The Hamster Wheel of Debt

This is you, in debt, working hard and accomplishing nothing.

Debt is so ingrained in our society that most people think it is like the air you breathe.  One of the hardest things to do in our society is to break free of the debt mentality.  After all, it is thrown at you, like a firehose, on the TeeVee all day long.

Buy a car, go into debt.  Go to school, go into debt.   Get a credit card, go into debt.   Buy a house - go into lifelong debt.   Improve your home - add more debt.  Consolidate your debt.  Borrow against your paycheck, your life insurance, your home, whatever.   Mortgage or pawn everything you own - debt, debt, debt!

The problem with debt is self-evident, but most people fail to see it.   First, you have to pay it back.  So you borrow $20,000 to buy a car - you have to pay that back.  And by the time you do, the car is worth maybe $10,000.  And maybe, that is the car you should have bought in the first place - the $10,000 used car.  But since the "monthly payments" are so low, you buy more car than you can really, really afford.  Or worse yet, lease.

The second thing is interest.  Since you pay several percentage points in interest on a loan, that means for every dollar you spend, you end up with a few percentage points less in real buying power.  It really is a no-brainer - give me a dollar, and I'll give you back 95 cents.  Is that a bargain?

Of course some folks claim esoteric arguments, such as "well, since I am improving my cash-flow, I can invest that money I would have spent, paying cash, and make more!"  But of course, in most cases, the interest on debt approaches or nearly equals, what you would earn by "investing".   And in most cases, the people making this argument don't have any spare cash to invest - rather they just want a new car and use these specious arguments as post hoc justifications for poor financial choices.

And by the way, your 0% or  2.9% financing costs a lot more than that, when your forgo a $1500 rebate.  Yea, the banks aren't stupid, and they are not loaning money for cars at interest rates lower than home mortgages.   Only consumers are dumb enough to believe this.   Or hamsters.

And most of these people have no clue what cash-flow means, anyway.  What they are doing is increasing their cash-flow requirements, to the point where they are living "paycheck to paycheck" and then cannot afford to lose a job, even for a month, without their entire house of cards (house of debt) falling down around their ears.

So how do you get off the hamster wheel of debt?  Pay cash, consume less.  When you have to pay cash for a car, your options are limited - and you shop more aggressively on price.   Suddenly, the idea of spending $2000 to $5000 extra on a car to buy it brand-new at a dealer makes no sense - when you can buy the same car, secondhand, from an individual, for a lot less.  When you have cash, this is readily apparent.   When you are making monthly payments, it is "only $10 a month more!" and you don't see the damage done to your bottom line.

Yea, it would be nice to "have it all" and have lots of nice toys.   But if you want to get ahead in life, yo can't treat every day like it is Christmas, and Santa is coming.  New cars, smart phones, subscription services - they all add up.   And they are all things you WANT but don't NEED.

OWNING MONEY is the definition of wealth, not SPENDING it.   And the sooner you figure this out, the sooner you are off the hamster wheel.

Having a new car in your driveway and 60 months of loan payments and high insurance costs is not a good bargain or a lot of fun.  Having a "paid for" car with low insurance payments is - because it allows you to do more things with your money and be wealthier overall.

And let's face it - both cars look the same after a year.

You are not your credit rating.  Borrowing money is not some great privilege.   Buying a new car is not some great personal accomplishment, if it is done all on credit.  Going into debt is going to make you more and more unhappy and unhealthy, over time.

Working toward being debt-free means rejecting our entire society's normative cues and values and thinking for yourself.

And it is totally worth it, unless you want to be a hamster.

And if you want to be a hamster, stop bitching about how shitty a deal it is, living "paycheck to paycheck"  or how crappy the hamster food tastes.  This was your choice - to have a shiny new hamster wheel and go into debt.  Kitcherbitching!

Or charge your perspective on debt and consumerism....

Who is to blame for the Debt Debate? Boehner.

A flattering photo of rep. Boehener of Ohio.

