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The other day, my wife asked me if I knew how to freeze thyme. Of course, by listening to her, I heard the question, “Do you know how to freeze time?” My first thought was that one show with the girl that stopped time by touching her fingertips together. Then I started thinking that it is graduation time again. So, I give my address to the class of 2008.
Congratulations on making it this far along the path of life. Many people never make it to where you are today, and many who do will stop once they get there. It is my fervent hope that you don’t stop here, but that you move on to the next step with enthusiasm that befits your youth.
Make no mistake; the times that we have given you have the potential either to be a new golden age where you can enjoy prosperity, or to be a dark age where everyone gets to suffer. Whatever they are, they will be whatever you make of them, since we have given you a brutal hand to play. For that, I apologize on behalf of those who control the world today. I hope you learn from our mistakes and do better for the next generation.
As in years past, I want to give you a few pieces of advice that will help you to make this world as great as it can be.
1. Don’t lose the humor of life. No matter how bad life may seem at the time, there is always something to laugh at. Usually, you can at least laugh at yourself. If you can’t laugh at yourself, learn to.
2. Never take anything too seriously, including yourself. There are very few things that are ever as serious as they seem to be. Pencils have erasers, computers have delete keys, and people can apologize.
3. Especially when you are young, be young. Make mistakes, do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do, and enjoy life. Soon enough, many of the enjoyable things will be harder to find, but you will always have the memories.
4. Everybody has bad habits. Spend some time breaking one of yours. You’ll be surprised at how easy it really is, and you will get a huge boost from succeeding.
5. Tell someone that you love them, and prove it. Do this whenever you are feeling a little down and out, or lost. These are the people that will help you get back to normal.
6. Get lost. We get so buried in routines that we rarely venture off the beaten path and try something new. Once in a while, make a turn when you should go straight and vice versa. You’ll be surprised at what may be at the end of the road.
7. Find one thing that you are passionate about and make it your cause. Do something to help forward that cause every day that you can.
8. If you haven’t already, you will soon start identifying with a political affiliation. No matter which party you belong to, get in the habit of following the news as presented by the “other guys”. Your own party is only going to tell you things you already believe. The other side may cause you to ask questions. Questions are good.
9. Find someone that you don’t like, but that you don’t know why. Try to get to know that person. You will either find out that you really do like them, or you will discover the reason you didn’t like them in the first place.
10. If anyone ever asks the question, “How do you freeze time?”, give them this answer:
a. Cut both leaves and flowers of thyme as you need them throughout the growing season. Don’t worry about taking too much at a time – the more you cut, or even shear back, the more it will grow.
b. Store fresh thyme leaves in plastic bags in the refrigerator.
c. Retain maximum flavor by freezing thyme. Freeze branches on cookie sheets, then strip off the leaves, put them into plastic containers and return them to the freezer. Or mix finely chopped thyme with just enough olive oil or butter to bind them together, and freeze the mixture in ice cube trays.
d. Dry entire branches of thyme on racks, or tie them into bunches and hang them in a dry, well-ventilated spot away from direct sun. Store dried leaves in airtight jars.
Finally, this is really your time to shine. The keys to the future are now yours. Some people may make you take them away by force, others will gladly hand them over to you. Be good stewards for the world and take a little better care of it than we did. Do good.
I’m sorry I don’t have a picture or a roadmap to draw for you, but here’s the situation: I’ve talked about the company I work for before, about the politics that run deeply throughout the institution. I’m an outsider of the group because I was hired by another outsider and I don’t really have a lot of patience for the “cool kids”. He hired a few of us, and with a couple exceptions, we are all outsiders. This person is going to be leaving us soon for medical reasons, and I don’t expect to see him back. I’ll probably be gone before he could even come back anyways.
Well, one of the big-wigs who has never liked him has been trying to steal loyalty from his people. I have no problem with that part of it; I would try to win influence if I were her too. It seems to be working with a couple of my friends there. One of them has been making the shift in loyalty for a little while. Here’s where the problem comes in. The boss that is trying to gain loyalty has screwed over all of us outsiders several times, and hides behind her position when questioned. The boss that is leaving has many, many flaws, but he does reward those who are loyal to him when he can.
