This is going to be a rant. But sometimes rant posts are fun. Let’s see what happens…
Before I get too far along in chronicling my financial mistakes on the blog, there is something that I want to make crystal clear:
Everyone makes financial mistakes, whether they are humble enough to admit it or not.
Man, have my juices been flowing. I’m a laidback guy and can usually keep my cool, but when the same thing keeps popping up again and again, that’s when I draw the line.
Are you one of the them? Are you one of those people who has never made a financial misstep in their entire lives… one of the chosen to grace us with their epitome of financial perfection so that we can lay down our monetary sins at the altar of their investing genius?
Are you? I have to ask. Because I have been naïve.
I never thought I’d have to write a post like this. I’ve already written my first two pieces on financial mistakes and am about to finish up my third, when I decided I had to pump the brakes and pull back.
There’s a mischievous trend developing here that needs to be addressed. I had assumed that pragmatism and humility would eventually rule the day, but to my dismay, I have been wrong.
The second you tell me you have never made a financial mistake; my ears are dead to you.
You might think this is so obvious – of course people make financial mistakes Q-FI – so why the fuck am I wasting my time writing this? But I assure you, it is necessary.
The other day I’m listening to a FIRE podcast, and the interviewees like to close out the episode by asking the guest what is the biggest financial mistake that they have made? The guest pauses dramatically for effect, setting the stage for his captive listeners, and then reveals his answer with a smugness so thick a chainsaw couldn’t cut into it:
“I have never really made financial mistakes. I’ve always been good with money.”
Wow, I thought, no financial mistakes. This guy was a numbers guru, a genius-savant that should be running wall street. Maybe Buffet should give him a call for a few pointers. But too bad he couldn’t humble himself to bestow a learning experience to those who probably need it.
And that was it. I brushed it off. No big deal. If someone doesn’t want to be honest with themselves, that’s up to them. No skin off my back.
However, as a few more days go by and I keep listening to FIRE podcasts my jaw begins to drop. There’s not one guest who claims to have never made financial mistakes, but now there’s at least 5-6 that I have heard say the same thing.
I mean, even the King of early retirement, MMM himself has made financial mistakes.
What the fuck is going on here? Where did all these brilliant investing masterminds come from? Does the FIRE movement just breed them like popping popcorn in the microwave?
If you claim with a straight face that you’ve never made a financial mistake, I can only think of two reasons why you would utter such a statement. One, you either lack the emotional intelligence to practice humility, or two, your self-awareness is so far buried under your vanity, you honestly don’t know what the truth is.
I’m a relatively open-minded person (bias sneaks into my thoughts just like everyone else), but the lack of acknowledgement in admitting financial missteps baffles me.
This shouldn’t bother me, but it does. When I keep hearing the same thing over and over again on FIRE podcasts that are supposed to help educate their listeners with real life examples, I wonder why these interviewers don’t call out the charlatans when they make these claims? Put a little fire back in FIRE and do your audience a favor. Put pressure where it needs to be applied, and let’s see where the conversation takes us?
Yet I know that’s not the FIRE way. FI Bloggers and podcasters seem to tiptoe around controversy and confrontation as if people’s feelings were made of glass. Here’s a newsflash. People are different, complex and opinionated. There is no wrong or right way. There is only the way that works for you and that idea in itself leads to friction.
I like to operate from a foundation of positivity, but sometimes we need to call out the shot-callers. Push back on the savant’s face value assertions. Dig up the details of the online geniuses and tinker with the formulas underneath. Maybe we find brilliance. Or maybe we find smoke and mirrors.
The point is… it can’t hurt to ask. It can’t hurt to pose the question…
And why do these podcast guests feel the need to brush these financial educational opportunities aside? Is it ego? They are invited on the airwaves because of their story… a story worth telling… a story worth listening to… because they offer value in what they have overcome or improved in their lives.
Here is a request to them, to you (and you know who you are): “Please, share this with us. What do you have to lose?”
So this is where the tirade ends. If you’re still reading, you must have really enjoyed the contradictions circling in my mind like a train about to run off the tracks.
But in a long-winded, chest thumping hubris sort of way, this is why I enjoy writing about my own financial mistakes. It doesn’t feel good at the time, laying scalpel to wound, but I know the exercise is good for both me and hopefully educates some readers as well.
Let’s share and learn together. Give the people what they want. Honesty. Humility. Truth. And there’s nothing better than a good redemption story.
So how about you? What was that one financial mistake that never got away?
Happy late Thanksgiving all.
-Q-FI
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