The False Easy Button
The False Easy Button
Proof of concept is important because accountability is a tenuous thing. One can pretty much say whatever they want on the internet. They can boast. Spin half truths. Tell a tale. The most deadly of these are the ones that are just a slight variation of reality. Personal finance is no different. Net worth projections, budgets, the acumen of a business venture or online coarse, it’s all taken at face value. We like to congratulate ourselves with blog posts, podcasts, or You Tube videos. But I sometimes wonder if we offer our readers a false easy button.
Maybe to convince ourselves of our own success or safety. Maybe to sell a certain product or lifestyle. Although the reasoning may vary, the end result is often the same. We are recommending a lifestyle and saying it is attainable.
Is it really?
Financial Independence
I have been just as guilty as the next. While I do truly believe there is a simple path to wealth, I speak from a privileged viewpoint. I grew up in an educated, middle class, family with all the benefits of being a white male. Success was never a foregone conclusion, but I certainly had a head start.
I have no doubt that I speak from true authenticity. Yet, that doesn’t mean that I have the experiential knowledge to back up my beliefs. I can only speak to my unique history. A history radically different from some of those who might be reading my blog.
I don’t have a debt story. Nor am I an immigrant. I didn’t fight poverty as a child. I am not embarrassed of this reality, but must take it into account when trumpeting the benefits of this lifestyle.
Am I providing a false easy button that is out of the average person’s grasp?
Business
We love to talk in this community about starting businesses. In fact, I have often postulated on the business asset class and it’s place in the modern portfolio. Clearly it is a major milestone on the path to wealth. Simple. Easy.
Just start a business.
Most new ventures, however, fail. After five years an abysmally small portion of new businesses survive. In the meantime, countless man hours and even dollars have been spent upholding this illusory dream.
I have tried to enumerate in past blog posts my significant failures in this venue, and yet still attach pithy concepts like failing forward that make it sound better. But the idea of building a business could also be a false easy button.
Many go bankrupt.
Real Estate
We had a whole podcast on this. Real estate takes capital, energy, and a good deal of luck. Even the most successful of investors have fallen on their face multiple times. There are, by far, more people in the poor house from busted real estate deals than almost any other venture.
This certainly could be a false easy button. Creating revenue streams through investment properties carries risk just like any other investment. Expect to put in the hours and deal with the inconveniences.
Final Thoughts
I sometimes worry that we in this community are preaching to the choir. We have self selected a small percentage of the population with the exact right amount of luck, privilege, intelligence, and skills to be where we are.
The rest of the world may not have the same tool sets that we have. By proclaiming the rightness of this path, we may be creating a false easy button that in no way reflects the reality of our population as a whole.
They keep pressing and pressing but never quite get the results we promise them.
Yes, you are the 10-20 %ers, not the masses.
Now that you have the podcast and a great format of discussion groups, you can have guests that have overcome a variety of difficulties. In fact, I hadn’t thought about it before, but in a way, your podcast is similar to my goal of sharing ideas of others. It reminds me of something I read in “The Education of a Wandering Man” by Louis L’Amour:
“It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
I like that quote. The exact reason I think the YOLO phenomenon is silly.
The median household income was about 61K in 2017. 61K pays maybe 56K after taxes. Save half you say? That leaves 28K to live on for a family or 2300 bux a month. The “median” means half are above and half below. I doubt this family is living on 2300/mo and anyone below the median is excluded. You had a pod cast by some peeps who were getting the “job” done but were working 2 and 3 jobs, renting out rooms etc to make it happen. Very inspiring but extreme discipline required! The “save half job” gets easier for the upper 25% cutoff of around 125K/yr for a household so likely only the top third (between 1/2 and 1/4) are going to qualify for FI much less FIRE. Live in a HCOL area and all bets are off. Big debt all bets are off. Late start all bets are off. Get laid off for 3 years… Get cancer… etc
It’s a slippery slope. It’s easy to ignore that for those of us with high incomes.
As someone who grew up poor and female and became a doctor, I appreciate and respect your capacity for self-reflection. All too often the privileged work hard to deny their privilege. That’s the main thing that makes others frustrated, not the privilege itself. I don’t begrudge the advantages you had at all. Recently discovered your work and am enjoying it.
Thanks and welcome. I hope you enjoy.
Another thought-provoking read, Doc G.! While reading the post, I thought about the curse of knowledge. The cognitive bias we have where we assume others have the background to understand or have the same skill sets as us.
How does this apply? I’ve been hearing a lot lately on a few podcasts that it has never been easier in the history of the world to make money online. It may be easy for those who are digitally literate, but what about the digitally illiterate among us?
I agree. Making money online is great for some. I personally have never been that good at it.
So many thanks for putting these things into perspective, because they are often forgotten parts in the equation.
A specific parameter that I always see is a very simple one : Living in the USA (or Australia/Canada).
Warren Buffet also mentions this point when he speaks about the “lottery of life”.
Yep. We have a certain amount of privilege by birthright when you are boon in a good place.
DocG,
What a refreshing post. Thank you for your honesty and transparency. As you know, I have my issues with the personal finance blogger community that I’ve now joined. As I took time off for reflection during the Holiday season, I’ve struggled with the very issues you raise in this post. Am I just another voice in the FIRE echo chamber? Where do I, as a Boomer, fit into the equation? Is anyone open to listening to a voice outside of the echo chamber?
The FIRE community ( a term that with which I struggle) is, as you say, a minimal subset of the population. Yet the message from many of them is so similar. Sid hustles, invest in real estate, the three fund Vanguard portfolio, passive income, yadda, yadda yadda. These things are far outside the reach and realm of understanding for the majority of America.
You are an exception to that rule. I so appreciate your voice. Keep speaking. Keep challenging. Keep creating. Your voice is important.
Thanks Fred. My own views have evolved over time and I am refining day by day.