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I get this a lot.
People ask my WHY I do what I do. Young people ask me WHY I care. Sometimes, I ask myself WHY I keep doing it. My wife asks me WHY I don’t pick up my socks off the floor, but that’s a little different. She also asks me WHY I keep so much on my plate.
I guess I understand her questions. We’re doing okay with our own financial house; we both have good jobs that pay for the things we want and need, we enjoy the fact that we don’t owe money. So WHY isn’t it enough?
In answering this question, I really have to leave the “Finance” out of “Personal Finance” and focus on the “Personal”. The truth is, as nice a guy as I am now, I wasn’t always. Nobody ever gave me anything that I hadn’t earned, and I liked it that way. I did my “eight”, went home, and enjoyed me-time. I’m not exactly sure when that started changing, but, after a while, it just wasn’t enough for me. I knew there was more out there, more that I could experience that I wasn’t.
I started to look at the people that would come to see me at work as people with stories and history, instead of account numbers. I got interested in learning their stories. That was when I started thinking about working to help others. I wasn’t sure where or how yet, but I knew it would happen.
Back to the present, I don’t look at PF as a job. I don’t look at it as a duty to help people to do better with finances. I see it as building the connection to the next person. This is true even in an on-line setting, where I usually don’t get to see the readers. I think of many other PF bloggers as friends, and I hope they do too, even if our opinions aren’t the same. I consider those who ask questions, whether here or somewhere else as friends as well, and I strive to make sure they are getting the best answer.
Which brings me back to the “Personal” in “Personal Finance”. I’ve seen several sites out there, read several books, seen the TV shows, etc. by others who think that Personal Finance is nothing more than a job, and who have no interest in learning the stories of those who make them wealthy. These people really piss me off, because they are wasting their time, as well as the time of those who read, watch, etc their message. To them, money is the only thing that matters. Let me explain something to them. Money, in and of itself, is useless. Being rich, or even wealthy isn’t about money. You can’t eat it, you can’t sleep under it, and you can’t get love from it. Money is only good if you are getting rid of it. Does that mean I don’t want money? Absolutely not. I like money. I like the things people will trade me for money. I also like things that have nothing to do with money.
I do what I do because I feel it’s important, and I enjoy it. I care because, looking back, I wasn’t really happy and I wasn’t really nice, and I don’t want young people to ever have to look back and see the same thing. I keep doing it because there is still so much to say, and there are too many people who care too much about money and too little about each other. I don’t pick up my socks, because they are all the way down there on the floor, and I’m tired. I keep a lot on my plate because I like life too much to limit my experiences. I just want to know WHY do some PF’ers feel that its okay to forget the “Personal” in “Personal Finance”? WHY do they keep doing what they are doing if they don’t enjoy it? And WHY do people still go to them for advice?
That’s my rant for now. Have fun. Do Good.
In a previous post, I spoke about a family member who had a choice to make that would either make her future easier or more difficult.
http://finance4youth.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/cars-of-the-future/
Well, it looks like she did the right thing and got her car fixed. She even spent a little extra to ensure that she would be able to continue driving the same car for a few more years! Great job! Her doing the right thing makes me really think that what I’m doing is helping somebody, somewhere.
This is the headline of an ad I keep seeing on TV. The first few times I saw it, I was like, okay… who are you, and why do you trust me so much? This is one of those payday loan advance places. They don’t so much trust you, but they are relatively certain that they aren’t going to lose too much money either.
You see, these very trusting people are charging A LOT of interest on your loan. Why? Because they figure that most of the people who use their service won’t be able to pay back the whole loan, so they want to get their money up front. If you do pay it back, great! If not, no worries! At 99.25% interest for $2600.00 (in California, for one company. Others may be even higher), you will only need to pay back 42 payments of $216.55.
