It’s very difficult to squirrel away money for a later date. For the foreseeable future, I know that I am consigned to renting an overpriced flat and that any thoughts of a mortgage or getting a foothold on the property ladder have been successfully stamped out by an over-inflated market that is only now being reconciled, but this doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be trying to collect funds for a later date.
When I was still at school, we studied John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, which despite the best efforts of the English Literature interrogation approach of dissecting text, I thoroughly enjoyed. Without giving too much away, the main theme of the book is that two friends are trying to work and save enough money to buy a farm of their own and live the American dream. One of the comments made early on is that all the farm labourers start with that intention but end up spending all of their earnings on whiskey, women and pool (assumedly in that order). It becomes clear later on in the book that this is probably what is going to happen to the main characters as well and that they too are going to end up getting locked in this cycle of working, earning money, spending money, repeat.
This cycle sounds an awful lot like what can happen to anyone in life if you’re not careful. There is a significant consumer urge built in to a lot of western society, and if you are immune to it, congratulations, but I know that I for one am not. Somehow, I get convinced that I need to buy things that I really don’t need to buy. Fortunately enough, I have a guilt switch that gets automatically thrown once the money gets too big and I don’t spend vast amounts of money or land myself with buy now pay later schemes that can become crippling, but I can see how easy it is to fall into those. It is so difficult to resist the lure of instant gratification. Work for most people is tough or at the very least despised and we all need picking up from those sorts of things, and a quick bit of retail therapy can often seem like the obvious answer.
I don’t know what the answer is to this. It’s easy enough to preach willpower and budgeting, but we’ll all give in to that eventually. Maybe the key is to just always work and not give yourself the time to spend your earnings, or maybe it’s to earn so much money that you can’t realistically find enough ways to spend it all.
Of Mice and Men is quite a short book and well worth a read. It has certainly become more poignant to me since living an independent existence with an uncertain goal before me.
Additional Notes:
The name of the book comes from a poem, “To a Mouse” and the full saying goes something along the lines of “The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry” or as it is in it’s native Scottish, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley”. I really hate it when things gang aft agley.
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Monday, 26 January 2009
Issues of Naivety and Trust
Due to a mixture of a rarefied existence at university and a natural lack of life experience, I often find myself assuming that everyone is trustworthy and deep down a generally good person. I often find myself saying “oh, but they’re ok really” and I’ve recently started to wonder if that’s always going to be the case.
This sentiment is often called naivety, but it made me think that maybe it’s not such a bad thing. It could be that the basic levels of trust are what gets us through society as a whole and maybe this naivety is just a good intention to get through life as smoothly as possible. I’m confident in the fact that even people that you couldn’t possibly describe as naive get caught out by people betraying them or otherwise acting in an untrustworthy manner, so maybe on some level we just need to forget about it, get past it and just hope we don’t get stung.
The following quote is from KPMG’s profile of a Fraudster published in 2007:
“Why are people often caught unaware when somebody is accused of fraud? Because it
is usually the colleague who is known to be helpful, polite and inconspicuous.
But most importantly it is the colleague that enjoys the absolute trust of both
superiors and colleagues.”
This is quite a frightening summary, and if we are to believe it, it means we need to become entirely self reliant in all matters and probably go and live in a cave, fending for ourselves for fear that the mild mannered guy who does all the printing might be the one stealing your sandwiches. Let the quote sink in for a while and you realise that what it is telling you is that those most likely to betray you are those that inspire the most trust in you.
It’s clear that everyone gets caught out. The number of frauds that take place on a daily basis are staggering and we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of them coming to light as we hit the recession, as the majority of frauds always come to light when money is a little bit more scarce. I’m guessing that this is because people start looking at their account books a little closer only to notice a few holes, and the most famous recent holes in account books started to become apparent around 20 years ago on the last market slump, such as the Robert Maxwell pension scandal, and we’ve already had some crackers in the financial crisis leading to our current recession, such as Bernard Madoff, whose fraud can no longer be called a fraud, but more of a lifetime achievement.
