Here is an example of how one might measure wealth. This coconut palm is what I see every day, whereas some “rich” people are lucky to see one on vacation. The past week has brought money back into central focus. I still find it exasperating how so many people think that, since money and wealth are so closely related, that they are exactly the same thing.
I’m going to describe a method of indirectly determining wealth; it is kind of a logic test. Believe it or not, this technique will make no sense at all to some types of people. Here goes.To have real wealth, you must have income-producing assets and that income must at least cover your living expenses or you are not “independent”. Most people never get to that state. Your house is not an investment, you fools. Consider the circumstances where you have $1,000,000 invested at ½% per month (simple interest). That would bring in $5,000 per month and you are wealthy provided you never touch the principle. Poor people do not understand this.
But let’s look at the situation another way. Suppose, via insurance, or annuity, maybe inheritance, or by some method, your affairs are arranged to that you have a pension of say, $1,000 per month (apparently the average). This is the financial equivalent, repeat equivalent, of having $200,000 invested. Do the math. This is why pensions play such an important roll for most people. They get a steady monthly income but are prevented from touching the big pile. By extrapolation, the smallest Social Security check, for all their whining, is the best “investment” most people will ever manage.
Sadly, this also gives the working class a glimpse at the vast sums of money needed to achieve a "decent" retirement (referring to cease work, not an arbitrary age). I ceased work 13 years ago, decades ahead turning 65. I am the first to admit I do not have a million invested, but I have secure pensions that will equate to a half-million, not much but enough for Costa Rica. Caution, this is not the full tale from the trailer court. I have not HAD to work since age 41.
I was wise enough by age 16 to grasp that earning such large amounts of money was fruitless and best left to the smart people all around me who, down to this very hour and minute are working quite hard at it, I am sure. You know the ones, they have mortgaged swimming pools in their back yards which they use about as often as I swim in the Atlantic Ocean, which just happens to be in my back yard. Hey, go back and read this passage again, but this time imagine you have a smirk on your face.
The point of all this is if things work out this year, I will actually have the real money, not just the pension equivalency. And I need to be prepared to follow my own guidelines. Only time will tell, as these matters are traditionally beyond the sole influence of the person involved. Pssst, that’s me.
[Author’s note: Due to unforeseen circumstances, I spent the morning making a very close inspection of the financial options left in this world. Not just for me, but for most people. Admittedly it is very difficult for people to adjust to having money after a lifetime of poverty, and I suggest it is even more so for those who work, or have ever worked, for a living. They don't realize ow many bad habits they acquire. Alas, I have both conditions in my background. I think we are all sufficiently aware of what happens to people who come into unrestrained money later in life.
Case in point. Contrary to their peasant-minded behaviors, my family was actually very well-to-do. Between my parents promising they would put me through university and the time I gave up waiting for the money (9 years later), they had brought in $112,930 of which I saw exactly $21 in cash. (In today’s money, that is $2,000,000 and $420, a bit of a spread.) My family had no problem with promising one thing and doing another (In today’s talk that is “lying through their teeth”). In fact, to this day, that still remains the largest single difference between us: As a rule, I never lie and they never tell the truth. They don’t know the difference.
When my father drank himself to death, mother was pretty much forced by circumstances to go see a lawyer. Did this ever emphasize the gulf between my family and myself! My mother used to keep asking, “That lawyer says I am a well-to-do widow, but where is all the money?”
I would sit down with her time and again and explain that the pensions and insurances she was getting should be invested, not spent on crap as it arrived. The lawyer was talking about the wealth she would accumulate over the remaining years to her own retirement, thus resulting in an estate of nearly a quarter-million dollars. But she would have to systematically invest the money and not spend it on bullshit like TVs for my shacked-up woman-beating brother and airplane trips to South Africa with my useless fat-assed sister.
Mother was incredulous that I would suggest she invest and spend only the investment income. Like the rest of my family, they never in their lives ever “heard of anything so goddammed stupid.” Why that would leave a big pile of unspent money "just sitting there". Anyway, I leave it up to you to contrast that with the way I’ve handled my money. You may conclude it is a good thing I never learned a thing from those people or anybody like them.
To those who might say I am mean-mouthing my family, you are wrong. I say nothing that is not common knowledge to anyone who knows them. The smartest thing I ever did was walk out that door when I was 17.]
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