The big-wig has instructed one of my friends to send her a copy of any emails between her and the other boss. She has also stated that, even though my friend answers directly to the other boss, she needn’t do everything he says, and to clear things through her first. The bosses also frequently disagree about how business should run. To further screw things up, she has blamed the other boss for things that may or may not have been his fault, and has intimated that he is the cause of my friend not advancing to where she believes she should be.
I’ve told my friend that she needs to get out of this situation as soon as possible if she wants to keep her job, and more importantly, her reputation, intact. She is in a bad spot. Unfortunately for my friend, the big-wig and her flunky has also made a point to suggest that associations with me are not good things either. Now she doesn’t know where to turn, or even who it is safe to talk to.
The kicker is when the big-wig asked for my friend to BCC her on any emails between my friend and her boss. In and of itself, this doesn’t sound that bad, but she already gets a copy of EVERYONE’S email due to her position in the company. This is just a way to put the thumbscrews to the other boss unnecessarily.
The point here is office politics kills careers. There are always people that are just going to beat you, whether because of their position, yours, or just because they are better at the game. The only thing you can do is to get out of the situation, stay away from the games, and if you somehow start getting stuck in a situation, RUN AWAY. Once you get stuck, it is harder to get out.
Okay, Finance For Youth, along with every other personal finance site has won! We have succeeded. People no longer need help with personal finance. I base this on a conversation I recently had with a young person.
The young person was telling me that he didn’t need to learn about personal finance, because his parents were going to take care of his finances for him so that he could focus on more important things. Finance just wasn’t that big of a deal for him to worry about.
The problem is– I know his parents too. His mother, grandmother, and two aunts work at the same place. So does his sister, who told me the same story about the parents taking care of her finance, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of letting someone else control her finances. She felt that it didn’t seem right for her to not know what is going on with her money. She also wondered what happened when she got married, or when her parents were no longer able to help her and when they needed her help.
The mother has come in to talk to me several times, and she has indeed stated that she was going to take care of her (adult) children and their finances, but she always talked about it with a note of sad resignation in her voice. She didn’t want to take care of them forever, but she felt that she was obligated to since she wasn’t able to teach them better habits when they were growing up. When I mentioned her daughter, she rolled her eyes, “At least ONE of them gets it”.
So obviously, when I say “Mission Accomplished!”, I say so with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek (Miwshen Acomptweshed?). I talked to the son again recently and asked him if some of the issues that bothered his sister bothered him at all.
“I never thought of it. Isn’t that what parents are there for?” Oh man, I guess I still have plenty of work to do. Darn! I was really looking forward to having another vacation, too.
“So what about when they aren’t there anymore?” I asked this because my own parents are getting on in years, and are only now beginning to come to me for help with financial questions (Don’t hold your breath for “Finance For Old People” to come along any time soon). He didn’t have any answers for that. I felt a little bad for forcing him to face the prospect of his parents’ mortality, but this is something that happens to us all.
I have another friend (actually a client, but we are friendly) who is a young girl with a brother who is a year older than her. Their mother died a few months ago. It was sad. I had talked to their mother several times over several months about her kids. One of the last conversations I had with her before she passed was when she asked if I would look out for her kids if anything ever happened to her. She didn’t know she was sick, but she worked at a hospital, and hospital people tend to become clannish and talk about morbid issues like that. I talk to both kids regularly, and they are coming along well.
So what’s the point of all this? You never know what the future holds for you. Even if things seem to be okay now, they can change at any time. I believe the phrase “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst” is important to keep in mind. While not all changes are as drastic or tragic as a death, sometimes they are. Sometimes changes are as simple as marriage, birth of children, changes of career, big purchases (homes etc,). Whatever the case, it always pays to be prepared:
- Keep a liquid emergency fund
- Continue to hone any skills that may be helpful at work
- Eliminate wasteful spending patterns
- Associate with people who share the same values as you
- Avoid people who are against your best interests
- Do things to help others to lay the groundwork for the day when you may need help from others
So although the mission isn’t accomplished, at least the mission is one worth working for.
