Five Money Mistakes Young People Make

Fiscal responsibility isn't hard - but it ain't easy!

I realized that in my previous posting about teaching fiscal responsibility to young people, I fell into the same trap my parents did.  My Dad would say vague things like "Save your money!" as if that was some sort of roadmap to success.  He was right, of course, but what I really needed was more specific advice.

Then it struck me - why not come up with one of these "listcals" of things that young people fall victim to when starting out?  But how to assemble it?  I had an epiphany - why not just list all the stupid bonehead things I did as a youngster?  Good idea, but that could go on for volumes.  So we'll limit it to just five things, in no particular order, but the first is probably the most important.

1. Not keeping track of finances:  I never got more out of my Dad than, "Save your money!"  And when I opened my first checking account, my Mother - who was probably inebriated at the time, showed me how to write checks and then record them in the little register.  She mentioned getting a statement at the end of the month to check the balance in the register and reconcile it, but she never showed me how to do this.  Her only comment was that reconciling the account was "a pain in the ass" and that "it never came out right" and I suspect she did a lot of "balance adjusts" on her account.  Total Lesson Time: 10 minutes.

That's it - the extent of my financial education.  "Save your money" and a drunken tutorial on how to write checks.  Oddly enough, if I had been a "C" student in high school, I would have taken "business math" and learned how to reconcile accounts and balance the books.  Sadly, I would not learn these skills until well into my 30's.

As a result, I tended to bounce checks and never had more than a few dollars in my checking account. I would read these articles about finances, and they would give an example of Suzie, who was a secretary making about as much as I did, who had $1200 in her checking account and $2000 in her savings account.  I would mutter in disbelief, "Who really lives like that?  Do you know how much beer and pot I could buy for $1200?  Even more with $2000!"  The sad fact was, my account was always circling the drain as I spent every nickel I had - and not on food, clothing, and shelter, but on a lot of stupid things.

But we'll get to that later.

50 years later and not much has changed.  I read online, missives from 20-somethings who call the big banks "evil" because they were charged an $18 overdraft fee.  Like I never had to pay those when I bounced all those checks!  So not much has changed from generation to generation, other than we hardly ever write checks anymore, but use debit and credit cards instead.  But regardless of the modalities of transferring money, you can still step in the dogshit if you let your balance go low.

And today, there is little reason to do so.  Unlike the 1980's, we have cell phones and computers today and can check our bank balances online on a daily basis - and hourly basis, if need be.  Not only that, you can set notifications so you get a text and an e-mail whenever a charge is made, a daily reminder of your balances, and so on and so forth (and I highly recommend you do this, even if erasing all these messages is tedious).  Today, I go to Walmart and when I swipe my card on the card reader, almost immediately my phone vibrates as I receive a message in near real-time of the charge being made.

(An aside - in the 1980's Syracuse Savings Bank came up with a service called "Pay By Phone" where you could call a live person and check your balance, determine if a check cleared, and also make payments to various companies, such as mortgage or utilities.  It was a primitive form of online banking.  The funny thing was, my Dad was having his "Corporate Portrait" taken and the photographer said he needed a shot of an "executive" for an ad campaign for Pay By Phone, and Dad agreed.  The next week, a half-page ad appeared in the Syracuse Post Standard with my Dad, smiling, and a script appearing showing how Pay By Phone would work.  They had my Dad's name as "Asher Holman" which cracked everyone up.  I can only guess that the photographer saw my Dad's charming personality during that photo shoot.  Asher Holman indeed!  But I digress.)

In the news today, some click-bait story that probably isn't true that a child used her Mom's debit card to rack up $16K in in-game charges.  How that much can be spent is beyond me.  Why Mom kept her "life savings" in a checking account (and not a CD or Money-Market) is also not mentioned.  Why she didn't have the account set to notify her of every transaction is also not mentioned.  You have to keep track of these things - and today, more than ever, it is very easy to do.

It is also important to keep your own, separate record of your account - like that checkbook register my Mother sort of taught me how to use.  I use an old, obsolete copy of Quickbooks.  But any software that allows you to enter transactions and reconcile accounts will work.  They used to give away copies of Quicken with new computers.  Surely there is some simple form of shareware out there.

Why is this second step so vital?  Well, if you go by the bank balance online and forget you made a bunch of other charges, it may cause your account to go over its limit (credit card) or cause an overdraft (debit) if you fail to take into account the "pending" charges, including upcoming expenses such as utilities, rent, and so forth.  With your own accounting, you can look at those expenses and uncleared charges and see how much you really have left to spend and act accordingly.

Since I started doing this, I haven't had an overdraft - in decades.  All it took was to treat my personal finances like a business and take them seriously.

But just because you are tracking your finances closely, doesn't mean it is a good idea to skate close to the edge every month, rattling along with $17 in your checking account.  It pays to have a buffer of at least a few hundred dollars, if not a grand or two.  I get nervous when my account balance goes below that.

Now, I hear the wails and cries of the entitled already. "But Bob!  You don't know what it's like to be poor!  We need to spend every penny we have in order to stay alive!"   While it is true that the poor don't have a lot of surplus income laying around, you can build up reserves, over time, just a few dollars a week or even a day - and we'll get to that later.  There is no real difference between standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and standing ten feet back - only the latter is far safer.  The real reason why people claim they have no bank balance is often they spend every dime on crap and as a result, pay those bounce fees, which makes them even poorer.

Sorry, no sale.  It is the same argument people make about payday loans - "Poor people have no other choice!  They have to take out payday loans!"  It makes no sense - taking what little money you have and then cutting it in half and giving that half to a loan shark.

If you track all your finances it becomes a lot easier to generate a rainy day balance (and no, don't leave $16K in your checking account, that's just dumb).  But that doesn't do it by itself.

2.  Drugs and Alcohol:  I noted before that as a teen and 20-something, I was high and drunk most of the time. Oddly enough, I was fairly "functional" but that is testament to my strong personality, I guess.  Also, the stereotype of alcoholics and drug addicts as being homeless skid-row bums is pretty inaccurate.  Most have jobs, own houses, and live fairly well - they just could do better without all the distraction.

