her destiny at the company.
She still worked for somebody.
We need to limit our discussion to those that directly and measurably benefit from the company’s success.
We need to limit our discussion to the leadership.
Keep in mind everything we’ve learned already – it still applies.
The company stories
I have the need, a need for need
Notes
- Sam at FinancialSamurai.com recently found some surveys done by the American Psychological Association and the Federal Reserve with this interesting data.