Misery Loves Company

[Milkman666]

I've been following, and even joining in on the discussion around announcing major milestones (specifically paying off one's mortgage) to family and friends and have been thinking about both sides of the discussion a lot.

I've noticed something I find interesting.

It seems that people I've observed over the past couple of months actually like to talk about the financial hardships they are having and derive some sort of feeling of companionship from it. It seems many folks have accepted that living in debt is how it is supposed to be because this is how it is for most people they talk to (partly due to the fact that many Mustachians keep pretty tight lipped about their successes?).

It's very similar to smokers who seem to discuss quitting on an ongoing basis. They seem to get comfort, support and an excuse from other smokers. Nobody else can quit either, so I'm in the same boat as everyone else.

Maybe if people were bombarded with stories of people in similar income brackets to their own successfully managing their money, instead of how everyone's drowning in debt and it's not their fault, people would take a longer, harder look at their financial house and start cleaning up!

November is Financial Literacy Month in Canada (http://www.fcac-acfc.gc.ca/eng/flm/index-eng.asp), and I think the guvment should get out there with stories of normal people, with normal incomes grooming their 'staches and leading stress free lives as FI or soon to be FI.

[wiferkhart]

Great idea - in theory.  In my experience, money success stories bring out the resentful, incredulous and kinda nasty side in some people.

We've pretty much given up on sharing our successes with non-mustatians types since the typical response is something along the lines of: "that's cuz you guys don't have kids so you don't understand/I have to have this fancy car (or widget) for my job/I couldn't live without my cable tv (or whatever)/by the way, can I have some money?"

I think that people just like to whine and complaint because it's easier that actually *doing* something about the situation. 

[Milkman666]

Great idea - in theory.  In my experience, money success stories bring out the resentful, incredulous and kinda nasty side in some people.

That's why I think it would be helpful for the government to bombard us with stories of normal people succeeding; the government is accustomed to people being nasty! Plus the powers that be could publish details of real people's lives without specifically identifying them. We all know the media won't do it because doom and gloom sells.

I must have thicker skin than most, or am intimidating to some, because I am not aware of this resentment, or nasty side of people when talking about my journey to FI, and nobody has asked me for money. I am well equipped and well suited for this kind of situation (confrontation) should it happen.

I just hate that people justify serious indebtedness because it is the norm (as they see it).

[wiferkhart]

That's why I think it would be helpful for the government to bombard us with stories of normal people succeeding; the government is accustomed to people being nasty! Plus the powers that be could publish details of real people's lives without specifically identifying them. We all know the media won't do it because doom and gloom sells.

Maybe taking the FI message beyond the people who know us personally could make a difference. 

Both of us are pretty nonconfrontational and fairly thick skinned, but some of our family and close friends haven't be particularly nice when we shared things like paying off our mortgage or buying a new car with cash.  We stopped sharing at all after we mentioned that having an emergency fund saved our butts when our water heater blew up last winter.  We got a lot of resentment (oddly enough) because we had the money to fix the problem.

Maybe we need a new family and new friends ;)

You're certainly right that the mainstream media isn't going to run with it - encouraging people to buy less/save more wouldn't make the advertisers happy!

[Togoshiman]

I really notice this.  When I bought a nice used car a couple of years ago there were kudos from the neighbours, who seemed to think it was brand new.  I was not pleased at this because I specifically hunt for really good value and not to impress people.  I do know how to get a very nice used car, however.  When I took pains to explain that my car was quite used, not new and cheaper than the cheapest new car on the market the tone changed rapidly.  I sort of got a 'good for you but screw you' vibe.

I have gotten this time and again from friends, family or coworkers when I have occasionally shared some nugget of frugality such as using the library, buying my work clothes at consignment shops or (the latest) using a safety razor instead of the blade system b.s.  In every single case there is a sort of knee-jerk 'that would never work for me because X' with this undercurrent of resentment. 

Trying to put my finger on it, it seems like people feel you are gaming the system and getting ahead unreasonably.  It's really the weirdest thing and, like others have said, feels like you're the only one who's woken up from the Matrix.  I too have just stopped talking about it beyond Mrs. Togoshi.

T.

[Togoshiman]

One other weird example of misery loves company (and to perpetuate misery): my office has free coffee.  Nothing too gourmet, but honest-to-goodness ground coffee made in big coffee pots.  It's kind of old fashioned even though all the equipment is brand new.  I love it, especially in place of those cartridge systems that are in vogue. 