And being "functional" doesn't always equate with being happy. And if you are unhappy, well, the more likely you are to indulge in drugs and alcohol.  It is a vicious circle - a feedback loop.  While I was "functional" I also managed to get thrown out of school and drop out of college.  Maybe these things were for the best - it is hard to divine God's plan.  But nevertheless, I was not really achieving up to my potential, and moreover, I was unhappy.

So one day, at age 25, I gave up the pot and the beer and an amazing thing happened.  I finished my Engineering degree, which I had been toying with for nearly a decade, in less than a year.  I moved away, got a job, started law school, and the rest is history.

If you are unhappy in life, making a change is one way to turn things around.  Now that I am retired, we have a cocktail in the evening, but it isn't like the old days of binge drinking.  Marijuana is now legal, but I find the desire to use it has diminished.  I have enough brain fog as it is, being wasted and confused doesn't seem to make that better.  It can help you sleep, but you have weird dreams.

But during those prime productive years - between the ages of 25-45, you need your wits about you.  Sadly, many people prefer to anesthetize themselves with booze and drugs, and if they ever wake up from that coma, well, it is too late to start over (or damn hard to do) at age 55.

There is also the matter of expense.  Most of the checks I bounced as a 20-something were at the local convenience store, buying beer and getting some cash-back to buy weed with.  Granted, maybe this wasn't a ton of money, but it was enough to put my account into the red - more than once.

3. Cars and Other Stupid Things: Young men tend to spend enormous amounts of money on dumb things.  Women do too, although they seem to be more financially astute, probably because they realize, at least subconsciously, they may be responsible for a human life, down the road.

Cars are a big hole in anyone's budget.  Women tend to buy a practical car and then take care of it.  Men tend to buy impractical cars and then fail to do basic maintenance in favor of bolting on a fart muffler or a cone air filter or Playboy seat covers or some other stupid nonsense.  You can easily double your automobile expenses by trying to "hop up" some cheap economy car, but young men do it, all day long - always have, always will.

We have a gas station here on the island and a young dude works there and has a bitchin' Mustang.  It is at least a decade old, but he keeps it washed and waxed - even the parts where the clearcoat is peeling - and has a mural of a horse on the side.  He put bitchin' rims and tires on it and lowered it as well.  He easily has spent more on "mods" than the car itself is worth.  And yes, he lives with his Mom.

I was at the auto parts store yesterday buying a battery terminal for the golf cart and saw him there.  He has an entirely new set of rims on the old 'stang now.  I am not sure why he is throwing yet more money at that car, except that I do know - I've seen it before and did it myself.

You can't claim to be living "paycheck to paycheck" and still be spending money on stupid things.  Like fart mufflers. Or tattoos.  Or a new video game.  Or cable television.  Sorry, but no sale to people who cry "poverty" and yet spend a substantial portion of their income on junk they don't really need - and years later, realize they didn't really want.

I saw this from experience, too. I blew tons of bucks on crapola that I and my friends thought was "really cool" but down the road, realized was pretty foolhardy.  You have to take care of yourself, first - and that means spending money on food, clothing (necessary clothing), and shelter, instead of toys and bling.  It also means saving money. Which brings us to....

4.  Failing to Save:  Saving money isn't fun or sexy.  It isn't hard, either.  When I was working in the factory, I thought nothing of going to a deli and dropping five bucks on a sandwich - when I was making less than that per hour even before taxes.  If you factored in my commuting costs, the whole morning was wasted on auto expenses and lunch.

Just giving up a simple luxury like that - eating out five nights a week - and putting that money aside, would, over time, build up a nest egg.  But we fail to see that as youngsters, because "everyone" (we think) eats out all the time, and the $5 we put into savings last week hasn't blossomed into a million bucks overnight.

But if you put a small amount aside every week - and make a corresponding cut in spending (that is the key) over time, it builds up.  And today, many employers offer savings plans like 401(k) plans, or you can set up your own IRA with a click of a mouse and have money invested every month, automatically.

But, the key is, you have to cut spending by the same amount, somewhere.  No more fart mufflers, tattoos, cable TV, and restaurant meals - or at least figure out which of these things is really important to you, and maybe figure out how to have these things at a lower price.  Eat out one night a week - and make it special.

5. Not Having a Plan:  Most of us drift through life, taking it one day at a time, without thinking about where we will be in five or ten years.  When you apply for a job, one of the questions that stumps applicants is, "where do you see yourself in five years?"  I know that question stumped me.

You don't have to have your life planned out in minute detail - after all, life throws  you curves, and plans change.  But you should have an idea that you are going somewhere, other than trying to make it through one more day.  Do you want to better yourself?  Or, if you feel that where you are is where you want to go, then how do you optimize the experience you already have?

For me, it was getting my degree, which I did for many years, attending night school at SU.  While maybe I was wasting my life away, I did have something on the back burner - a plan to improve myself.  And if it didn't work out, well, I still had a job and career.  Fortunately, it worked out.

Whether you want to go to college and get a degree and a career, or raise a family, or whatever, it isn't going to happen unless you make at least some outline of a plan.  With regard to raising a family, one pitfall that happens to a lot of young people is to become pregnant by accident and then have family thrust upon you.  It is a hard life - often meaning career plans are derailed and life becomes trying to get through each day at a time, with no end in sight.  Better to plan these things than just let them happen.

There are, of course, many other mistakes young people can make.  Like I have said time and time again, it is the hardest part of life - trying to figure out who you are and how you fit into a greater society - and how to live independently.  No wonder mental illness manifests itself at that age - the stress is unbelievable - and most adults have forgotten about that.

I sympathize with how difficult it was - and is - to be young. But sadly, no young person wants to hear that - or anything, for that matter - from older people.  So everything I have written above is for naught.  No young person would read it, and if they did, they'd say, "Pfffft!  That's all bullshit!  Let's go score some weed, buy some beers, get new tats, and play video games.  Did you see the bitchin' rims I put on my Hyundai?  Oh, man!"

Youth is, indeed, wasted on the young.  But then again, that's how we old fucks continue to exploit them, sending them off to fight our wars, and putting them in debt, perpetually, so we can live off the interest.