 A lot of the debt ceiling debate is marked by credentialist arguments ("Joe Blow, famous economist, favors MY plan, so it must be good!") or just chanting of slogans, enforcement of "pledges" made to non-government entities, and basic fear-mongering and bullshit.

What is the real deal on the debt ceiling?  Is our national debt going to bankrupt our country?  Or is our failure to deal with the debt the REAL problem?  A little of the former and a lot of the latter.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the debt, and here are a few I think need to be clarified.

1.  It's Obama's Fault:  Budget bills, under the Constitution, are to originate in the House of Representatives.   Thus, it is the responsibility of the House, not the White House, to present a budget bill and also to figure out the debt ceiling.   Rep. Boehner, as leader of the majority is thus responsible for bringing a bill to the House floor that will pass, pass the Senate, and be signed by the President.  Boehner is the man in the hot seat, and yet he passes the buck to Obama or Harry Reid.

2.  The debt will kill the country:  While debt is bad (the entire point of my blog is about being debt-free) the dire predictions about the national debt are a little overstated.  Yes, our debt is about equal to one year's GDP in this country.   But then again, a typical American has debt equal to several years of their personal GDP.  So this is hardly a staggering amount. In addition, our GDP is down, which makes the debt seem higher.   Once the economy recovers, the debt load, as a percentage of GDP, will decline.  And as revenues increase with the GDP, we can pay it down.

3.  Debt is responsible for the recession:  Actually right now, the reverse is true.  Economists have long argued (and been proven right) that when you have a recession, the best thing to do is spend your way out of it.   It sounds dumb, but it works.  In 1929, Hoover tried to cut back on spending, and this served only to make things worse.  Roosevelt spent money on public works projects and got the country moving again.  The pattern has been repeated again and again over time.  When government "primes the pump" it gets people working.  When you cut government spending right now, it will throw a lot of people out of work, and increase the length and depth of the recession - right into an election year.   This indeed, is probably the Republican's plan - to exacerbate the recession so they can elect one of their own in 2012.   Remember this - the GOP is making you suffer so they can get elected to Office.  Can you think of another political party in the 20th Century that destroyed its own economy just to get into power?  Hint:  It was in Germany.

4.  Obama Caused the Debt:  Conservatives like to point to the stimulus package as the cause of our debt.  But the bulk of our national debt is quite old, and a lot of it was incurred during the Bush era, when we spent large to go after Al Qaeda.  During boom times is when we SHOULD cut the debt, but since it seems small as a percentage of GDP, no one does.   Although Bush and the Republicans controlled the Government for 8 years, they failed to live up to their fiscal conservatism and cut the budget - rather, it increased.  During the first two years of the Obama Administration, more debt has been incurred for unemployment, welfare, and of course, the stimulus package.  But if we didn't spend that money, we would be in a 1929-like Depression right now.

5.  The GOP Will Create Prosperity By Eliminating Debt:  This is a nice fantasy, but in reality, what this amounts to is maintaining tax cuts for the rich, while cutting the Social Security and Medicare that the middle class has relied up for retirement.  And since their bungling of the debt problem (and downgrading of U.S. Bond ratings) has severely damaged the economy (the Dow has lost ALL GAINS since January of this year - in one week!) many of the middle class are facing a bleak retirement, of ravaged bank accounts, cuts in Social Security, and limited medical care.  Meanwhile, the tax brackets for the very wealthy remain cut.

6.  The GOP Will Cut Your Taxes or Has Cut Your Taxes:  The GOP runs on a platform of tax cuts - both in terms of income taxes and in things like the gifts and estates tax.  Poor people mouth the language of Fox News Talking Points - "I'm Taxed Enough Already!"  But as I noted in an earlier posting, if your combined income is below $60,000 (the average American) then you never saw a penny of the "Bush Tax Cuts" as you are in the unchanged 15% bracket.   Even if you made more than this ($100,000 to $150,000), you saw little in cuts.   It is only when you make a quarter-million dollars or more than you see any serious cuts.  And as far as the "Death Tax" is concerned, you will never pay it anyway - unless you are a multi- multi- millionaire.  Yet poor people continue to believe that Bush "cut my taxes!"