Why am I looking at these loans? It’s simple. They prey on my audience. The take the people who are least able to pay back these loans, and destroy their credit while they collect the hard-earned money of those who keep them in business. The attack the poor, the young, the inexperienced, the desperate, and worst of all– the unlucky.
Do I want $10,000.00 put into my account based on trust? Not at that price. If I needed the money, I’d rather the loan be based on my actual ability to pay back such a loan, as proven by my credit history. This way, I’m more likely to pay interest that is more in line with the risk the company is taking on me. What does this mean to me? Quite simply it means that I need to work to keep my credit clean and current while I DON’T need the money, so that when an “EMERGENCY” truly does come up, I won’t be tempted to settle for this financial rape.
Okay, I’m pissed.
First, I’d like to thank all of those who have read, participated, or linked to this or other sites in the F4Y family. This post is NOT directed towards you. For the most part, you are good people, and I thank you again for making this what it is.
Last week, I did a post on dating, and I did another one on Spring Break. The post on dating got a lot of traffic, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped with that traffic increase.
I got a few comments, and I appreciate those who were brave enough to comment on my blog. I also got flooded with email. At first, I dismissed everything as a prank pulled by some immature idiots. As those emails got forwarded, I see that was not so much the case, and it pisses me off.
As most know, there is another issue going on in the blogosphere that I will not mention directly, because I don’t want to take away from the seriousness of that issue by comparing it with the antics of a few morons. Suffice to say, what happened to me is by no means close to that level.
The emails I got condemned me for tacitly approving of the debauchery of young people. I was actually accused of instigating children behaving inappropriately by not calling for abstinence, sobriety, and high morality. These emails, which will not be reprinted here because I don’t want to give any attention the authors want, claimed to be from religious groups who “monitor the web for those who promote evil to the youth”. Some of what they said was very un-christian-like.
Let me clear up what appears to be some misconceptions about what Finance For Youth is, and is not, about:
- Finance For Youth is strictly about promoting strong, proven, practices in the realm of personal finance.
- Finance For Youth is about teaching young people how to handle their finances in such a manner as to help them to live comfortably in the future.
- F4Y is NOT about teaching morals to young people. If you want your young people to learn your morality, then you should teach them. I make no pretense of being morally perfect, nor do I expect young people to be so.
- F4Y is NOT about any religious affiliation. For the record, I am Roman Catholic, but I do NOT inject my personal beliefs onto unsuspecting youths. In fact, I rarely, if ever, talk about my religion at all. Personally, I don’t believe it has anything to do with personal finance, so the topic does not come up.
- F4Y, and any of the people that I allow to post for F4Y, have no vested interest in making sure that young people follow the morals of their parents. I, and those who work with me, clearly advocate doing good in the world, but we leave the definition of what that good is up to the individual.
I don’t now, nor have I ever, suggested that young people act in any way that is contrary to how they are taught to act by their parents. By the way, if you are a parent of a young person who reads this blog, or visits any of the sites in the F4Y family, YOU should be teaching your kids right from wrong. My job is to teach them how to handle their money. YOUR job is to teach them how to act in the world.
I still haven’t fully decided how I plan on handling the idiocy of those who profess to believe in God, but act in such a manner towards their fellow man. All I do know, is that the kind of grand mall stupidity that you have engaged in will not alter my course, nor will it distract me from my ultimate goal of teaching young people that which they should learn in school or from their parents, but don’t. You can feel free to try to intimidate me again, but have the testicular fortitude to do so on the blog, not in my personal email. For the 99.999999% of the rest of you, the good people, if you have suggestions about what I should do, feel free to comment.
If, as I suspect, this is the result of some dumb kid with an overabundance of time and a lack of sense, to quote the late Jack Palance, “Boy, I s### bigger than you.” If I were you, I would take a good, long look at myself and my priorities before I came near a computer again. If this is a bible-thumping campaign, my best advice is to move on to someone who is intimidated by your juvenile tactics.
Yours,
William J. Stanton
Founder, Finance For Youth