Let's hope they never read this, ever!

Military Police

Cops today are dressed like they are going into Fallujah!

We were at our favorite Mexican taco joint, which also serves tortas, which are huge sandwiches which are a helluva bargain at $6.99 each.  In walks some of Glynn County's finest (this is the Police force that the State legislature authorized us to disband, due to, well, a whole host of bad shit). They are dressed from head to toe in "tactical" gear - bristling with weapons, flashlights, and who knows what else.  The colors of the uniforms and bullet-proof vests are a dark, dark grey.  It is very intimidating!

And maybe that is the intention.  But it got us both wondering why Police want to dress this way - and it is a choice, too.  Not only does it impact the people they are ostensibly supposed to serve, but I suspect when you strap on this body armor (quite literally) it changes the way you think.  It's us against them!  And you need protection from the general public!  Moreover, you are one badass motherfucker!  Shit yea!

Compare this to how Policemen dressed in years gone by.  I grew up in an era where "Officer Friendly" came by to visit us in school, and he wasn't so imposing or dangerous looking.  Back in the day, Policemen wore neckties and weren't bristling with armament.  You hardly realized they were armed at all, in fact.  They were just people like you and me, not threatening, not intimidating.  And maybe that meant better police/community relations.

Malloy and Reed showing off their tactical neckties.

You hardly noticed these guys were armed, but that nightstick could do a number on your skull, and they did carry sidearms.  What was missing was the military-style tactical gear so prevalent today.  Some argue that this arms race escalation is necessary, as "the other side" (drug dealers, gang-bangers, etc.) have armed themselves to the hilt, and the Police need equivalent "firepower" to respond.  This may be true, but then again, crime rates are less than half what they were in the days of Adam-12 and somehow the Police did OK with neckties instead of body armor.

A Police Officer is more likely to be killed in the line of duty by being run over while doing a traffic stop.  And we see this all the time - Police Officers so intent on a motorist pulling over "right away" that they stop them on a narrow bridge and then stand outside their car in the traffic lane.  It is just a death wish.  They think the flashing lights will save them, but every year, cops are killed by drivers who are so mesmerized by the flashing lights they slam right into a cop.

We see some cops who "get it" - the have the citizen pull their car far off the road, and then park their prowler at an angle jutting out to form a protective area behind the suspect car.  Better yet, they approach the car from the passenger side, where they are much safer both in terms of traffic flying by and being able to see what the "perpetrators" are up to.  But few cops seem to get this - so many we see in our travels are actually standing in the road, their attention focused on the driver, not the speeding traffic whizzing by.

Oh, sure, in most States it is the law that traffic should slow down and/or pull over a lane for stopped emergency vehicles.   It is a good law, but relying on motorists to obey a piece of paper 100% of the time is not a sound safety strategy.  If motorists obeyed all the laws, all the time, we wouldn't need traffic cops, would we?  Relying on a "law" to divert a 4,000lb SUV hurtling along at 70mph is not a sound plan.  But I digress.

Barney Fife only had one bullet!

Good old Andy Griffith wasn't threatening-looking, unless you were on the wrong side of the law.  Again, he hardly looked armed, but he still projected authority. Yes, these are television characters, but they are dressed like the policemen of my childhood and adolescence - and even up until a decade or two ago.  And granted, putting on any uniform or costume does change your personality somewhat.  If you ever met a drag queen out of costume, you likely would not recognize them - not only in appearance, but mannerisms.  Ask any actor - once you put on the costume, you become the character.

So you dress like "Officer Friendly" you may come across one way - and feel that way yourself.  You dress like a SWAT team member, ready to knock down the door of a drug lab, well, you feel differently.  And suddenly, everyone looks like a potential enemy - and the public feels uneasy about you as well.

Compounding this problem is the tactical vehicles being used - armored cars, sometimes directly from the Military Armory, better suited to a battle zone than a city street.  Even the storied Police Cruiser has morphed into this tough-looking, slightly lowered, blacked-out death machine - like something from a Mad Max movie.  They pull you over for having excessive window tint, but can you even see inside a cop car anymore?  Because I can't.

The era of the cheerful and readily identifiable "black and white" squad car is gone.  In its place are menacing machines in dark colors.  Dark blues, grays, black, and dark green seem to be popular. And when they pull you over, more lights go on than at a Japanese Pachinko Parlor.

In the era of Dragnet, they had one red spotlight, that didn't even flash. In the era of Adam-12, they had two flashing red lights on the roof, which were not even synchronized.  Ironically, the television show wired them in "wig-wag" formation and the LAPD thought this was so keen, they decided to copy it.  Life imitates art!

Maybe we can't go back to the days of the Irish cop-on-the-beat, dressed in his Police overcoat and domed helmet hat.  He was armed only with a billy-club, but he could make that thing sing, for sure.  And maybe body armor makes sense, in this era of "sovereign citizens" armed to the teeth.  Oddly enough, many Police Officers seem to favor the far-right of the political spectrum, and yet these same far-right nutjobs are the first to decry police over-reach.  They are also the first to open fire, in many instances.  The cognitive dissonance is startling.

But maybe we could tone down the uniforms and the Police cars to be less threatening-looking and intimidating.  We don't need to be promoting the culture of belligerence with our tax dollars.  What's next?  Jacked up monster truck police cars?  How about rainbows instead?

Add a disco ball, and you've got a party!

Teaching Young People About Fiscal Responsibility

Maybe it isn't even possible!

A reader writes, in response to a previous posting, that they were eating tuna salad as they read it, as they had no leftovers to take to work for lunch.  They are living frugal and have almost paid off their mortgage.  But how to teach their kids about these things?  Young people actively sneer at efforts to conserve capital.  You read it all the time online, "Boomers tell us to save money and not get tattoos or eat out in restaurants!  Like $15 for lunch is going to make a dent in my $50,000 student loans!  Get real, Boomer!"

And of course,what they want is student loan debt forgiveness, which as we have seen, is easy to talk about, and hard to do.  Even Biden's modest $20K forgiveness plan (which some might argue isn't modest but akin to giving millions of young people the equivelent of a free car) is mired in court battles.  GOP legislators (and a few conservative Democrats) have vowed to put a stop to it and even have passed legislation to that effect. Of course, it may be merely symbolic, as they don't have the 2/3rds majority to override a Presidential veto.