7.  The Debt Ceiling Deadline is Arbitrary:  In two days, the Government will have to shut down many offices.  Contractors will remain unpaid.  I suspect that Social Security checks will go out on time, and even debt payments will be made.   But there will be another government shutdown, and it will not be good for the economy or for the people.

8.  We Need to Cut Entitlements:   While a lot of people are collecting welfare, most entitlements are paid out to people who PAID INTO the system.   Most Social Security recipients have paid into the system and expect to get paid back.   As I noted in that previous posting, Social Security, on average, pays you back what you paid in, plus a paltry 2% interest.  It is hardly a "government giveaway" but more of a loan program.  It was a promise - just as a government Bond is a promise (and not a "transfer of wealth scheme").  You pay in, you get paid back.   More welfare reform is a good idea, but cutting Social Security - or worse yet, instituting a "needs test" just turns it into what the teabaggers claim it already is - a transfer of wealth scheme.

9.  It is impossible to balance the budget any other way than to cut, cut, cut:  We have some of the lowest tax rates in the world.   And in the middle of two major wars, our last President decided to CUT taxes further.  We have to pay our bills, and this means paying for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It means paying for all the pork-barrel spending the GOP Congress  engaged in, during the Bush years (and they engaged in a LOT, which is disappointing to a fiscal conservative!).   And yes, it means we have to pay for the stimulus package as well.  The Bush-era tax cuts for the very wealthiest brackets need to go away.   And these were not huge cuts - only a couple of percentage points.  The very wealthy can afford a couple more percentage points in taxes - but it will mean big increases in revenue for the country. 

Here is a chart of the actual tax rates.  Again, if you make $60,000 a year or less, you are in the 15% bracket.   Show me on the chart where you big tax cut is....

1993 saw a tax hike on the wealthy (via two new brackets at the top), and then 2001 through 2003 saw a series of tax cuts (the so-called Bush tax cuts)  that lowered the tax brackets as follows:

1992	1993 - 2000	2001	2002	2003 - 2010	2011 - 2012	2013 ?
15%	15%	15%	10%	10%	Same as 2010	10%
			15%	15%		15%
28%	28%	27.5%	27%	25%		25%
31%	31%	30.5%	30%	28%		28%
	36%	35.5%	35%	33%		36%
	39.6%	39.1%	38.6%	35%		39.6%

So what is the solution?  Compromise.   That is how politics work, period.  The majority of the Democratic Party and a large portion of the GOP are prepared to compromise.  But Rep. Boehner, for some reason, thinks that the only way to pass a bill is to get all Republicans on-board and forget about the Democrats.  But a Republican-only bill will not pass the Senate or be signed by the President.  Boehner is bowing to a small minority of Republicans - and an even smaller minority of Americans, in drafting his legislation.  When we let loud, vocal minorities (often misguided) dictate events, very, very bad things happen.

When your 401(k) evaporates, and inflation surges because our bond-rating drops to AA - and the US is no longer viewed as the "safest investment on the planet" - remember who to thank - the guy in the photo above, and the "new" fiscally irresponsible GOP.

When you retire and find that your Social Security is cut and your medicare is a "voucher" good for one free doctor visit, remember who to thank - the GOP.

The Republican Party has fallen on hard times - lack of leadership.   We need great leaders in this day and age, and what do we get?  Donald Trump, an actor who plays a Millionaire on TeeVee - and Sarah Palin, a media floozy who decries media floozies.

You have to wonder what Barry Goldwater would have said  (WWAuH20D?).  Certainly not this nonsense...

The Bicycle Trap

Rule #1 for the serious cyclist:  Never Smile!  This is not fun, dammit, and bicycles are not toys!

We get a lot of yuppie jerk-asses who come here to the island.  They drive 20 miles from a neighboring island to come over here and annoy the snot out of us.  Why is this?  Well, they ruined their own island through over-development and by building tacky and cheaply made mini-mansions and strip-malls.  Heck, they even have stoplights there, if you can imagine that!