Despite massive frauds taking place on a daily basis, trust isn’t a bad thing. It is required for a smooth running of society after all. You have to trust the postman to deliver your letters, the bank manager to direct your finances without skimming bits off the top, the insurance company not to steal your credit card details when you give it to them over the phone, your contractors not to swipe your beer from the fridge, and your government not to give away your personal details, including the names, addresses and private phobias of your children. Whether or not you can trust them is irrelevant, you have to trust them on some level, other wise it all falls apart and you have to move in to that aforementioned cave.
I’m not saying that we should all live with our heads in the sand. It is clear in some situations that you shouldn’t hand money over for something. I’m not saying that you should respond to all those “update your information” requests that get emailed to you from “Loylds” or “Bralcays” or “Hallifacts” bank, or that you should give money to the Nigerian colonel in order to unfreeze his assets, but at the same time, try to have a little faith in the rest of humanity. I hate to go on about it, but my adventure with the washing machine generated a lot of distrust towards the man I was buying it from and in all sensibility I should have walked away, but as a result of having a little faith, I do now have a functioning washing machine and clean underwear again.
With the quote above in mind, look twice at the mild mannered man in grey who never offends but that just seems like a cog in the machine, but remember that not everyone is a fraudster and the majority of people are still for the most part good and deserve your trust.
Additional Notes:
Bernard Madoff: the man with the most comical name for a fraudster embezzling money. Really though, once you get to swiping fifty billion dollars before anyone notices, that’s undeniably talented.
You’ll notice I painfully avoided the phrase “Credit Crunch”. I can’t stand it. What’s even worse is that at some point I heard a stupid joke referring to a cereal called “Credit Crunch” and now all I can see when someone says something about financial complications, is a bowel of cornflakes.
This sentiment is often called naivety, but it made me think that maybe it’s not such a bad thing. It could be that the basic levels of trust are what gets us through society as a whole and maybe this naivety is just a good intention to get through life as smoothly as possible. I’m confident in the fact that even people that you couldn’t possibly describe as naive get caught out by people betraying them or otherwise acting in an untrustworthy manner, so maybe on some level we just need to forget about it, get past it and just hope we don’t get stung.
The following quote is from KPMG’s profile of a Fraudster published in 2007:
“Why are people often caught unaware when somebody is accused of fraud? Because it
is usually the colleague who is known to be helpful, polite and inconspicuous.
But most importantly it is the colleague that enjoys the absolute trust of both
superiors and colleagues.”
This is quite a frightening summary, and if we are to believe it, it means we need to become entirely self reliant in all matters and probably go and live in a cave, fending for ourselves for fear that the mild mannered guy who does all the printing might be the one stealing your sandwiches. Let the quote sink in for a while and you realise that what it is telling you is that those most likely to betray you are those that inspire the most trust in you.
It’s clear that everyone gets caught out. The number of frauds that take place on a daily basis are staggering and we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of them coming to light as we hit the recession, as the majority of frauds always come to light when money is a little bit more scarce. I’m guessing that this is because people start looking at their account books a little closer only to notice a few holes, and the most famous recent holes in account books started to become apparent around 20 years ago on the last market slump, such as the Robert Maxwell pension scandal, and we’ve already had some crackers in the financial crisis leading to our current recession, such as Bernard Madoff, whose fraud can no longer be called a fraud, but more of a lifetime achievement.
Despite massive frauds taking place on a daily basis, trust isn’t a bad thing. It is required for a smooth running of society after all. You have to trust the postman to deliver your letters, the bank manager to direct your finances without skimming bits off the top, the insurance company not to steal your credit card details when you give it to them over the phone, your contractors not to swipe your beer from the fridge, and your government not to give away your personal details, including the names, addresses and private phobias of your children. Whether or not you can trust them is irrelevant, you have to trust them on some level, other wise it all falls apart and you have to move in to that aforementioned cave.
I’m not saying that we should all live with our heads in the sand. It is clear in some situations that you shouldn’t hand money over for something. I’m not saying that you should respond to all those “update your information” requests that get emailed to you from “Loylds” or “Bralcays” or “Hallifacts” bank, or that you should give money to the Nigerian colonel in order to unfreeze his assets, but at the same time, try to have a little faith in the rest of humanity. I hate to go on about it, but my adventure with the washing machine generated a lot of distrust towards the man I was buying it from and in all sensibility I should have walked away, but as a result of having a little faith, I do now have a functioning washing machine and clean underwear again.