But I digress. Or did I?  Because expecting free money to bail you out is part and parcel of the problem for young people of any generation and of any era.  I noted before that in my college days (spanning three decades) they would offer credit cards to students, who would promptly rack them up to the limit and then go delinquent on payments.  A tearful phone call later, Dad pays off the debt and Junior has to cut up the credit card.  In some instances, the parents get a credit card for Junior for "emergencies."  But in college, an emergency can be "we're out of beer!"  You remember what it was like to be young, don't you?

My own brother fell victim to this.  My Dad set up a charge account at the SU Bookstore, and my brother charged everything in the world he could think of, to it.  Turns out they sell a helluva lot more than just books!   Of course, Dad went ballistic and closed the account.  I am sure the bookstore people had seen this same pattern before - after all, they are the ones who suggested setting up a charge account in the first place, "for convenience."

Kids are just not keen with money.  Well, some are - you see them on occasion and it is impressive.  When you meet an 18-year-old who saved every birthday check he ever got from Grandma (instead of spending it on candy or beer) it is a rare and wonderful thing.  I always wished I was that kid.  But I wasn't.

Immediate gratification is the problem.  When you graduate from high school and go off to college and/or get a job, get your license and maybe that first car, well, you feel that finally you are an adult, and for once in your life, you get to call the shots.  Pretty soon, you realize why other people were calling the shots for you for so long.   The teens and 20s are dangerous years.  You can make bonehead decisions that will haunt you for life.  Sign up for $50K in student loans, or rob a liquor store - same effect, your life is marked from then on, or at least for a decade or two.  It is possible to make decisions that will devastate yourself, your family, and others.

For example, I wrote before about a "friend" who used to steal cars and do drugs and get drunk.  He crashed a stolen car head-on into a young lady on the night before her wedding.  He destroyed her life, her fiance's life, her family's life, and his family's life - as well as that of his own.  Just one stupid decision - or a series of them - and all hell breaks loose.

Granted, you can make stupid decisions when you are 40, but the probability is far less.  Hopefully by then, you have a career and a spouse and maybe a family and whatnot.  You stopped partying and binge drinking (if you ever started) back in your college days.  The longer you live, the less chance you have of making bonehead decisions.  Moreover, as your days grow shorter, well, the consequences don't last as long.  Of course, oldsters end up making horrible decisions when they slip into dementia.  But that is why they call old age "a second childhood" as old people often turn into adolescents and then eventually children.

The problem is, at a young age, you want to start living now.  You want to try all the great adult things you have been taught about, and your raging hormones aren't helping any.  You want to have sex, of course, preferably several times a day.  Now you know why women are attracted to older men  - young men are just too exhausting. Plus, older men have their shit together more.  While a 20-something may think a hopped-up economy car is "cool" the 40-something has a Mercedes.  Oh, and he doesn't drive it like an asshat all the time.

Worse yet, young men in particular tend to hang out with other young men, which tends to cause trouble.  You walk down the street and see a 20-year-old and he is scared of you.  You walk down the street and see three 20-year-olds, you should be scared of them.  Because young men are horrible influences on each other, goading each other on to do things they later regret.  And if they decline to participate in some ill-conceived scheme, well they will be called a "faggot" or whatever.

Of course,  young women do the same thing, often setting poor normative cues for each other.  Maybe that is one reason some young women are attracted to "bad boys" - their peers tell them that the successful nerd is "lame" or something.  But in terms of men versus women, the worse young women do to each other is cause each other to have eating disorders or low-self-esteem issues.  Young men can goad each other into violence and criminality.

And spending.  Young men will blow thousands of dollars adding "mods" to plebeian cars, not to impress the ladies (who are not impressed by a Subaru with a fart muffler) but to impress their fellow young men.  Similarly, women dress not to impress men, but impress other women.  Men generally don't even notice a woman's new hairstyle or clothing.  They have no idea how much a high-end handbag costs.  Only other women do, and the $10,000 handbag sends a message not to men, but to other women - that I am a bitch to be reckoned with!

As you get older, of course, you stop thinking this way.  It takes time, and often fiscal responsibility requires a whole series of life-changing events in order to kick in.  For some, it never happens.  But when you turn 30, you realize the Klown Kar you are driving isn't "cool" but marks you as an immature teenager.  When you are working at a law firm and taking clients out to dinner, you don't want to chauffeur them around in a Trans Am.  No, the boring sedan is the ticket - and your status is determined by how new it is and what brand.

At a certain age, you start to realize that the amount of money you will earn in a lifetime is finite.  You may not know the exact number, that doesn't mean it is infinity. Sounds pretty self-evident, but I remember back in my early 20's thinking that someday, somehow, I would have "more money" through some undetermined modalities.  Of course, that turned out not to be true at all.  I had to scramble to catch up - going back to school (yet again) and finding a new career.  Sure, I made more money, but sadly, I kept on spending it as well.

It was about the time I started this blog that I really thought about how I was spending money.  It isn't an easy thing to do - particularly when your habits have been ingrained for decades at that point.  And introspection is the hardest thing to do.  Externalizing is so much more fun!  It isn't my fault I have these student loans!  I don't even remember college!  I was drunk at the time!  Where's my loan forgiveness?  Everyone else is getting it, why not me?

For me, the first revelation came at age 25 - an age where we now know that the human brain finally finishes developing.  I had this epiphany that whatever my life was going to be, it would be based on my own efforts and hard work.  I could not rely on an inheritance (as some friends of mine had) to live off of.  If I wanted to succeed, I would have to improve my own lot in life and stop blowing money on stupid things. So I went back to school, graduated, and then moved to the city for a better-paying job and started law school.

For many, that is a non-starter. "Move away?  Why should I have to?  Bring the jobs here, to our depressed town in the middle-of-nowhere!  And bring a Walmart with you, while you are at it!"

Kind of hard to argue with "logic" like that.