So they come here, because our island is less crowded.  Go home!  Stay on the island you fucked up, don't bring all your bad vibes over here!  The next thing you know, they'll be demanding we build them a Starbucks!  Goddam Yuppies!  Hate them almost as much as dirty stinking Hippies!

And they come in their Lexuses (Lexi?) with their $5000 carbon-fiber racing bicycles (no "fixies" yet, but wait for it) and their fake racing uniforms "Just like Lance Armstrong has!" and all the accoutrements and accessories a "serious cyclist" needs, which doesn't include, of course, a sense of humor or even humanity.  They all look alike and dress alike, like streamlined alien clones.

Back in Hemingway's day, they used to joke about people going on safari in Africa, all fitted out by Abercrombie and Fitch.  Back then, before it became an overpriced Gay T-Shirt store, they sold safari and camping gear, on 5th Avenue in New York, so all the wanna-bes could get kitted out for deep sea fishing or African safari.   They even sold elephant guns.  No kidding.

But it was a joke.  These rich folk just trying to buy their way in to something.  Everyone laughed at them.  And the same is true for these "serious cyclists".   They think that by running up credit card debt, they can become the next Lance Armstrong.   But it is all posturing and posing of the worst sort.

And worst yet, they ride on our shoulder-less roads, which is not safe, and then get all pissy when you try to pass them.  We have miles of bike trails on our island - it is sort of famous for that, going back to 1910.  And you can ride on our rock-hard beach, too, which, with a tailwind, is fun.

But you need a beach cruiser or mountain bike for that.  And the "deadly serious cyclists" would never do that, of course!  Too much rolling resistance!  Uh, why were you doing this again?  To get exercise?  Or just to be a poseur.  The latter, I'm afraid.

I have a much-battered and well-loved decade-old TREK that I think I paid $450 for new, which I thought was a lot of money.   But I can ride it on the trails and on the beach and NOT constantly feel the hot breath of a Buick behind me.  And it is great exercise.   And when I am done, hose it off, spray the chain with WD-40 and it's good to go.  I think half the gears are shot, but on a flat island, what do you need more than 3 speeds for?

So why do the "serious cyclists" buy these expensive bikes and ride them around annoyingly?  Because it is a status thing - to brag and show off to the other "serious cyclists" how much you can afford to spend on a disposable commodity.  And to show how "serious" you are about the "sport".

But it is not like they are training for the Tour de France or anything - or even a local race.   They are just showing off in the typical annoying Yuppie way - by buying things.

You know, I detest "serious" people.  They really know how to suck all the fun out of life - turning everything into a competition of expert-ism.  What is the point?  And they can never laugh, particularly at themselves.

But beyond the fact that these people are a living joke and annoy the snot out of everyone, there is a far more substantive reason not to get caught in the "serious cyclist" trap.   And that is your inevitable collision with an automobile.

Riding a bicycle in traffic, particularly on a road with no shoulders (like the GW Parkway, at rush hour) particularly when there is a BIKE PATH, is just suicide.  A 6,000 lb SUV going even 35-45 mph will crush you and your $5000 bike into nothing, and in a real hurry.

And how do I know this?  I have friends who have been hit - or have had a loved one hit.  The lucky ones survive - with months in the hospital and years in rehab.  The unlucky ones leave behind a widow and child - years before their time was due.   And for what?  To show off your new spandex bike shorts?

Yea, yea, yea, the driver was at fault.  So what?  When you are bleeding out on the pavement, looking at the underside of a car in your last moments of life, that is cold comfort.  It is just incredibly dangerous and foolhardy.

Fortunately, there ARE an increasing number of places in this country where you can ride a bike and not be molested by cars - miles and miles of bike paths are being built everywhere and "greenways" are turning old railroad tracks into bicycle commuter routes.

But the "serious cyclists" look upon such routes with disdain.  Their racing tires will sink into anything softer than asphalt.  And their thin rims will bend to a pretzel when they hit their first tree root.  As a "serious" mode of transportation, the racing bike leaves a lot to be desired.

