Taking Baby Steps To Break Financial Indoctrination

chekohler(76)

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Hey Jessavers

If you kept up with my previous post, then you'll know where I am going with this one, if not, I would suggest you do give it a look over before you dive into this one. We, as humans, are repetition machines, we learn by what we see and repeating. It's brought us significant strides in efficiency and skills transfer over the years, but it also allows for lies and bad behaviour to easily propagate across vast numbers of people.

When it comes to financing, no one feels they are doing the wrong thing, or they wouldn't do it. At least a drug addict as the sense to know what they are doing wrong but cannot help themselves, but in finance, we cannot admit it.

If you invest in a Ponzi or a company that fails, you won't say YOU made a bad choice; you'll say it's the companies fault or the market, something abstract, so you don't have to take the blame.

This coming economic crisis already has a scapegoat in the coronavirus, so no ones going to feel bad or want to take proactive action, they're just hoping to get back to what they were doing, which is why I have no faith in market fundamentals taking over as long as people want to continue with the status quo of government, bailouts and more free stuff.

Programming going against logic

I think most people get the idea that if you want to live in modern society you need to earn an income, use it wisely, upskill to earn more income, find additional sources of revenue and keep saving your excess money. It's a simple fact of life, but why does no one do it?

In fact, why do people actively go against this?

There are tons of investment books, financial education both free and paid, so this isn't an information issue, this is a behaviour issue.

Due to what they see and not what they learn. When you don't actively learn what you see becomes what you do. You watch your parents, your friends, social media, family, television shows and you absorb these impulses and create a poor mindset that will leave you poor.

You may also be learning from say you parents who grew up in a different time and their idea of the world, economy and finance is dated.

So what does a poor mindset mean?

Poor mindset

Many of my peers or rather, all of my peers are middle class, working-class, everyday people. Naturally so since I grew up in a country where I was born under apartheid, so opportunities were only starting to open up, but this is beside the fact, even if didn't exist many of these beliefs would remain the same, it's only exacerbated by it.

Those of us who work for money and feel it's just this never-ending fight to survive have beliefs like:

I am not good with numbers/money
I am in country/place of lack of opportunity
I'll never be wealthy
The game is rigged/corrupt
I didn't come from money
Money is evil
I don't have time to take care of this
I have bills to pay
People like me never make it out of their circumstances
The rich are greedy
I don't want to take the risk/playing it safe
It's only a few 100 bucks a month, what difference is that going to make

Does this sound familiar?

These beliefs are hard-wired into your brain and operate in the subconscious of your mind, which literally mounds your perspective on the world and how you engage with it. So when you don't see a way out, you think might as well us the money I have no to get some sort of satisfaction right now.

Always an excuse

Now, these beliefs, once they take hold start to drive excuses. A very popular one I've come to see is "looking the part" if I want to be taken seriously I need to have a BMW or wear fancy clothes, then the money will come. So if I can't look the part, I can't get there.

Another excuse would be well how can I save so little, its no point; it will take me years to have that million or whatever you feel the number should be. But what you don't see is savings give you that buffer to take the risk. Savings builds self-confidence, so lack of it breaks you down.

Show me someone in debt, or without savings and I'll show you a bank full of excuses. We all have them, they're not in short supply.

Inaction or worse wrong actions

As you can tell if your foundation is poor beliefs and you have infinite ammo in excuses you have a certain recipe for financial destruction.

Many people don't realise how far off 55-60 is when they start working nor how expensive it will be to live in the future and actively create negative feedback loops to ensure they never get anywhere with their money.

They either save in cash and take no action, which sees you lose your purchasing power through inflation or they load up on debt and pay it off themselves thinking this is how everyone does it I should too, the money mob mentality.

But if you do what everyone does, you'll get what everyone gets and at the moment, most popele are in the shit.

The system is rigged, but you've rigged yourself

The reason I know this is because I used to have those beliefs, I used to make those excuses. I used to take the wrong actions and sometimes still do. But I am open to change, I am trying to learn, and I've seen that this doesn't get me anywhere, so I'm trying to find something new.

We all know the system is rigged, debt traps, inflation traps, tax traps and more, you have to find ways to navigate around that, get on the right side of compound returns and you'll be surprised at what you can achieve.

As Albert Einstein said:

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it ... he who doesn't... pays it."

I think developing a positive relationship with money is important, not to use it to dull your pain or temporary satisfaction but to use it as a tool to improve yourself, your skills, your life, and the life of your loved ones.

You're not going to do that with buying new consumer products; you do that by saving and investing so you can pay for better education, have the luxury of time and working less, starting a business instead of working for a boss. Find what it is you're passionate about and then use the money to get you there.