So maybe fiscal responsibility isn't something you can teach or instill.  It either has to be learned the hard way - by banging your head against the wall - or it is never learned at all.  Or maybe some of us are predisposed by genetics or by upbringing to be thrifty.  A friend of mine adopted a child from China, and she has saved every penny she ever made by babysitting and pet sitting.  My friend was chagrined to find out the balance in her daughter's savings account was greater than her Mom's.

But you hear this a lot with adopted people and orphans - they tend to be thrifty, ambitious, and successful.  Perhaps there is some subconscious insecurity in the mind from early on that causes the orphan or adoptee to be more cautious with money and more ambitious as well.  As a spoiled middle-class kid, no such insecurity exists - you want something, you throw down a tantrum until you get it.  Kind of hard to learn fiscal responsibility that way.

And I talked about this before - parents who "don't want our children to want for anything" or to "have all the things I never had as a child."  They think they are doing their kids a favor, but instead are creating perpetual dependency.  I noted before how one of my bosses had three dependent children, some in their 30's, who had Dad pay for everything from the rent on their apartments, to their brand-new cars.  I recall one particularly awkward telephone conversation with his daughter, while I was in his office, and she complained that the two-year-old car she had was worn out and she wanted a newer, sportier model.  It was kind of awkward, as she was my age, and here I was, making a six-figure salary at his firm, and she had yet to leave the nest.  It was a nightmare of his own creation.

Looking back, I kind of wished my parents had said "No" to me more often, or at least explained their finances more fully.  If I had known how much they were making and how much they had to spend to keep us fed and clothed, I probably wouldn't have asked for so much from "Santa" - as I would have realized more how dear money was to them.  But my Mother had that crazy idea that you should spoil your kids, because that was doing them a favor.  It wasn't.

Very few, if any, parents want to share their finances with their kids.  Most kids have no idea how much money Mom and Dad make, what their fiscal responsibilities are, and how much they will need for retirement.  Often Mom and Dad don't know, either.  I know my parents flew by the seat of their pants for decades, and when retirement was thrust upon them, well, they crash-landed with what they had - which wasn't too bad, actually.

Of course, the problem with talking to your kids about money is that, even as young adults, they might not appreciate how the numbers work.  To a kid or even a young adult, any amount over $1000 seems like infinity.  So you tell them you have a couple hundred grand in your 401(k) they will chastise you for not buying a Ferrari with it.  After all, that's an infinite amount of money, right?  Lottery winners often fall victim to the same logic.

I think too, parents are reluctant to share financial information with their kids, lest the kids blab it all over the neighborhood.  So it is hard to explain to a young person that, yea, we have all this money and a nice house and whatnot, but it didn't happen overnight and moreover, we will need that money later on, for retirement and Junior's college fund.

The latter is a young person's first and most significant dealing with finances, and sadly, it is a learning opportunity that is often wasted.  I know a number of parents who have told their kids they should major in whatever interests them, and not to worry about the cost of college. Both are ludicrous propositions.   You would never buy a car that way - not caring about style, type, brand, and quality, and just paying "whatever" price the dealer conjures up.  Hell, no!  You'd pick (hopefully) a practical car that serves your needs best, has good reviews and is priced within your budget.

Yet, when you hear these sob stories about $100,000 in student loan debt (more than twice the national average) it usually involved a "name brand" private college and a degree that is utterly useless in the job market.  Here was a great opportunity to illustrate the cost/benefit analysis as well as how an investment (in this case, in an education) can return far more, over time, in terms of payback.  This is not to say that education should be vocational training, but that majoring in "Communications" or "Philosophy" at a $40,000-a-year university is just not affordable for the middle-class, particularly when paid for with student loans.

I noted before that one of the greatest expansions in real estate in recent years has been in "luxury student housing."  I returned to my Alma Mater and noticed a medium-rise building with a banner running down the side of it, advertising such.  It was a far cry from my University days, where we made do with older, roach-infested buildings, because we were students and thus by definition, poor.  Luxuries were for people who had money, not people who borrowed it.  But then again, we didn't have these private student loans back then - maybe that is the connection, perhaps?  (Yes, yes it is).

But just because they'll let you borrow yourself to death doesn't mean you have to do it.  And again, this is a great learning moment that seems to be squandered on many young people.  Maybe a lot of parents are uncomfortable talking with teens about these things.  Maybe teens are bored by all of it. I know at that age, sitting down to talk with Dad wasn't a pleasant experience.  I doubt I would have been receptive to any good financial advice, even if he had it to give.

Maybe a better idea is to start off younger.  My Dad tried that with my older siblings, giving them an "allowance" and then asking them to account for every penny of it.  My sister would end up crying as my Dad yelled at her because she could not account for 39 cents of her allowance.  She was too young to realize she could  have just lied and said she bought a candy bar or something.  Not only did she not learn fiscal responsibility - she learned to loathe it.

In modern times, companies have tried to sell junior debit cards for kids.  The idea is to provide this spending card that your kid can use, and you can monitor his spending habits and thus have a learning experience with it.  If Junior does his "chores" you can reward him with cash on his card, which he then can decide how to spend - or save.  You can even set savings goals and whatnot and work together on them.  It could be a learning experience, but then again, from what I have seen in the past with college students having credit cards, it could also be a disaster.  Overdraft fees could swamp the whole thing.

On the other hand, in today's economy, cash no longer exists, for the most part.  So learning how to handle debit and credit cards is part of the modern norm.  All I can say is, though, I would have chafed at the bit, if my parents set up such a card system and had me do "chores" to earn money.  Or maybe not - maybe I would vacuum the house three times a day so I could buy weed.  Who knows?

The kiddie debit card is a nice theory, but again, kids being kids, I doubt it would work out well - although it sounds like a dream for control-freak parents.  I know a young girl who ran away from home at the tender age of 14.  Her Mom had set up a savings account for her to teach her fiscal responsibility.  Once she became a hormonal teenager, she pulled all the money out of the account and spent it on drugs.  YOLO -right?  Might as well have fun now than to save for a rainy day.   And yea, eventually she achieved some form of financial solvency and independence, but not until after age 30.