Posturing and playing pretend dress-up is never a good idea.  It is not real, just an act and an expensive one at that.  Bicycling should be fun, not a soul-sucking hobby that bankrupts you.   One of the best aspects of bicycling is that it is CHEAP and FUN, and yet, the Yuppies have found a way to ruin even that.

I just hope I don't hit one of these sonsofbitches.   It is not hard to do - they swerve right out in front of your car when you try to pass.  What sort of idiot does that?  A Yuppie idiot, that's what.

Clickbait Scam

Why do people want you to click on links?  Because they make money!

A comment appears in my inbox today:

Please for Christ sake please help me
I need your help and support to help PAY MY Tuition Fees. I need your only 3 to 5 minutes approximately

What you have to do is
1.go to Google.com and search "*******************"
2.then visit my blog from the the search results.
3.Remain on the page i.e **** for one minute or so and do some random surfing
4. click ONE of the ads that appeals to you from AdChoices and visit there.
5.remain on that page for one minute or so and do some random surfing.
and that's it.

NOTE: Only ONE click is needed.
I will be grateful to you.
May God Bless You.

What is up with this?   It appears to be a clickbait scam, which is becoming more and more popular on the Internet.  A lot of websites, blogsites, and other sites out there are nothing more than SEO (Search Engine Optimized) Clickbait.  How does this work?  And why?

Well, to begin with, Internet advertisers are dumb enough to pay "click revenue".  If you go to a site and see an ad, the owner of the site might get some revenue from that.  But, if they CLICK on an ad, they get even more revenue.   And if they BUY from the ad, they might get even more.

In theory, it makes sense, as you are selling eyeballs, one pair at a time, to advertisers.  No Nielsen funny-stuff, where they project "ratings" based on what some fat chick in the trailer park watches all day on her Nielsen-equipped TeeVee.  Rather, you pay for each view.

Granted, the amount paid is not much - fractions of a cent at most.   But if you can get thousands and thousands of people to look at your blog and click on a link, well, it could result in some revenue for you.

Of course, the links are often for odious deals.  What am I saying?   This is the Internet!  Nearly all ads on the Internet are for odious deals.  And that is one reason I DO NOT MONETIZE THIS BLOG - as the sidebar ads that would appear (based on key-word context) would be for the very agencies that I am decrying.

Is the guy posting the comment doing anything illegal? Well, he might be violating the ToS of AdChoices, but I have no sympathy for Internet Advertisers.  And he is SPAMMING my comments section, as well as that of others (a search of the text of the above message finds identical copies in hundreds of blogs).

And, he really should get a job.

More and more today, we are seeing these types of "Content Farms" that are generated by people, often from overseas, that are designed to get clicks from Google or other sites.   For example, I search for a review of a particular brand of automobile and I get a hit on Google from a site called "AutosNow!" or some such B.S.   The "article" is written in pidgin English, clearly by someone from India or Africa (e.g., "the feature of this cars are most amazing!") and the article contains little real data.

Other sites are just conglomeration of words and text and garbage - with lots of sidebar ads.  And still other sites, well, they've copied MY CONTENT from this blog and re-pasted it with some sidebar ads.

What's the harm in all this?   Well, to begin with, most of this "content" has no content, so it wastes your time when you are searching for real, hard data.   Hopefully, Google and other search engines will realize they are being played for a patsy and filter out garbage content sites.

And hopefully, internet advertisers will realize that the clicks they are paying for are garbage clicks - views by people who are not viewing at all.

But the whole thing underscores one fundamental truth:  NEVER, EVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, click on an Internet Ad.   They are never good bargains, and usually are for rip-offs, raw deals, or scams.  And the same is true for "paid hits" on Google or other search engines.

Do your research independently and contact sites independently.   People who use saturation advertisements on the Internet are never going to give you a "good deal" or even "one trick to the tiny belly".

But then again, you already knew that, I hope.

The Big Lie

It turns out that you don't need to create a repressive totalitarian regime to enslave millions.  The secret is to put a little bling on the hand-cuffs - and people will line up to wear them!

