Why you should keep up with the Jones

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2021-05-30 20:00:03

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5-second summary: conventional finance wisdom tells you to treat peer pressure like you’d treat an old friend who reached out to reconnect and talk about how Herbalife can change your life. I make the case that peer pressure isn’t the problem and can in fact be a positive influence. It’s the peers themselves you need to worry about.

The personal finance world is obsessed with the mythical Jones family. Those Jones’ and their perfect teeth and their white picket fence and their loose spending habits! Do they have unlimited discretionary income? Or are they one flat tire from having to jump in front of a Lexus to pay off a blender they bought on layaway? Nobody knows! Either way, they’re bad news. Finfluencers like to admonish you, they like to tell you to resist the temptation of the Jones family, as if they are the parents from Footloose and you are just a whimpering teenager with an uncontrollable urge to dance the night away and carry a credit card balance. Here’s my counterpoint to the finfluencers:

You’re an early Neandarthal on the savannah, hairy and hungry. You’re out by yourself picking berries and later you’re going to lay a bunch out to dry so they’ll last all through the rainy season. Really, you are a prehistoric financier investing in berry futures. Your friend Steve is out with a large band hunting Wooly Mammoth. Ha! The meat won’t last a week. Come rainy season they’ll be begging for your berries, and you’ll be able to trade them for all the Sabretooth necklaces in the village. You begin to drift away into a pleasant tooth-necklace daydream, a favorite pastime, when the ground starts quaking. Out of the bushes comes Steve, followed by a horde of your peers. “Run!” they all yell. Steve stops just long enough to suggest you drop your basket of berries and flee. You think about it for a second, but decide not to. “These are nice people'' you remind yourself “but they make bad decisions. After all, they didn't’ bring back any meat from hunting, and now they tell you to stop gathering berries?” You get back to business and the stampede of Neandarthals passes. You smile, knowing you’ve done the right thing by resisting peer pressure. It’s your last thought before you're buried under the hoof of a Wooly Mammoth.