Maybe that's the ticket to teaching young people about fiscal responsibility - just wait until they turn 30.  When they are no longer young people.

Of course, by then it is too late.  Maybe we are destined to be spendthrifts, at least early in life.

Delusional Thinking And The Laws of Probability

When you live in an alternate reality, the real reality may seem harsh and difficult.

You may recall a few years back, one of the deadliest mass-shootings (if not the deadliest) occurred in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The shooter holed up in a hotel room and gunned down party-goers who were attending a concert in the plaza below.

Why?

Well, he was insane of course, and one of his delusions was that he could become a big-time professional gambler and make lots of money.  He gambled a lot - and lost a lot.  And apparently he felt the casinos weren't treating him properly, with free meals and free hotel rooms or whatever. So he shot a bunch of people just to get even.

That, of course, makes no sense.  Then again, gambling never does.

I was reading about this whistle-less whistleblower online and adjacent to the article was another blaring ad for an online casino, which claimed that their casino allowed you to gamble "without risk."   I need to buy them a dictionary, as the word "gamble" means to take risk.  You can't have a risk-free casino where everyone wins all the time - you'd go out of business in a day.  Makes about as much sense as "Trump Bucks."

But it illustrates that the vast majority of the people in the world - which on occasion often includes you and me - have only a tenuous grasp on reality.  We want to believe in fantasy worlds, and when we do, someone inevitably takes advantage of us, whether it is a casino, a guy selling space-alien books, a religion, or an investment scheme.

For some reason, we are prone to throwing reason out the window on occasion, and oddly enough, maybe that is a survival skill - for the species in general, not you in particular.  Think about it.  The King gets up on a rock and gives a rousing speech to his subjects as to why they need to go to war with a neighboring kingdom.  Be prepare to die for King and Kingdom!  Never mind you are throwing you life away for the sake of someone else's glory - in fact someone else who has been exploiting you most of your life.  But people take up arms for these "causes" and die, so that the survivors may live - the survivors being the smarter people who sit in the back and plan these things at little or no real risk to themselves.

The "Sport of Kings" ain't horse-racing, my friend!

Delusional thinking gets people to accept the unacceptable, or to rally behind a cause that doesn't benefit them one iota.  We see this today, with poor people in rural areas voting for politicians who promise to "cut their taxes" and "abolish the death tax!"  But most of these folks in the trailer park are paying hardly any taxes, other than Social Security and Medicare - and yea, Republicans want to cut that, for sure.  But down the road, those folks will wish they had those benefits, when they retire.  Worse yet, are people who are on Social Security and Medicare, voting to politicians who vow to cut their benefits, but promise to keep little Elliot from turning into little Ellen.

And unless their trailer is worth $10M, they are in no risk of paying any "death tax."

Of course, Democrats play the same game, on a friendlier basis.  Instead of promising to cut things,they promise free things - "guaranteed annual income" and "student loan forgiveness" - neither of which looks like they will ever see the light of day (and that's probably a good thing).  Both parties cater to delusional thinking to get elected.  One just relies on hate more than the other.

In my last posting, I noted that space aliens simply don't exist, which is to say that if there are other life forms in the universe, they haven't visited us.  Of course, in response to this, I get the remarks, "Well Bob, iN aN inFiNatE UniVeRsE anYtHinG iS PoSSiBlE!"  And this illustrates how people will grasp onto any straw - any life-ring in a storm.  It also illustrates how people don't understand probability and will make long-shot bets and then fail to understand why they failed to play out.

Right now, there is a finite possibility I could look out my window and see a man in an orange bowler hat, riding by on a donkey.  It isn't impossible.  These things exist, after all.  But it is far more likely I will see a squirrel (99% probability) a cardinal (50%) or a deer (25%).  And I know this, as I look out the window and see these things often - but no man in an orange bowler hat, and no donkey.

Just because the probability of anything happening is always greater than 0, doesn't mean it is likely.  A probability of 0.000000000000000000001 is akin to never happening.  Yet people cling to these long-shot propositions, often eschewing a 1:1 payout as being too tame.

For example, I was watching a YouTube video on the rise and fall of Sun Microsystems, a company I once wrote a couple of Patents for.  They casually mentioned that two of every three Silicon Valley startups fail within the first few years - and indeed, most of the principals of Sun had worked for one or more failed startups.  Sun was wildly successful for a time - indeed, back when I used to fly out there regularly, all of my clients had SPARC workstations running chip design software.  But as the PC became more and more powerful, the workstation became less and less relevant.  It is a story as old as time - and one that people investing in "new tech" should learn.

But it is odd, people want to jump on "the next big thing!" even if it has a success rate of 1/3 out of the box, and over time, may never pay off, particularly if you ride it all the way down.  But then again, people are bamboozled by things like "Market Cap" which as I have noted before - many times - is just a fake number calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding by the current share price.  It really means nothing.  Tesla didn't decrease in value by 2/3 over the last year - indeed, the company appears to be as profitable as ever, even if there are troubling signs ahead.  What changed is what the last chump in was willing to pay for a share.  And that was affected by the laws of supply and demand (particularly when a primary shareholder is dumping shares to pay for ill-conceived vanity purchases) as well as the troubling waters facing the company.

But most people don't even get this simple concept. Instead they "read something online" or worse yet, saw the shouting guy on television saying "Buy! Buy! Buy!  It's the NEXT BIG THING!" and the plebes invest - or should I say, gamble.

When you ask the folks who throw $500 at some startup - when they are behind on their credit card payments - they reply, "Well, it's only $500 and I can afford to lose that, and well, you never know!"

Yes, you never know.  There may be space aliens, or Sasquatch, or a man on a donkey with an orange bowler hat. We live in a universe of infinite possibilities - but finite probabilities.  People fail to see the difference between the two.

Act rationally in an irrational world is the mantra of this blog.  You can get ahead in this world and live quite contentedly and comfortably, if you engage in rational thinking.  Yet so many people obsess about other things - conspiracy theories, sports stars, video games, celebrity antics, politics, and so on and so forth.  You ask them about the balance in their checking account and they have no idea - but will engage you in an hour-long diatribe as to why the "big banks" stole all the money they never had.  If only the Federal Reserve (or insert whipping-boy du jour) was abolished, we could all be billionaires!

