RPF0641-1500_a_Month_On_Non-Essentials
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00:00:15.200 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:18.880 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:23.440 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Today on the show, I want to
00:00:28.480 | talk with you about mindset. It's kind of an important topic, and I don't like that word. I
00:00:37.200 | just want to very rarely talk about it. But today I can think of no other word to use other than to
00:00:42.880 | talk about your mindset. And my impetus for today is a just a short, fluffy little article that USA
00:00:51.600 | Today published that is being mercilessly ratioed on Twitter for allegedly it's out of touchness.
00:01:00.160 | Here's the headline of the article, or sorry, the headline of the tweet, which is being ratioed.
00:01:05.120 | The average adult in the USA spends $1,497 a month on non-essential items, all told that's
00:01:12.720 | roughly $18,000 a year on things we can all do without. And then it goes on and it breaks down
00:01:19.520 | some of the things that the typical American spends on non-essentials, that's what they're
00:01:24.080 | calling non-essentials. $209 a month on restaurant meals, $189 a month on drinks, $178 a month on
00:01:33.440 | takeouts and delivery, $174 a month on buying lunch, $109 a month on impulse purchases,
00:01:41.200 | $96 a month on ride shares, $94 a month on personal grooming, $94 a month on subscription boxes,
00:01:49.440 | $91 a month on cable, and $84 a month on online shopping. They go to the smaller numbers in the
00:01:55.840 | actual article, but that's what's included in the little graphic. Now, here's the thing,
00:01:59.520 | the tweet is being again, mercilessly ratioed. Currently, as I record this, almost 20 hours
00:02:04.880 | after it was published, they have 939 retweets and 6,200 replies, which is a pretty normal,
00:02:14.000 | or a pretty good ratio. Ratioing of course, in the Twitter world for the uninitiated is
00:02:19.680 | when a comment is usually considered to be astoundingly bad and everybody just beats up
00:02:25.200 | on the original poster instead of wanting to share it with their friends. You know that
00:02:29.040 | something is spectacularly bad, evidently. Now, maybe I'm the dense one, maybe I'm the
00:02:35.280 | dunderhead here, but I don't think it's spectacularly bad. Certainly it's not worth
00:02:39.040 | ratioing. I would usually just ignore fluffy stuff like this, but when you read the comments,
00:02:44.880 | man, if this is an indication of our future, I'll tell you two things. Number one, the future is not
00:02:51.120 | bright. And number two, the future can be bright for you. Because it is stunning to me of how
00:02:57.760 | incredibly disempowered the average person is. First of all, why waste any of your time posting
00:03:05.680 | stuff on Twitter in response to a mainstream news article like this? And especially, what about
00:03:12.880 | making fun of it and complaining? Now, I get that some people enjoy it, but the comments on here are
00:03:18.240 | absolutely stunning. You read so many of them and it's stunning. Now, I don't know how to figure out
00:03:26.880 | what my sample set selection bias is of a ratioed Twitter comment, but if this is in any way
00:03:33.600 | reflective of any major portion of the US population, collectively we're in for a rough ride
00:03:43.600 | and you can have a bright future. Just, I'll pick and choose a few of these. One writer says this,
00:03:50.080 | "Absolutely censored hilarious about how millennials are both to blame for ruining the
00:03:55.200 | economy, for not buying as many luxuries, but are also to blame for their financial woes due to
00:03:59.840 | buying too many non-essential items such as," checks notes, "haircuts and socializing." Now,
00:04:06.400 | this is the kind of comment that I thought was funny because I thought, "Man, I read the article,
00:04:11.120 | I didn't think it talked about millennials. I went and checked." The word millennial appears nowhere
00:04:15.760 | in the article. Nowhere, nor in the headline. It doesn't appear. But this poor dude is reviving a
00:04:24.160 | debate about how millennials, when millennials aren't even being talked about. Or listen to
00:04:29.440 | this exchange from a girl named Alexandra. "Personal grooming, you get fired if you skip that.
00:04:35.840 | Ride shares, people got to get places. If you saved that $96 a month until you could afford a car,
00:04:42.880 | and in many places, a place to park it, you'd be missing out on so many opportunities in the
00:04:47.280 | meantime. At least four different items on this list add up to food, which is something human
00:04:52.720 | beings need to survive. Online shopping, you're not specifying what people are shopping for.
00:04:58.320 | You can buy essentials online. People without, again, cars or places to park them often have to.
00:05:04.400 | These breakdowns are so biased in favor of a very narrow and specific vision of life.