With the quote above in mind, look twice at the mild mannered man in grey who never offends but that just seems like a cog in the machine, but remember that not everyone is a fraudster and the majority of people are still for the most part good and deserve your trust.
Additional Notes:
Bernard Madoff: the man with the most comical name for a fraudster embezzling money. Really though, once you get to swiping fifty billion dollars before anyone notices, that’s undeniably talented.
You’ll notice I painfully avoided the phrase “Credit Crunch”. I can’t stand it. What’s even worse is that at some point I heard a stupid joke referring to a cereal called “Credit Crunch” and now all I can see when someone says something about financial complications, is a bowel of cornflakes.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Cave Emptor: Buyer Beware – Doing your homework before shopping
I was always taught to never rush in to things when it came to going shopping for certain items. Doing the research about whatever it is you’re buying is absolutely essential if you’re wanting to avoid being consumed with regret.
Over the last couple of years of living independently of my warm and fluffy home in the Cotswolds, I have experienced first hand why you must be careful in what you buy. My recent adventures aside, there have been several things that I’ve regretted buying or wished I’d looked in to things a bit more. The following pieces of micro-advice, will either help, or tell you something you already know, and sometimes being told something you already know is very helpful.
1) Cheap stuff will almost always break. Now, I’m sure that Argos don’t do it on purpose, and to be perfectly fair, they are just the middleman in that particular consumer arrangement, but the amount of stuff that we’ve bought from there that’s cheap and has broken is staggering. The best one was a tent that Fien and I bought to take to a festival, and the only time we realised that it wasn’t one hundred percent in working order was when we were trying to put it up. That’s pretty stupid on our part for not testing it first, but even so, it was cheap and of low quality and it broke. It also chose to break in the rain, which did nothing for my blood pressure, and I should think that was a very educational day for the other Belgian festival goers in our immediate area as they were able to witness first hand the versatility of the English language once it is directed towards a pile of semi-waterproof unhelpful broken-enough-to-be-a-problem canvass.
2) Paying over the odds for something doesn’t mean it’s going to be of a higher quality. It sounds ridiculous and patronising, but finding out exactly how much something is meant to cost is crucial to living without buyers remorse. If you have it in mind that cheap stuff will probably break, you can fall in to the trap of automatically assuming that expensive is better. Do a bit of background research into costs and you’ll be amazed to see that things can be cheaper in places you wouldn’t expect them to be.
3) Make sure the item is right for your needs. Apparently, people only ever buy things for one of two reasons. They buy things to solve a problem or they buy things to make themselves feel better. Whatever you’re buying, if it’s a solution to a problem, make sure that solution will be adequate and won’t just create more problems, and if it’s something to make you feel better, make sure it’s actually something you want. Never underestimate the power of advertising in it’s ability to make you feel like you need things that you really don’t.
A couple of days ago, one of the bloggers I regularly keep up with posted this. This is an example of incredible ingenuity in terms of merging a PC and several games consoles to make a monstrously-incredible media station. This gave me an idea for a solution to a problem that I’ve had for a while in that I have a console sitting around that’s been demoted by a newer model but still has some use left in it. I quickly became obsessed with the idea of hooking it up to my monitor through my PC, and a trip to Maplan later found me the owner of two pieces of equipment that wouldn’t do the job, but that I had been convinced would. This was completely my own fault. I hadn’t researched the matter properly and it was only when I came to look a bit closer at the ends of the cables that I realised that the two ends just wouldn’t fit together, no matter how hard I mashed them together. Although I did manage to get the redundant kit returned and acquire something to get the job done, I wasted a lot of time in trying to get it right, that wouldn’t have been needed if I’d just spent another half an hour finding out exactly what I needed.
I was lucky in that I made this mistake with something incredibly small that I could take back, but had it been something bigger I could have found myself in a very difficult situation.
Additional Notes:
I’m not actually too sure what happened to our tent. I think Fien managed to offload it onto an unsuspecting sibling, but as far as I’m concerned, if that tent so much as even thinks about coming back to England....
The man at Maplan actually ended up telling me that the cable I needed was probably available on the internet. I don’t know why my ears didn’t hone in on the use of the word “probably” earlier than they did. It turns out the actual cable was a figment of the assistant’s imagination. There were forum threads on the matter, but I quickly ascertained that they were forum posts on how to theoretically make a cable and what sort of equipment and sorcery one would need to splice the wires together.