When I was a young man, like most young men, I wanted to be wealthy.  Not super-rich, but just to have the toys that it seemed everyone else had, and to have money and control over my own life.  When you are a kid, you have bubkis in the way of cash, and that sucks.  Money, it seemed, was something that other people had, not me.  And earning money never seemed to allow me to get ahead.

As I noted in My First Job, I had a paper route when I was 13.  It was very hard work and not a lot of pay.   But then again, in retrospect, my personal overhead was zero - all of my needs, in terms of food, clothing, housing, utilities, and education, were paid-for by my parents.  Even if I made only a paltry $10-25 a week, I could easily have saved up $500 a year or more, and this in an era where a good used car could be had for that price.

But for some reason, I was unable to save any money.  Like with most consumers in America, I ended up living "paycheck to paycheck" even at age 13, with the money coming in on Friday and being long gone by Monday.   Where did it all go?

Well, back then, the drinking age was 18, and by age 15, I was being admitted to bars.  And my Brother, who had no money, was willing to take me along with his friends, if I would buy the pitchers of beer (which were a dollar apiece during happy hour).  And of course gas was 50 cents a gallon, and we needed that.  And pot of course, which was $20 an ounce.  A $25 paycheck from the paper route went away rather quickly.

But of course, even without recreational drugs and the like, there were other things I spend money on - record albums, toys, snack foods, and the like.   The money just....went away.  I was never able to save up for a nice stereo, or  a nice car, or whatever.  And yet I had the money.  What happened?

What happened was a foreshadowing of the next 20 years of my life - and what is day-to-day living for most Americans.  We enslave ourselves to the powers-that-be in exchange for crap.  And when we can't afford to pay cash for crap, we finance it on time, making it that much more expensive to own.  Before long, we are surrounded by manufactured goods, subscribed to a dozen monthly subscription services and expenses, and sit there wondering "where did all the money go?"

And at each stage in my life, I thought that "this time for sure" I would end up making a lot of money and be rich.   When I left the job as paperboy and went to work at the 1890's Olde Tyme Gaslight Restaurant (more on that in another posting), I thought for sure that $4 an hour was going to be the bomb, in terms of a payday.  Now I would be making hundreds of dollars!  But it never worked out quite that way. 

Just as a goldfish grows to the size of a fish bowl, or gas expands to fill a volume, my spending increased in proportion to my income.  And most of my spending was on small, crappy things, rather than on big-ticket items, as I never had a lot of cash at one time (because I squandered it all on small, crappy things).

And so on down the line.   When I went to GM, I thought that now was the "big time" and same at Carrier - after all, I was making the staggering sum of $15,000 a year!  But as each raise came along, so did an increase in spending.  It was hard to toe the line and keep spending down to a minimum.  There is something in human nature, I'm afraid, that makes it very hard to say "let's do without and save instead!"

And, unfortunately, this lack of willpower is prevalent among most of us.  We are tempted by the new-car showroom and E-Z monthly finance terms.   We want shiny new things and electronic gadgets.   We seek status, whether it is in our clothes, cars, cell phones, or even tattoos and body piercings.

Somewhere along the way I woke up and realized that my life was slipping away, one $5 designer coffee drink at a time.  Each new expense and new toy seemed affordable and a trivial amount by itself.  But cumulatively, it was all starting to add up.   I was making, by then, the fabled six-figure salary, and still wondering why I wasn't getting ahead in life.

At this point, many folks throw up their hands and blame the government or the "Wall-Street Fat Cats" for their woes, depending on their extreme political leanings - Left or Right.  But for middle-class people, their problems are often parked in their driveway, or dead center in the living-room.   Onerous new car loan or lease payments and countless hours programming your brain by watching TeeVee are to blame - not anyone else.

Suddenly, it seemed that we "needed" things we never thought of before.  The TeeVee shows a fancy bathroom, and we have to have one.  The TeeVee shows a fancy kitchen, and we have to have one.   The TeeVee shows a new leased "luxury SUV" and we all go out and get one.  The TeeVee shows a "smart phone" with texting, and we run off, like lemmings, to the store to wait in line, feeling lucky to be able to hand over our money in exchange for a little electronic box that for some reason, we did without for so long.

