Ignore the click-bait title. This is one woman's coming of age story as she learns to plan for her future; well written and with good self-understanding.
Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#62After years of living for the moment and YOLOing, author felt bad because she was in her 30s and didnt have wealth, then her parents gave her a large lump sum of money and she was able to apply things she learned from financial management books. The end.
Yeah I was waiting for the point in this article where it became about "outdoorsy types" and not the author but it never happened. I'd be embarrassed too, mismanaging money and relying on my parents support at 34 years old. I guess the author was just so embarrassed that she published this article about it.
Great job with the antagonizing, clickbait title though. I'm guessing "My Tone-deaf Autobiography about How Irresponsible I am" was thrown out.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#63After years of living for the moment and YOLOing, author felt bad because she was in her 30s and didnt have wealth, then her parents gave her a large lump sum of money and she was able to apply things she learned from financial management books. The end.
I can’t wait until I can move into a “retired millionaire’s” house at below market rent when I run into tough times. What an inspiring article.
Read between the lines there. She describes him the way people describe their significant others and not the way people generally describe mentors and/or business partners. People don't generally know their landlords well enough to get an understanding of the details of their business and landlords don't tend to rent stuff out at highly discounted rates without very specific business reasons or emotional attachment.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people is the wrong metric for this statistic. A large number of just-barely-affluent nouveau riche could drown out a handful of old money robber barons that own the world. The much more interesting statistic would slice it by dollar: What percentage of dollars are owned by first-generation wealthy versus old money?
Really depends on what you’re trying to use the number for. If you’re trying to study wealthy people, it makes sense to use stats that are counting people filtered by wealth. If you are trying to study wealth itself, it makes sense to use stats that are weighted by dollar.
that's what I figured, the people metric seems more pertinent to ideas of economic mobility across the population as a whole, we could think of a population percentile, like say jumping into the notorious 1%.
But the other metric is interesting too, something like an age x wealth product, the longer the wealth was held the higher the score, and the more wealth held the higher the score too. One could imagine like an area under net worth curve and create a histogram with decades of time as buckets, say across a 300 year span maybe?
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#65I'm not a particularly outdoorsy person, but being a frugal person, I have noticed that a lot of outdoors activities really do "require" an investment. Equipment can be expensive, as can ski passes or trips. Once you hang out in those circles (as the article states), you don't want to have cheap gear. It's as with anything, I suppose, but with gear, there's always more and better things, which never interested me. I…
Gear is fashion in this situation, complete with the yearly refresh to avoid looking unfashionable.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#66I'm a firm believer that everyone should have a skill they can use to support themselves. It doesn't really matter what that is as long as you can't be replaced easily by unskilled labour. So take the author. She wants to be a ski bum while she's young. I respect that, actually. So the question such people should be asking is: what skill could I gain that is compatible with that? Example: being a qualified paramedic/…
> The people people live one paycheck away from being destitute varies ... generally because they've taken on long term expenses they can barely afford.
Bare-minimun necessary expenses like a place to live, a way to get to work, sensible insurance, and the miscellaneous expenses of life like groceries and clothing approach or exceed minimum wage in many areas. I'd argue that the power dynamics of the employment market cause prevailing wages to tend asymptotically toward this level. There's certainly an element of materialist culture that results in some number of people parking leased BMWs in McMansions to keep up with the Joneses, or of YOLO irresponsibility with adrenaline junkies spending their whole paycheck on adventure gear. But there's also on the order of a million ordinary Walmart cashiers making $11 an hour while working 30 hour weeks so the company doesn't have to pay benefits. Those people don't have to be either irresponsible or greedy to live paycheck to paycheck, even with good finances that's the default.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but I can tell you that there were $60 rounds of drinks purchased without a second thought and $25 cab rides to the bars. There were $1,500 ski-season cabin shares in Lake Tahoe and a $150-a-month membership at Equinox. There were multiple Starbucks lattes per day and $18 organic steak salads eaten at my desk. I don't think this is someone who can't cover essential bills with their salary. This is the trap kids fal…
As a reasonably frugal person, it is very annoying that outdoorsy people set the standard for spending, and they make me look stingy. I’m not stingy. I’m sane. They’re the ones going bankrupt ;) 20 years later: They’re married with kids and I’m single. Perhaps I really looked stingy ;) Moral of the story: People in average are de facto pushed to consume all their margin.
I know the feeling. I often prefer not to eat anywhere the costs are more than $10 and usually go for places around $5.
I wish to retire in a few years and they in a few decades.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#68>I have no idea where all my money went. I can so relate to that. Fortunately my natural instincts appear to leave me with cash at end of month which I move to savings...but that is about the extent of my control over things.
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Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#69After years of living for the moment and YOLOing, author felt bad because she was in her 30s and didnt have wealth, then her parents gave her a large lump sum of money and she was able to apply things she learned from financial management books. The end.
Actually, she put all of her nest eggs into an inflated asset which sounds like she still hasn't really learned the most important lessons.
Re: Young, Dumb, and Broke: Why Outdoorsy Types Suck at Money
#70After years of living for the moment and YOLOing, author felt bad because she was in her 30s and didnt have wealth, then her parents gave her a large lump sum of money and she was able to apply things she learned from financial management books. The end.
The older the company I mix with, the more I realize how common it is for parents to give their kids a huge leg up financially. I am one of the only people in my friend group to not have been given the equivalent of a large home down payment by the time they were thirty.