I value experiential knowledge and this is because of the learning curve that comes with it. I grew up among business people who were wealthy and successful, people who are well read, educated, and exposed and I enjoyed listening to them talk about their failures and triumph.
I made friends with older people because I couldn't keep up with the wild and pacy lifestyle of teenagers who were in my age bracket.
They wanted to spend to impress girls, steal from their parents, use Blackberry phones, and follow the trajectory of being young, wild, and adventurous.
Trend lifestyle was something I couldn't really cope with
It was pacy and expensive
I, on the other hand, could live this life even if I wanted. I had health issues, and my parents didn't have that much money for me to steal or flex with, so I had to make friends with older people in the neighborhood and learned so much about adulthood.
Sometimes, we feel that exposing younger people to sophisticated knowledge dampens their growth procedural process, while this might happen to some people, it helps some other kids learn hard and fast.
For example, I learned a lot about financial capacity from people who had seen it all.
Even Older knowledge carried weight
It is hardly useless
I never filtered or rejected any of the knowledge they passed across to me and this was because of the intentions they had toward me.
The basis of their intent was that I shouldn't repeat the same mistake as they did and this is why I took all their teaching to heart because knowledge might be archaic, redundant, or old, but at one point in time in life, they might come in handy.
One thing I've learned over time is that value might be uniquely determined, but there's a universal acceptance that everyone tends to simultaneously agree to.
For example, not everyone likes diamond, In fact, some people would prefer not to own them, but we still universally agree that it holds value, because of their worth.
Humans are always sentimental in the bestowment of value to a person or commodity, however, irrespective of sentimental, there are things we know their value and this is because of the external worth they carry.
When worth is undeniable value is hardly subjective
.....even if people hold a sentimental belief that what's valuable for others might not be valuable for them, this coming from a place of preference and not from a statement of fact. Facts and beliefs are two different things.
While the former is universally empirical, the latter is opinionatedly validatable. In this post, I created an anecdote with a laptop and wedding gown
In retrospection, I want to simplify that wedding gowns hold no secondary value and the reason why I think so is that it serves the purpose of only one event, which most people hold only once in their lifetime; a wedding ceremony.
So they cannot use it for a second time unless they choose to give it out and allow it to serve someone else. Even at this, they can still be very expensive.
This is because of its iconic nature and the things it tends to symbolize, hence the makers attach a sentimental value to it, by inflating the original money valuation. Because of this appeal, people tend to not mind the price and can go as far as even borrowing money to buy one.
On the other hand, owning a laptop is undeniably valuable: you can learn a skill, do a job, and even have access to your business ventures which can make you money in return.
However, someone spends 800$ on a laptop and another person spends the same amount on a wedding gown. It is only one person who will obtain recurrent value for money.
However I won't deny that the two people will obtain the value they bought sought, but when we're unbiased and choose to be objective in our deductions, we'd have our answers.
In reality, there are things that the value is not arguable and in question, this is why I think people should balance their metrics for judging value, so they wouldn't be blindsided in their personal finance journey.
Interested in some more of my works?