00:05:09.280 | If someone's spending hundreds of dollars a month on car payments, plus gas, plus maintenance,
00:05:13.600 | plus auto insurance, plus parking, you're not going to call that non-essential. But let someone
00:05:18.480 | spend $100 a month using the cheapest version of a taxi available, and that's frivolous. Okay."
00:05:25.440 | And then fellow commenter replies, "And even if you cooked nearly every meal,
00:05:30.800 | that's not super cost-effective if you live alone and travel a lot. I need to eat on the road. I
00:05:35.680 | also like getting out of the house so I don't go crazy and dining alone and with people because
00:05:40.160 | I'm an adult with a career and a life." Another commenter responds to her, "People usually get
00:05:46.640 | takeout because they don't have time to cook. They're working late. They have to feed the kids.
00:05:50.960 | They are honestly considering haircuts non-essential. The economy would collapse if
00:05:55.200 | people followed their advice. So this is clearly just manipulation." Previous commenter responds,
00:06:00.960 | "A lot of disabled people get takeout and delivery. When I was recovering from surgery,
00:06:05.520 | something I got again in a few months, I'm sorry, I would have starved to death without delivery
00:06:09.680 | apps. Life is complicated and most of us are just getting by, if we're lucky. However, USA Today
00:06:15.520 | needs us to know that it's our fault for eating lunch. We could all be millionaires like those
00:06:19.440 | guys whose parents leave them money. I'm a temporarily disabled digital media hustler
00:06:24.560 | who needs to frequently buy my time back at best, has no spoons left to do anything at worst.
00:06:29.280 | But according to these brain geniuses, I'm just wasteful. We could all be perfect, but we could
00:06:35.040 | have no desires or needs, work all day and night and save our money. But even then, the AI will
00:06:40.080 | beat us eventually." I can't read the tweet with a straight face. "Still, they can dream of..."
00:06:47.680 | "Still, they can dream of a subjugated population..."
00:06:50.240 | I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.
00:06:55.120 | "Still, they can dream..."
00:06:59.520 | Okay. "Still, they can dream of a subjugated population riddled with guilt over their own
00:07:17.520 | struggles until that day comes."
00:07:19.120 | Other comment...
00:07:25.120 | Okay, I'm a professional. I can do this.
00:07:42.080 | [Laughter]
00:07:52.080 | These are people. These are real people. Or maybe they're Russian bots. I don't know.
00:07:55.920 | "It's so darkly hilarious because these are the same numbnuts who fill their diapers over why
00:08:01.840 | millennials aren't buying diamonds or buying fabric softener, but then whine about how the
00:08:07.680 | average adult is spending so much on other things. Give it a rest!" I've censored some
00:08:13.280 | profanity there. I apologize. I can't even do it. This is again and again. And then someone else
00:08:22.560 | responds to those two people going back and forth. Bert responds with this. He says,
00:08:28.560 | "I'm following you both because this thread was 100."
00:08:35.440 | Okay. Friends, this is the world we live in. I don't know who these people are,
00:08:42.000 | but this is the world that we live in where nobody looks down. And even if you want to
00:08:50.320 | have a debate about, I don't know, ride sharing and should that be a non-essential,
00:08:54.480 | probably not. But probably a mixture, right? Most of us drive our cars more than we need to. Most
00:09:00.960 | of us probably have more cars than is essential. Lots of people have a car payment that's not
00:09:06.240 | essential. All of us could drive $500 cars. It's not essential. So of course, the whole word
00:09:11.200 | essential, the whole thing is put in scare quotes, even in the tweet of non-essentials,
00:09:15.600 | and identifying things. But trying to find one comment out of 6,200 comments where somebody says,
00:09:22.640 | "Hey, you know what? I sat down and looked at my budget and figured out that I didn't have to spend
00:09:26.880 | $174 a month buying lunch." It doesn't exist in this thread. You've got thousands of people who
00:09:34.000 | are doing nothing but complaining about how this person is shaming poor people for their spending
00:09:38.640 | decisions. And don't they recognize that we need to eat? After all, I need to eat. I mean,
00:09:44.960 | your heart goes out. Just think about how sad this poor woman's life is. I need to eat on the road.
00:09:54.000 | I also like getting out of the house so I don't go crazy and dining alone and with people,
00:09:58.240 | because I'm an adult with a career in life. I mean, you feel sad about it, obviously, but I mean,
00:10:03.920 | this is not an uncommon thing. But does nobody sit down and actually think, "Huh, wait a second.