The weird thing is, these folks are not outliers, but increasingly in the majority and historically always so.  There is much talk today about the return of Nazism, which I am not sure is entirely real, but instead some young men thinking they are "edgy."  But the rise of Nazism in Germany is an interesting study in delusional thinking.  Hitler got people to believe that all their problems could be solved by eliminating (in every sense of the word) one group of people.  Sadly, it seems we are going through this again - which makes me wonder what country I should move to, before the trains to Auschwitz start running again.

First they came for the trans people, and I said nothing, because I was not trans.  Then they came for the drag queens, and I said nothing, because I was not a drag queen.....  It is the same old story.

What is weirder is there may not be a country to move to.  Americans have always claimed they were going to "move to Canada" if [fill-in-the-blank] was elected.  But recent events in Canada seem to indicate that the Q-virus has infected there as well.  Even Jolly Olde Socialist England has a strong conservative hold on power - and talks of abolishing their nationalized health care (as well as in Canada).   Pretty soon, the whole world will be fascist.

We get these brochures from the cruise lines and while they are fun to read, it is like "nope - ain't going there, hostage diplomacy!" or "nope, ain't going there, drug cartel violence!" or "ain't going there, pirates!" or "ain't going there, caning!" It is getting to the point where there are few places left to go.  Even Caribbean nations, once the vacation hotspot for Americans and Europeans are getting more and more dangerous.  American Virgin Islands?  Jamaica?  Haiti?  Nope. Nope. Nope.

But I digress.

I guess the point is, delusional thinking is the norm for most people, not only in the United States, but worldwide. And periodically, it seems that it rises and falls like the tides.  A few years ago, if you asked me whether we would be having serious discussions on whether the world was flat or the moon landing faked, I would have laughed at you.  But today?  People are deadly serious about their delusions.

And by deadly, I am not exaggerating.  So pardon me, if I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories or believe in space aliens.  Maybe some people find these things "fun" or amusing or whatever.  But I see a dark side to all of this - and a dark side to humanity.  Rarely do logic and reason result in the mass-murder of millions.  In fact, never.  It is always the delusional thinking.

UFOs Don't Exist

In order to be a whistle-blower, you first must have a whistle.

First of all, a clarification of terminology.  "UFO" stands for "Unidentified Flying Object" and means only that the object is unidentified, not a space alien or flying saucer.  Every "UFO" ever spotted turns out to be an object that is readily identified.  And fully half of the "UFOs" sighted are made-up hoaxes.  Just because you see something in the sky doesn't mean space aliens are about to invade.

Consider airplanes.  No doubt you've been near an airport and seen a plane landing.  From a certain angle, it appears to be moving very slowly - almost hovering, in fact.  At night, all you see is the navigation lights, and again, it may appear to be "hovering" if it is heading toward or away from you.  So these "sightings" where people say they saw a "cigar-shaped object" with flashing lights "hovering" and then suddenly accelerate away are easily explained - it is merely a jet aircraft, which, while travelling away from you appears to be motionless - until they change direction and "suddenly" accelerate.  I know this because I've seen the effect myself.

Recently, there has been a lot of hoopla on the Internet that a "whistle-blower" is "telling all" about how aliens have visited the Earth and how "scientists" (you know, the guys with white lab coats and clipboards) are reverse-engineering alien "tech" and using it today.  This is an old song, and has been going on for decades now.  It is easily debunked.

To begin with, UFO "sightings" never existed prior to World War II.  It was in the post-war period of nuclear fear, as well as the coming of age of science fiction movies that we started to see this mass hysteria manifest itself.  A few people faked "UFO" pictures, one famously by throwing a DeSoto hubcap in the air and taking a grainy photo of it.  They admitted the fraud, but every single UFO book out there (and there are many - it is a lucrative business) has this photo and of course, claims it is real.

Some claim that the reason why aliens never visited us before was that it wasn't until the modern era that radio and television signals leaked out into space and alien civilizations got a dose of I Love Lucy and flew here to investigate.  This was illustrated in the movie Contact, where early television signals from the Berlin Olympics are beamed back to us.

There are a host of problems with this idea.  First, it has already been established that radio signals from Earth, unless directed in a tight beam, pretty much peter out by the Moon's orbit.  Television and Radio towers are set up to transmit an omnidirectional signal within a local area.  If Aliens could receive our television signals in another solar system, then why can't I get television and radio stations from Chicago or LA?  The simple answer is, we can't and they can't.

The other problem is the speed of light. Assuming a radio or television signal could travel that far into space, it would take years, decades, or even centuries, for aliens in another star system to receive them.  Yes, it is true that the SETI program has tried to "listen" for alien life signals and even send signals of our own.  The are using a huge array of antennas way out in the desert, which you need in order to detect such faint signals from far away - or to effectively send them.  Since our planet spins on its axis, however, we can only send these signals (or monitor for them) for half of each day, at best.  Even if some far-off solar system receives our signal, a hundred years from now (and they happened to be listening in our direction at exactly the right time) it would take another hundred years to get a reply.

That is probably why SETI is doomed to failure.   We spent all that money to send out a signal or monitor a far star system for signals, and we can only target one system at a time - in a star field of billions, if not trillions of stars.  The odds of winning the lottery ten times in a row are better.

And by the way, why are we funding SETI if we've already been contacted by aliens?  It's like sending a telegram to someone who is already in your living room.  And the simple answer is:  because we haven't been contacted by aliens yet - and it will never happen.

The big problem for alien contact is that unless the aliens evolved in your own solar system, it will be damn hard for them to come visit.   Maybe if Mars really had Martians, we would have contacted an alien species by now.  But even the closest solar systems with inhabitable planets are many light-years away - often hundreds of light-years.  Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take generations to reach such star systems, and it is doubtful that we would ever fund such a one-way expedition - or that aliens would, either.

The problem with interstellar travel is that deep space isn't empty.  At speeds even approaching half the speed of light, the energy released by an impact with even a particle of dust would be equivalent to a hydrogen bomb.   You can't just go trucking through space and not expect to hit things, even tiny things.  Even an atom or two.