The Blogger that I’ve linked is Shamus Young and his blog is for those of us with a penchant for the geeky side of life. If you’ve ever played a role playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons, his webcomic “DM of the Rings” is also fantastic, but probably won’t make any sense to any anyone that didn’t understand this last sentence.
Over the last couple of years of living independently of my warm and fluffy home in the Cotswolds, I have experienced first hand why you must be careful in what you buy. My recent adventures aside, there have been several things that I’ve regretted buying or wished I’d looked in to things a bit more. The following pieces of micro-advice, will either help, or tell you something you already know, and sometimes being told something you already know is very helpful.
1) Cheap stuff will almost always break. Now, I’m sure that Argos don’t do it on purpose, and to be perfectly fair, they are just the middleman in that particular consumer arrangement, but the amount of stuff that we’ve bought from there that’s cheap and has broken is staggering. The best one was a tent that Fien and I bought to take to a festival, and the only time we realised that it wasn’t one hundred percent in working order was when we were trying to put it up. That’s pretty stupid on our part for not testing it first, but even so, it was cheap and of low quality and it broke. It also chose to break in the rain, which did nothing for my blood pressure, and I should think that was a very educational day for the other Belgian festival goers in our immediate area as they were able to witness first hand the versatility of the English language once it is directed towards a pile of semi-waterproof unhelpful broken-enough-to-be-a-problem canvass.
2) Paying over the odds for something doesn’t mean it’s going to be of a higher quality. It sounds ridiculous and patronising, but finding out exactly how much something is meant to cost is crucial to living without buyers remorse. If you have it in mind that cheap stuff will probably break, you can fall in to the trap of automatically assuming that expensive is better. Do a bit of background research into costs and you’ll be amazed to see that things can be cheaper in places you wouldn’t expect them to be.
3) Make sure the item is right for your needs. Apparently, people only ever buy things for one of two reasons. They buy things to solve a problem or they buy things to make themselves feel better. Whatever you’re buying, if it’s a solution to a problem, make sure that solution will be adequate and won’t just create more problems, and if it’s something to make you feel better, make sure it’s actually something you want. Never underestimate the power of advertising in it’s ability to make you feel like you need things that you really don’t.
A couple of days ago, one of the bloggers I regularly keep up with posted this. This is an example of incredible ingenuity in terms of merging a PC and several games consoles to make a monstrously-incredible media station. This gave me an idea for a solution to a problem that I’ve had for a while in that I have a console sitting around that’s been demoted by a newer model but still has some use left in it. I quickly became obsessed with the idea of hooking it up to my monitor through my PC, and a trip to Maplan later found me the owner of two pieces of equipment that wouldn’t do the job, but that I had been convinced would. This was completely my own fault. I hadn’t researched the matter properly and it was only when I came to look a bit closer at the ends of the cables that I realised that the two ends just wouldn’t fit together, no matter how hard I mashed them together. Although I did manage to get the redundant kit returned and acquire something to get the job done, I wasted a lot of time in trying to get it right, that wouldn’t have been needed if I’d just spent another half an hour finding out exactly what I needed.
I was lucky in that I made this mistake with something incredibly small that I could take back, but had it been something bigger I could have found myself in a very difficult situation.
Additional Notes:
I’m not actually too sure what happened to our tent. I think Fien managed to offload it onto an unsuspecting sibling, but as far as I’m concerned, if that tent so much as even thinks about coming back to England....
The man at Maplan actually ended up telling me that the cable I needed was probably available on the internet. I don’t know why my ears didn’t hone in on the use of the word “probably” earlier than they did. It turns out the actual cable was a figment of the assistant’s imagination. There were forum threads on the matter, but I quickly ascertained that they were forum posts on how to theoretically make a cable and what sort of equipment and sorcery one would need to splice the wires together.
The Blogger that I’ve linked is Shamus Young and his blog is for those of us with a penchant for the geeky side of life. If you’ve ever played a role playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons, his webcomic “DM of the Rings” is also fantastic, but probably won’t make any sense to any anyone that didn’t understand this last sentence.
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