00:10:09.680 | Do I need to spend that much money on meals and on drinks and on takeouts and delivery and on
00:10:16.640 | buying lunch?" I mean, there's a reason why those four things are the top, because that's where most
00:10:21.360 | of us waste a ton of money. But if you add that up, I mean, let's just ignore the validity of the
00:10:27.680 | data, all that stuff. Does nobody sit down and actually think, "Wow, if it were true, just pretend
00:10:32.880 | for a moment if it were true, there might be a more efficient way to live than spending $750
00:10:38.880 | per month on restaurant meals, drinks, takeouts, delivery, buying lunch." I mean,
00:10:47.680 | there's almost no self-awareness. There's almost nobody that sits down and says,
00:10:51.520 | "I wonder if there's a connection between cause and effect. I wonder if I might be a
00:10:58.960 | broke..." What did she say she was? "I wonder if I might be a temporarily disabled digital media
00:11:08.400 | hustler who needs to frequently buy my time back at best. I wonder if the fact that I have no time
00:11:14.000 | might be due to the fact that I'm trying to work all the time and maybe I could take a break and
00:11:18.560 | cook something instead of spending all my money having other servants cook for me." I mean,
00:11:25.360 | that's what it is. But even Ms. Alexandra originally, personal grooming, you get fired
00:11:32.240 | if you skip that. You're telling me that somebody needs to spend $94 a month on personal grooming?
00:11:37.520 | Now, what's funny to me is it's a very legitimate question to ask what's included in that.
00:11:43.840 | But again and again and again, you find people writing and talking about how, "Well, I'm not
00:11:50.160 | going to wear deodorant and I'm not going to cut my hair because I got to get my personal grooming
00:11:54.000 | and how ridiculous." $94 a month on personal grooming is ridiculous if you're trying to save
00:11:59.440 | money. It's absurd. My wife and I spend between the two of us, what? It can't be more than $100 a
00:12:09.280 | year between the two of us on grooming. It's absurd. Now, you don't have to be as weird as we
00:12:17.680 | are, but $94 a month? Now, if you have the money and you want to do it and that's fun, you like to
00:12:23.440 | get your nails did and whatever else, fine, do it. But it's certainly non-essential. At least,
00:12:28.160 | be honest, it's non-essential. $189 on... Anyway, I'm not going to get into that. The point I just
00:12:33.360 | wanted to drive at was simply how funny it is that this... Just the minor scandal that this is
00:12:42.960 | and about... It's crazy. And then what's funny is... There's so many logical fallacies on here.
00:12:58.640 | Mike writes, "Yeah, who the censored needs lunch?" John responds, "Or," Chex notes, "personal
00:13:11.440 | grooming." You need lunch, buddy. Well, sometimes. Probably healthier if you skip breakfast, lunch.
00:13:16.800 | That's what all the intermittent fasting people say. But you need lunch. But you don't have to
00:13:23.040 | buy the most expensive version of it. Anyway, here's what I see. To bring it down to some
00:13:31.120 | themes. Forgive me for losing control. To bring it down to some themes. First, you have to be able
00:13:37.200 | to read things like this and recognize it for what it is and then look at your own situation.
00:13:43.680 | Somebody writes here, says, "I don't even make $1,400 a month total right now." Lindsay responds,
00:13:52.480 | "That was kind of my thought." Paula writes, "Right? It's clear they're trying to 'poor shame'
00:13:58.240 | with this and say that all our money problems are based on cable TV and eating out (apparently
00:14:02.880 | every meal) but for me all this says is that USA Today thinks the average American is pulling in
00:14:07.760 | $150,000 to afford all that." If you don't make $1,400 a month, this advice is not for you. I
00:14:16.080 | guarantee you're not wasting $1,800 a month or $1,500 a month if you're making $1,400 a month.
00:14:22.960 | This is just random fluffery. Look at it and ask yourself, "Am I wasting any money out of my $1,400
00:14:29.360 | a month?" Because I'll tell you what, somebody making $150,000 a year can certainly afford to
00:14:34.960 | waste $18,000 a year because they like their coffee, they like their drinks, they like their
00:14:39.520 | lunch out, and they like their $94 a month on haircuts or whatever else personal grooming means.
00:14:45.280 | If you're making $150,000 a year, you can afford that if you want to. But you can't if you're
00:14:51.840 | making $1,400 a month. You've got to be able to take information and look at your situation and
00:14:56.720 | say, "Does this apply to me?" It's funny, this thing about poor shaming, this whole cultural
00:15:08.880 | thing that somehow shaming is a bad thing and/or shaming is somehow something you're supposed to
00:15:14.480 | avoid. Pay attention to your own results. There's a big difference between things that are your fault
00:15:23.040 | because of your decisions versus things that have happened in your life that are out of your control.
