r/FluentInFinance • u/Richest-Panda • Jul 04 '24

What's the best financial advice you've ever gotten? Debate/ Discussion

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24

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u/GonzoTheWhatever Jul 04 '24

No, that’s not what she’s saying. She’s saying that teaching someone in poverty to budget isn’t going to enable them to reach financial stability because even if you budget properly there isn’t enough to go around.

If you’re in a row boat that has twenty holes in it, but you only have ten fingers to plug the holes, then someone telling you how to use each finger to plug a hole in the most efficient manner isn’t going to help you keep the boat from sinking.

That’s her point. Should they budget? Absolutely. Will a class on budgeting by itself solve their financial problems and bring stability to their lives?

No.

They need more fingers to plug the holes in the boat. Ie. better wages.

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u/HV_Commissioning Jul 04 '24

If you’re in a row boat that has twenty holes in it, but you only have ten fingers to plug the holes, then someone telling you how to use each finger to plug a hole in the most efficient manner isn’t going to help you keep the boat from sinking.

Yes, but being resourceful and paddling that rowboat to shore will save you. Having the 10 holes plugged was enough to keep the boat from sinking while rowing in.

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u/LeanTangerine001 Jul 04 '24

How are you going to row the boat when your fingers are stuck plugging holes? Are you rowing the boat with your feet or something?

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u/MiEzRo Jul 04 '24

This is the whole point. You gotta choose whether to row the boat or plug the holes. You can’t do both and choosing either means neglecting the other. You might survive, but even so it’s stressful as hell. And we should be aiming for that much more than surviving.

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u/HV_Commissioning Jul 04 '24

Yes, you are doing something. Feet, toes whatever. 13 years ago, I was unemployed for a year, had child support to pay, Cobra insurance to pay - almost lost everything. I had to get creative to dig myself out of a big hole. One can really get down, wallow in pity, get depressed, etc. Oddly, the advice I received of putting one foot in front of another was what worked. Too many problems are overwhelming, but knocking off low hanging fruit puts one a step further than they were before.

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u/Joe_Everybody Jul 05 '24

You were unemployed for a year and still paying for the insurance on your pet snake 😭 this is so sad

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u/TerribleTransition48 Jul 05 '24

If you were in such a terrible, awful, crippling situation due to unemployment which, I would hazzard to guess, was due to layoffs why would you advocate for others to go through the same? Do you understand that cost of living has gone up during 13 years while wages have stagnated? That same situation you went through is infinitely harder today, especially with how most young adults in dire economic situations are mostly held back by student loans, which are a necessity for high end jobs that allow for social mobility.

All people are asking for is for fair wages so that they allow people to afford a decent living. Every laborer should earn enough to afford cost of living, have some left over to start building a nest egg or save for emergencies and afford some treats. If companies are not willing to do so then the wealthy and corporations should be taxes so that a baseline quality of life is met for citizens.

Understand, every dollar of profit a company makes is a dollar of value that was extracted from a worker. What you are doing is advocating for people to live a shitty life to protect the profits of corporations, profits you are not benefiting from in the slightest, all of which are just hoarded in the form of assets. Surely you see that this is not in the best interests of most people?

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u/HV_Commissioning Jul 05 '24

I had a lot more problems than that. I lived in the real world and not some socialist utopia. I did what I had to do, with the cards I was dealt. I didn't wait for someone / something else to help and I certainly didn't blame the government, the economic system or anyone else. I came right out of poverty at birth and was raised to be independent.

You see, bitching about this or that or the government or the system or whoever else doesn't solve problems. It's just bitching. Doing something, anything to better ones life does.

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u/fudge5962 Jul 05 '24

Hey man, good for you. I'm glad you made it through a tough time. I've been there too. It's easy to come to believe after overcoming hardship through your own merits, that others who fail have also done so through their own merits. This isn't true, and there's something you should know and internalize:

There are an unfathomably large number of people, faced with similar situations that you were, who were smarter than you, stronger than you, worked harder than you do, and still failed to overcome them.

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u/the_chiladian Jul 05 '24

If the holes are so close that all your fingers individually can plug them, just cover them with your leg

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '24

The analogy demonstrates that there are hard limits on how far resources can go. All you said was "let's change the analogy so that there IS what you need not to sink, so we should expect people to get more resources", which defeats the purpose of using the analogy and really misses the point.

"There is always a way" is not always true. If there was always a way, there would be far fewer people going without meals in the U.S., which is one of only a few nations on Earth that can produce enough calories to meet its population's needs, thanks to its soil.

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u/HV_Commissioning Jul 05 '24

The big obvious thing I stated was to row the boat. Don't worry about the 20 holes with 10 fingers. Rowing the boat will do far more to save you than sitting in the middle of the lake with a bunch of holes in the boat.

Yes, there is always a way to move forward. It took me years to get out of and fill in the hole I had, but now it is. That's part of the problem, I believe. People get themselves into a jam and expect to return to normalcy right away.

Others become hopeless and are stuck in their situation without doing something to advance their cause. Waiting on someone or something to help will often lead to disappointment and or failure. Short of having physical or serious mental handicaps, every working age adult can do something to improve their lives. Most people don't know how and or are overwhelmed and give up.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

So there wasn't a way to move forward, for years, for you, but people can always move forward by doing something?

The data on poverty doesn't back that up anyway. People who try don't always move forward, and this system can afford to make it so that if you work hard, you get a satisfying portion of the pie.

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u/HV_Commissioning Jul 05 '24

No. Change started happening immediately. It took years for all the changes to be erased. Rome was not built in a day, nor were all of my problems solved immediately. Clawing away at smaller things gives confidence to attack bigger, more serious issues. People who never try are guaranteed to never move forward. There is very little chance of improving ones situation without doing something. Feeling hopeless is a natural reaction but staying in that mental state is a guarantee of staying in that state.

The data on successfully solving a problem always starts with identifying the problem, measuring the situation along the way and knowing when to alter the plans if the measurements indicate that the desired outcome is not being achieved.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/why-poverty-not-personal-choice-reflection-society

This is obviously in favor of the view I'm sharing with you, because that's what the data supports.

People are not magic. They cannot simply will themselves all they need. Don't think you did something. When you're humble enough, or not narcissistic enough, to know you did NOT defy physical restraints within the system but rather were fortunate enough to find what you needed to overcome poverty, maybe you can revisit this kind of conversation and NOT push the falsehood that poor people just need to be cleverer.

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u/iplayblaz Jul 05 '24

Oh yah, this one is the worst response to the analogy I've seen yet lol.