Hello gentle readers (all three of you). I promised you that I would be writing about things that interested me, and if you were along for the ride then welcome!
Today I read something on twitter from one of the favorite accounts that I follow. Zuby is really interesting, mostly because of the eclectic doses of common sense he provides. This one struck me:
I learned a new word today: “Flex”. The Urban Dictionary says it means “to show off”. Which in this case is to show of by spending a lot of money.
When I was a young guy, my first job was in a convenience store. A man drove up in his Cadillac, and three piece suit, and walked in and began abusing us. The older man working with me was polite to the man and after the man left, he told me something I’ll never forget:
“That man right there is what we call a ‘ten-cent millionaire’. He drives a Cadillac, but probably can’t afford to put gas in it. He wears that expensive suit, but he probably can’t afford underwear”.
This is what we see a lot of nowadays. People go into the new car showroom, and they negotiate a price on a car, then figure out if they can make the payments. They never think about how much the car will cost them over the period of ownership, and a few years down the road are surprised that they owe more than the car is worth.
Ten-cent millionaires.
I bought my first car, a used Ford Festiva for $2,700 cash. I drove it into the ground and my next car was about the same, as was my third. 25 years into driving these cars, I asked my wife if I could do a bit of an upgrade. She asked: “What kind of upgrade?” I said: “Mercedes or BMW”. So I bought a used “baby Benz” for cash with 75,000 miles on it. 12 years later when I got rid of it, it had 225,000 miles on it. I never had a car payment.
One of the most important lessons I learned in my life was how to delay my gratification, and sometimes that delay takes years.
So now we’re talking about “student loan forgiveness”.1 Middle and upper class people who stupidly borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless degrees want us to pay the cost.
Screw them.
There’s no “forgiveness”. You and I will be paying for it.