00:15:28.960 | Poor shaming nonsense. Here's the point. Friends, we are living in a society where again and again
00:15:39.360 | when people talk about a non-essential thing and say, "Oh, the average American is wasting $1,500
00:15:46.000 | a month," you can't believe the number of times where someone talks about, "Oh, but what about
00:15:51.520 | the billionaires? What is their wasting payment? How much money are they wasting?" A billionaire
00:15:55.840 | can afford to waste as much money as they want. But what's implied in that is, "Why don't we take
00:16:00.800 | some more money from the billionaires?" Here's the other thing. When you live in a society of
00:16:06.000 | people who are so weak and so incompetent, I mean, here's Ames, "I'm no big city lawyer,
00:16:16.480 | but poor shaming the middle class doesn't seem like a winning social media strategy USA Today."
00:16:20.800 | And then Stephen writes, "The economy would implode without the average adult spending on these
00:16:26.160 | leisurely items." I don't know what to say. I guess repeat those two themes.
00:16:38.640 | If this is at all reflective of even a modest segment of society, we got big trouble ahead.
00:16:45.760 | But you can deal in this mess if you're just halfway intelligent and you look around and save
00:16:53.760 | a little bit of money, you can become fabulously rich. Because here's the reality. The average
00:16:59.520 | American does waste $1,500 a month. I don't know if it's this stuff that they wrote about or
00:17:03.520 | whatever, but the average American does. The United States economy is swimming in money.
00:17:08.400 | It is swimming in money on all sides. And the majority of us need to be made fun of.
00:17:16.720 | The person who is the best at this is Money Mustache. His tone, one of the reasons why he
00:17:23.040 | has done so well is he had the proper thing. He did the right thing to mock rich people,
00:17:29.760 | six-figure income earners, upper half, upper quartile income earners that are wasting $1,500
00:17:37.200 | a month instead of getting rich. Those of us who have been in that situation deserve to be mocked
00:17:42.320 | mercilessly as Mr. Money Mustache so effectively does. And hopefully that mocking will wake us up
00:17:48.800 | to look down and say, "I am behaving stupidly. I should change." I'm not going to mock the poor
00:17:56.240 | lady earlier who was struggling to make $1,500 a month or whatever it is. I'm not going to mock
00:18:01.520 | that person. But this doesn't apply to you. This doesn't apply to you. But it sure does apply to a
00:18:09.200 | lot of us. So when you read information like this, first be entertained, but recognize
00:18:15.200 | we live in a world that is swimming in money for the majority of us. Not for all of us. A lot of
00:18:20.880 | us are struggling. But for the majority of us swimming in money and it's our own stupid decisions
00:18:26.560 | that are leading to our poverty for the majority of us. No. USA Today, they didn't even say
00:18:34.160 | majority. They're very politically correct. Many of us, that's their comment. I'm not really sure
00:18:42.480 | how to wrap this show up other than to say two things. There is a large mob with pitchforks
00:18:55.520 | assembling in a town square. I mean, just listen to these. John writes, "The media does nothing
00:19:02.000 | but lie continuously. It's disturbing and sick." Bario responds, "Um, exactly how much do the 1%
00:19:08.960 | spend? Articles like this are a distraction to the dirty truth." John responds, "I'd like to see a
00:19:14.480 | corresponding article. The 1% could be solving world hunger every month, but instead they choose
00:19:18.720 | yachts and the Met Gala." Zach writes, "Cool character takedown of the working class. Can
00:19:23.520 | you do a similar article on how much money the 1% spends on frivolous things? Fancy clothes,
00:19:28.000 | yacht maintenance, fourth or fifth homes? I bet we could replace all our bridges with that money."
00:19:33.440 | It just goes on and on. So be warned. We'll see what happens, but be warned. When you have this
00:19:40.960 | many thousands of people and you cannot find a single person who says, "Huh, I wonder if I'm
00:19:46.400 | wasting money." Hard to know what the future holds, but be encouraged because when you have this many
00:19:55.840 | of your fellow members that can't see a distance, your fellow citizens who can't see a little bit
00:20:00.960 | of a distance between spending $750 a month on restaurants, drinks, eating out, lunches out,
00:20:09.120 | however these were categorized, versus saving a little bit of that money, right now the US economy
00:20:16.960 | is a wash in money. Unemployment is at the lowest it's been for decades, which means that if things
00:20:23.200 | aren't working for you right now, you've got a problem that needs solving. Now, I don't know
00:20:29.920 | what that problem is. You might have a personal problem. You might be disabled. You might be,
00:20:34.160 | I don't know, some major thing that's causing you major problems. You got to get that fixed
00:20:39.440 | because if things aren't working for you now, it's only going to be harder in the future.
