Recently I read this article on the Guardian on how tech workers in Silicon Valley are struggling where the cost of living is starting to outweigh the high salaries that you would expect a person in that area and field would earn. According to that article one would earn on average about $100,000 and $700,000 a year. Rent was apparently the biggest cost where it was expressed that $3000 a month is considered “cheap” there. So at minimum I suppose if the person made $100,000 a year with that expense then they would have $36,000 left for everything else.
Now as expected this generated a lot of criticism where people who make way less scoff at the idea that a person with that salary can’t live a comfortable life. Especially with the examples of like a couple that makes over one million a year in combined income. From what I read often the rebuttal to this is that people criticising them or providing financial advice don’t exactly live in that situation so they can’t criticize them on things such as having questionable money management skills as an example.
For whatever reason after this article I saw this old viral video where a person named Alexis Bloomer was trying to explain what is wrong with our generation due to others always criticizing about it.
In a nutshell I guess you can say it is entitlement and not appreciating what one is provided that is more prevalent with say a millennial group which seemed to be her message from what I got out of it. For the most part I think that is true for anyone regardless of what group you are trying to categorize one in as it is more about that life experience I feel.
What fascinated me was the contrast as there was another video done by a Simon Sinek who talked about the same topic.
The message in many ways was the same I felt except with Simon Sinek I guess you can say he is the “outsider.” With the people that don’t want to change in any way it seemed with Alexis Bloomer people would tell her that she doesn’t know what she is talking about in the sense of her life isn’t theirs and interestingly enough people say the same thing to Simon Sinek as he literally isn’t in that group.
So that brought me back to this article about finance and mindset with people in general. While granted a person like myself doesn’t exactly live in that area so I can’t exactly say for sure what it is like, when I read quotes like this that stated “He said he won’t miss some of the more mundane day-to-day costs, like spending $8 on a bagel and coffee or $12 on freshly pressed juice” I am inclined to say that is just simply making a conscious lifestyle choice to spend more. Example, if you insist in having freshly pressed juice every day at $12 a pop wouldn’t that make more sense to start investing in a way to make it yourself? The thought of spending $4,380 a year with vendor bought juice is mind boggling to me in North America when you have so many other options that would be cheaper.
From my personal experience it usually doesn’t make too much of a difference on who is telling the person. If one is insistent in staying with their own ways I often find people will make every excuse in the book to say they are just different, so to speak, where you say simply don’t get them as their reason to say something can’t be fixed or to adapt with methods that will actually work for their scenario.
I usually have a middle of the ground perspective for things like this. The example that I can think of off the top of my head is it’s like driving a car where it requires you to press your foot on the pedal in a controlled manner. Now imagine someone that literally has no legs but instead can actually drive with their hands on the pedal somehow and still have full vision and control. Like there I would say if they can actually still drive that car smoothly and all then who are we to say it’s the wrong way to do it? So like with the finance and the juice example if they are actually managing their money very well then what does it matter that they spend that much? But if one starts complaining about finance then that is a different story.
But often what I would see is like with the car example it would be like someone who insists in always stepping on the peddle very hard where the car goes out of control and they can’t drive smoothly. Then imagine when you try and correct the person on how to drive properly they insist in telling you they are just different and so they just keep justifying in doing what they do. I often find the only way to change this is people need to be in a completely different environment. That’s true for most things I find and finance is no different.