Issues

From The Tao Of Making Money, the author of M's Blog says, "Most PF Bloggers Are Rich, Self-Righteous and Inflexible." While the author did recant her comment to some degree here, it certainly made for some interesting discussion, and I realized that, while I have focused on my finances on this blog and my financial decisions, I haven't talked a lot about a whole host of other, more personal issues that do, in fact, affect how I think about money and, more importantly, how I think about life in general.

I started this blog because I admired people who used their blogs as a way to record their finances, and also because I hoped I could be like them -- that I could get out of debt that way. As this year has shown, it isn't that easy, and it was somewhat naive of me to think that way. But, what might not show is that the naivete comes from growing up poor and not really understanding the way things work. There's a kind of mentality that comes from that that is really hard to break. I tend to emulate more than innovate because I don't have the confidence someone with a large income and assets might have. I have a lot of education and I consider myself something of an academic, but it's still hard to shake the idea that "money is corrupting" (love of it is, or so the quote goes). Poor people tend to despise the rich also (I've found that wealthy people are blissfully unaware of how much the poor really despise them -- not jealousy, but real hatred, I mean). So what happens when I become, well, "rich"? It's not an easy thing to deal with, and already there are murmurings in my family when I say I can't afford so-and-so because my husband and I aren't living hand to mouth.

The worst thing that happens to the lower-middle-class because of this belief that money and wealth is bad, is corrupting, is that they tend not to make their money work for them. That is the real reason I started this blog; I wanted to really find out about retirement accounts, brokerage accounts and a whole host of other things, and I did. And you know what? Last quarter my 457 account made a 28% profit. Twenty-Eight Percent. Unbelievable!

Regardless, this comment (and the many comments that proceeded from it) reminded me that my position as someone going from a blue-collar life to a white-collar life might be an unusual one, so look for some interesting posts about it, from paying for a private college alone to how I felt about my first real paycheck to dealing with depression and chronic fatigue while looking for a first job. This is some ancient history for me, but I still am dealing with decisions I made right out of school that were directly related to my complete ignorance about personal finances and the reality of office jobs. I hadn't planned to add this element to my PF blog, but perhaps it is fitting, after all.