So that leaves so-called "warp drives" and "FTL" or "faster-than-light" travel.  Surely alien "tech" would have developed this - a shortcut across the galaxy!  But while it is a science fiction shortcut, it isn't clear such technology exists or could ever exist.  Tales of sailing through black holes or "wormholes" are just that - fanciful tales.  In SciFi, they use these shortcuts to make the story work, much as Star Trek used the "transporter beam" because it was too expensive to do model shots of shuttlecraft for every episode (even the special effects of the transporter were deemed too expensive, and in later years would have Kirk et al. walk into the transporter room and then scene cut to the planet surface).

But what about "alien tech?"  Surely this explains our modern technology and the building of the pyramids!   This trope goes back many years, and as I recalled before, my hapless brother read some of the books by Erich von Däniken, which claimed that every achievement of mankind, was, in fact, created by Space Aliens.

For example, in one of his books, he "proved" that the pyramids at Giza were built by space aliens - which became a theme in the movie Stargate, where pyramids were used as landing pads for huge UFOs.  His argument was that the stones were too big for primitive people to move, ergo, space aliens. However, the hieroglyphics inside these pyramids include a basic 'how to" of pyramid building, including diagrams showing how a large  number of people can move a huge stone block up an inclined ramp.  The Egyptians were not primitives, but were part of a sophisticated civilization.

It's kind of insulting to the builders of the pyramids to claim it was space aliens.  He also made much ado about Mesoamerican civilizations also building pyramids - halfway across the world!  But of course, these were more stepped pyramids, not the neatly geometric ones in Giza.  If they were copying one another, they did a shitty job.  But why the pyramid shape?  Well, it is the easiest way to build a monument of any height.  You can only go so high with stone columns and lintels - if you want a massive monument or temple, pyramid is just the way to go.

To a lot of people, though, this "alien tech" thing rings true - mostly because they have no idea how things work, and thus assume no one else does, either.   A UFO believer looks at the pyramids and thinks, "there is no way I could lift one of these stones!  Must be alien tech!"

Similarly, they are befuddled with how their cell phone actually works, so they assume the inside is magic bits and thus "alien tech."   Space ships?  Radar?  Lasers?  Complicated stuff - aliens must have invented it!   And I suppose if you are one of those people who can barely drive their own car, this is comforting - after all, those egghead "scientists" (lab coats and clipboards!) are no smarter than you, and in fact, you now have the secret conspiracy theory data all your smart buddies know nothing about!

I noted before that as an Engineer, I am cursed with actually knowing something.  And as a Patent Attorney, I have met and talked with the people who actually make all this "alien tech." There are thousands of Engineers who work on tiny bits and portions of computing devices - sometimes spending decades just to squeeze out a tiny bit of efficiency or performance out of a microchip.  And growing up at the dawn of the PC age, I saw firsthand how the technology developed over time.

Sorry, no aliens - although geeky tech workers could be mistaken for them, on occasion.

And again, it is insulting to the legions of Engineers out there to dismiss their hard work as merely "reverse-engineering alien tech."

But if that doesn't convince you, look at it this way - if we had these crashed UFOs to "reverse engineer" then why in hell are we still using chemical reaction rockets to go into space? If the aliens have anti-gravity and warp drive, why the hell don't we use it?

Don't answer that - because the raging true believers just make up yet another bullshit conspiracy theory story to cover holes in their previous bullshit conspiracy theory story.  It is a popular sport these days - critical thinking is no longer in fashion.  Sadly, mainstream politicians engage in this sort of nonsense, too.

So why do people report these sightings?  Why do people write books about it? Why do people buy t-shirts with aliens on them and hang out near "Area 51" and such?  Well, for a lot of people, it is a harmless hobby.  Deep down, they really don't believe aliens exist, but they collect all the memorabilia, just as Barbie enthusiasts collect hundreds of the dolls. As for the book authors, the motivation is more direct - money and lots of it.  You sell a few books you can end up as rich as that Harry Potter lady.  Give a few speeches, do some seminars, go on television - they pay you for all of this.

Hell, you can even start a religion over it.  It's been done.

And every so often, the UFO-verse comes alive with a "breaking story" that this time, for sure, the "secret documents" are going to be released and we'll know the real story about space aliens and humanity will be saved!  But like a Trump indictment (and conviction) these always end up being teaser stories that end up fading from view and you never hear more about it.  Yea, the media loves a space alien story as much as they love a Trump indictment story.  We are more likely to see a Trump indictment, but I would not even bet on that.

A reader writes, asking me what I think of these tropes (often used in Science Fiction) that aliens came to Earth and interbred with primitive human species (it's an alien thing, don't kink-shame!).  Sci Fi authors have written stories about this - that the Gods on Mount Olympus were actually aliens from a crashed UFO, who bred with the local fauna.  Or that primitive man was somehow "educated" by an alien obelisk as in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  But here it is, 2023, and we haven't even been back to the moon!  Never confuse science fiction with science fact.

Yes, it is fun to speculate about such things and read stories about them, but we should never confuse science fiction with science fact, or let conspiracy theories dominate our lives.  The conspiracy buff is a sad and lonely person who drives away friends, family, and employers, all of whom rightfully assume that maybe the conspiracy buff is a little insane - or a lot so - and should be avoided.  Left alone in his echo chamber, these bad ideas only amplify themselves.  It becomes a perfect feedback loop.

Sorry, but there are no space aliens, no Sasquatch, no Loch Ness monster, and no Santa Claus. If you find these beliefs comforting (like religion - but don't get me started on that!) then so be it.  But when you substitute wishful thinking for rational thinking, you will end up in a world of woe, in short order.

Act rationally in an irrational world.

UPDATE:  The vaunted imminent disclosures about captured UFO tech have yet to materialize because, well, they don't exist.  Another day, another click-bait story - and more sketchy stories from people who claim UFOs landed in their back yard (but they "forgot" to take pictures with their cell phones) or a military guy who claims he loaded "weapons" into a UFO and six people will back up his story!  For some reason, these stories are forgotten about within one news cycle.  It is just click-bait nonsense.