Anyway, a significant majority of people turn their noses up at it and insist on running to the food court in our building to get their chain coffee fix.  In almost every case the excuse is, 'I don't know how you can drink that swill'.  I think the tone is actually, 'only the bottom-feeders in the company would stoop to drink that; upwardly mobile professionals like me never would'. 

My easy chameleon solution was a branded travel mug from the chain place on sale filled with the in-house coffee.  Anyway, it's truly all around.  I feel like the Unibomber sometimes.

[Matte]

Yup, it sure does bring resent.  My issues were more when I bought my house, I kept very quiet about my money until that.  I was 20, people got wind that I bought my place, and all of a sudden expected me to have unlimited pockets and share.  I am still footing the bill from a hotel room I rented with a few former friends who refused to pay me back for the rental because they thought that since I had a house I should pay.  Also others would hassle me to buy rounds of drinks at the bar, and generally they treated me like I owed them.  I can't say that they are miserable, they all still live with their patents, have huge car loans go on fancy trips, eat at restraints every day, freely leave jobs whenever they want.  They have not got personal independence, and financial independance is not even an idea.   I wish them the best but we do not see each other anymore because we really can't relate. 

[Posthumane]

Yup, it sure does bring resent.  My issues were more when I bought my house, I kept very quiet about my money until that.  I was 20, people got wind that I bought my place, and all of a sudden expected me to have unlimited pockets and share.  I am still footing the bill from a hotel room I rented with a few former friends who refused to pay me back for the rental because they thought that since I had a house I should pay.  Also others would hassle me to buy rounds of drinks at the bar, and generally they treated me like I owed them.  I can't say that they are miserable, they all still live with their patents, have huge car loans go on fancy trips, eat at restraints every day, freely leave jobs whenever they want.  They have not got personal independence, and financial independance is not even an idea.   I wish them the best but we do not see each other anymore because we really can't relate.

Man, if I had friends that started hassling me to buy them drinks or anything else because they thought I had more money than them, they would very quickly stop being my friends. Perhaps I'm lucky regarding the people who I hang out with, but the times that I've been better off than my friends financially I never got any pressure to foot the bill. They would occasionally lament that they couldn't afford to go out if I invited them somewhere, and would instead suggest that I come to their house instead (which I keenly accepted, bringing drinks and such with me to share with them, though I never got the impression that I was *expected* to). There are some spendy people around my office, but most tend to be fairly modest. That may be because I work amongst scientists and engineers.

The most surprising instances of pushback regarding frugal tendencies tend to come from my parents. My dad is particularly surprising at times since he's generally been quite frugal throughout his life. However, a couple years ago he went out and bought a brand new car, something he'd never done before because he felt buying new was not worth it. What got me was how much his tone about my car tendencies changed after that. Despite the fact that he would sing praises before about how good I am at buying cheap cars and making them last, he was suddenly trying to convince me that I should buy a new car because I'm not a student anymore and shouldn't look like one, old cars are expensive to maintain, and so on. The annoying part of it all was he would say these things in almost the same breath after he finished complaining about how bad a deal his new car purchase was, how he was unhappy with how expensive it is and how it already has some problems, etc. It was a very blatant message of "You've done well in the past, but you should stop doing it that way because I did, and you need to come join me in my misery."

[Heather]

People talk about things that worry them, to get reassurance that their actions are socially acceptable. 

Say you really like pie, though you know it is bad for your waistline.  You start letting yourself get away with eating pie every day.
You are feeling a bit worried about this, and tell your friends. They reply  "Oh, we eat pie every day too. It's really bad".  Now you feel much relieved: I'm not so bad, in a relative sense, because most others are bad in the same way.   But what if, instead, all your friends had said "Oh my god, pie every day!, Thats crazy!", then you might have felt a shock of shame, but then you might have gone home and skipped your pie that night.

There is a tendency to blame the messenger when we don't like the news, but if everyone else is in agreement, we stop blaming them, and are more likely to force ourselves to improve.   But, if most people say "It's ok, I do it too", and there is one dissenting voice who says "Pie! That's crazy.", there is a pressure to make the oddball conform.  The majority would rather not feel guilty, and one easy way to fix the problem is to tell the goody-goody to please shut up.

People are not fools.  We have impulses to do all sorts of things we ideally shouldn't, but we use feedback from others to find out which ones are ok and which ones will get us voted off of the island.  It's an innate democratic instinct, which lets us collectively hammer out a flexible and constantly evolving social contract.  The mechanism is sound, and very useful in many good ways, but it does have the downside of allowing people to let themselves get fat and broke.