It’s just not cool to be Frugal, everyone want to ‘live for the moment’ and have a great life. Saving is boring, not having the coolest products, flashiest car and biggest house is a sign of weakness in today’s society. Frugal people are boring, and what’s worse they probably have some sort of disease that causes lameness on contact- stay well clear of them.
These days, it can start from Middle School, it is all about who has the best clothes, gadgets, hair cuts. And what’s worse if you don’t have those things then there are people around you who will pick on you and bully you for it. There is tremendous pressure to fit in at such an early age, and sadly you are reliant on the wealth of your family to provide you with the things you need to fit it, like the latest Phone or Tablet, new Sneakers, and in a few short years it will start becoming bigger ticket items like a Car.
Bullying starts really showing its face here because the Middle Schools often blend from a group of Elementary’s – that means kids are jostling for dominance within a new peer group, throw in puberty for good measure and you have a magical combination of some of the best times, and the worst times of your life ahead of you.
It is natural for the child to try to offload some of the pressure felt from the bullying to their parents in the form of asking for the latest products, and fighting a constant battle against budgets and the desire to fit into the group. This solution, to effectively buy themselves out of the ‘bullyzone’ and fit into society carries through when they hit ages where they can earn money, or obtain credit and this is a cornerstone of where bad debt habits start.
People are willing to burn money in order to avoid the focus of the bullies around them, and the only thing that matters is today. Go too much in one direction, and just try to suck up being sad and not having any of the things that you need will make you a prime target for bullies, and it will make your future life sad and miserable as you would want nothing more than to get out of school, and wash over these years.
Go too far in the other direction, and try to buy your way out of trouble by looking cool will likely set you off to a very bad start in life from a money perspective (hardly seems important now I know) actually, if you do that it is possible that you really will have a great time for a couple of years, but by the time you are in High School and College you will have terrible habits reinforced and by the time you are 23 you will be hammered with Credit Card debt and you will be on the receiving side of the power of Compound Interest. When it is interest that you are paying, and when you have the convenience of spreading your debt of many months or years the chances are you will be making very small payments against the principle, and paying just interest if you are punctual, or interest plus fees if you aren’t keeping up with your payments.
I carried a credit card debt around with me on my travels of about $9,000 – paying the minimum and finally, when I realized I had to start addressing the issue of paying it down, some 6 years later the balance was still $9,000, despite my making payments of over $20,000 to that card.
Frumpy people in my year on the other hand didn’t wrack up that debt, instead, from the age of 18 they started saving. In fact, if they had just saved $1,500 per year from the age of 18 to today (19 years ago, which would be less than the $29,000 I needed to pay of that card) today they would have over $40,000 saved.
Forty Grand! And all I have to show from those years are a few old pictures in some very weird fashion choices. Forty thousand dollars is a down-payment for a house, would pay for most of college for your kid, or if it was sitting until retirement at 65 would be worth over $230,000!
The proper balance
It’s likely that you won’t fit into the super cool gang, and if you don’t have enough money then you will never be able to keep up with the cool kids so competition is pointless. What you need to do is find a skill that you can become good at from an early age, focus on it and drive it. This should be separate from your studies. What it is will be dependent on your own natural abilities and tendencies, so try a few things out, become great at something that you love, and you will be able to side step around many of the opportunistic bullies, they are looking for people who don’t have that extra something, who instead are insecure and looking to fit in.
Don’t get me wrong, you will feel insecure, lonely, and scared at many times during your life, as an adult and as a child, but if you have something to come back to at your core that you are passionate about you will have a foundation, and that is something that will make you so much stronger. Remember, you cannot buy yourself friends with money, or out of bullying. Neither should you try to buy favor with bullies by bullying someone yourself. My core is Martial Arts, it is something I would certainly recommend as it allows you to build up intensity to a place where you simply aren’t afraid of what a bully can do physically any more, which is a very empowering thing. But it might not be for everyone.
Bullyproof
Building a proper foundation early will make things like managing your finances and leading the very best life you can so much easier, but its still a tough world out there, and we have to fight everyday, in one way or another.
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