So the answer, to me, became clear.  Stop listening to the Big Lie.   Stop being a "consumer" and instead start being an Investor - in every aspect of your life.  Think carefully about the real economics of each transaction in your life - not coupons or rebates or other distractions.    And certainly this means not thinking in terms of "monthly payment".

It was not easy to do - it meant re-thinking everything I had been taught by the TeeVee since age 5.  It meant rethinking everything I had learned from my parents, co-workers, peers, siblings, friends - our entire society.

And many of these folks say (and still  say) that I am "crazy" for not obsessing about the "Tot Mom" trial or who is voted off "Dancing on the Stars Lost Island Survivor Idol" whatever.  After all, "everyone" watches this crap, right?

And everyone said I was "crazy" to invest in Real Estate - after all, prices were so depressed in the 1990's!  And everyone said I was "crazy" to sell it in the 2000's - after all prices are high!  Why sell?  (Gee, I dunno, the old "buy low, sell high" deal?  The real way to make money?).

I attended a nice breakfast meeting with Raymond James people.  Thanks for the breakfast, but I am not sure I will be investing anytime soon, however, with them.  But one chart they showed was interesting.  It showed rates of returns for mutual funds, institutional investors, and individual stock-pickers.  Guess which was the lowest?  Yea, chumps like you and me who try to "beat the market" by buying high and selling low.  We churn our own investments, out of fear and greed, and end up getting 1-2% return on our money, over time, if we are lucky.

And why is this?  Because most people get their investment advice from the shouting guy on the TeeVee, who says "BUY" and "SELL" as if the act of buying and selling stocks makes money in and of itself.  It plays to the Casino mentality of the market - which is all the financial channels and pages tout and sell - because when you play at the Casino, people make money - people other than yourself.

It is all part of the Big Lie - and it is a Lie that we all want to believe, as it involved lazy, weak thinking.  The idea that we can get something-for-nothing or win big at the lottery.  But it never quite pans out.

So, how do you avoid the Big Lie?  This is where it gets very, very difficult.  A lot of people read this blog, looking for Hints from Heloise - how to recycle pocket lint and make a nice sweater.  Most of that sort of thing is just faux financial acumen.  Although it is true that vinegar is a great glass cleaner and cheap to boot.  But that sort of thing only scratches the surface.   Saving a dollar here and a dollar there is good - if you apply this to your whole life. 

But if you rope-off certain areas of your life as "untouchable" financially (much as our government has done), then nothing will come of your efforts.   And for many people, this list of "untouchables" is very long - the cable bill, the cell phone bill, the car payment or lease payment, etc., etc., etc.    They have a laundry list of "must have" items which cannot be touched.  But most of them are not only NOT "must have" items but are things are you better off without.

Not watching TeeVee is essential - not optional.   And most people can't put their arms around this.  How can I live without "Dancing on the Stars?" they whine.  And yet, the moment you stop beating yourself over the head with this sort of nonsense, you can start to slow down and think for a change.

Obsessive cell-phoning and texting is another.   "I can't give this up, it is how I communicate!"  But often LESS communication is better than more, particularly when the signal-to-noise ratio in a phone call or text message is high.   Again, this obsessive behavior is just a means of drowning out the silence in your brain and pretending you are doing something "important" when in fact, you are doing nothing at all.   It is Computer Solitaire for the brain.

In short, you can't claim to be against Big Brother and still go to the rallies and engage in the two-minute hates.  It is a package deal - all or nothing.

And this is why I say that financial acumen is not to be found in clipping coupons and watching yet MORE TELEVISION looking for normative cues.  You have to unplug entirely from that.    Once you get your head in the right place, the rest will follow, as day follows night.

But until you do that, you are just spinning your wheels, I'm afraid.  The ability to get ahead in life is available to anyone.  But it requires that you reject 99% of the thinking of your culture, society and friends.  And most people can't do that, which is why they don't get ahead.