00:20:43.520 | There's no magic wand that anybody can say is going to solve all financial problems. If you've
00:20:47.680 | got a serious problem, health issue, disabled, something like that, you got to do your best
00:20:52.880 | right now because the US economy is a wash in money right now. If you're a competent person
00:20:58.320 | and if your life isn't working well right now, if your business is not going well, if your
00:21:02.800 | job is not going well, if you're not well employed, if you're not saving money hand over fist,
00:21:07.920 | you better carefully look at what you're doing and try to figure out why it's not working for you
00:21:15.440 | because it's hard to see how things get better from here. You've got right now cheap money
00:21:24.880 | everywhere. You've got low unemployment everywhere. You've got stock market through the roof.
00:21:32.240 | How do those things continue consistently in the next decade? This is the time to be cutting back.
00:21:43.200 | This is the time to be saving. This is the time to be stockpiling and getting ready because at
00:21:48.480 | some point those trends will turn. At some point, money will be more expensive. At some point,
00:21:56.480 | and unemployment will go up. At some point, stock market will go down. Who knows when? I don't.
00:22:02.800 | You probably don't either, but you can at least feel that. So take a moment of introspection
00:22:09.600 | when you read something like this. Don't blame it and say, "Okay, #BernieBro,
00:22:15.680 | got to vote in a solution." How are you going to vote in anything better than today?
00:22:20.160 | Look at your own life and say, "Is there anything I can be doing differently now?"
00:22:25.200 | Because if I can't be doing, if I'm not doing well when things are going well,
00:22:30.400 | how do I expect to be doing well when things aren't going well?
00:22:34.560 | This is time for introspection. Don't do what these 6,000 commenters are doing. Think a little bit.
00:22:44.160 | If you and I can't get rich in America, it's hard to see how it works anywhere. I mean,
00:22:54.400 | just simply, especially on expenses. We can all face challenges with income and there are some
00:23:01.040 | structural expenses that are high in the United States like taxes. But when you get to expenses
00:23:05.600 | like stuff, this last weekend I bought some plastic boxes for the children's toys because
00:23:12.080 | they were cardboard boxes and they were just making a mess and I got tired of it and said,
00:23:15.200 | "That's it." I went and paid retail for plastic boxes. My wife's comment was, "I don't know if
00:23:20.240 | I can get used to not having this stuff on the side of the road." In America, it just sits there
00:23:25.360 | on the side of the road, free, free for you, free food, free boxes, free everything, just sitting
00:23:31.440 | there. If you can't do that and figure out how to lower your income or your expenses, I don't know
00:23:36.560 | where you do it. Last thing is this. Recognize that there are some people who are just truly
00:23:43.440 | ignorant and your heart goes out to them because how do they function in a modern world? One
00:23:50.480 | commenter writes here, Bizzabel writes this, "The average US adult, I'm sure, doesn't make $1,500
00:23:58.080 | a month, especially in low-income states like Oklahoma." I repeat, this person says this,
00:24:05.040 | "The average US adult, I'm sure, doesn't make $1,500 a month, especially in low-income states
00:24:12.160 | like Oklahoma." Now, what's amazing is that somebody could think that and believe that.
00:24:19.680 | First of all, of course, it's easily most obviously disproven. The median household
00:24:26.480 | income in the United States of America is $61,000 and an adult, it's very hard to live.
00:24:33.040 | How could you not make $1,500 a month and live? It's tough, tough. Possible,
00:24:38.160 | no few people, disabled, living on $700 a month, it's possible, but it's wildly inaccurate.
00:24:45.600 | And yet this is what a competent, I guess I shouldn't necessarily use that adjective,
00:24:52.240 | but an adult woman believes. So the financial literacy that we face is so low,
00:24:58.800 | it's hard to know what to do with it. Anyway, I'll stop complaining. I just want to point out to you
00:25:02.720 | this. Pay attention. If this ratioing of just some of a silly little thing is reflective,
00:25:10.560 | just pay attention to that. Watch the mob with pitchforks. Number two, this is the time. This
00:25:16.400 | is the time to cut back. This is the time to save. This is the time to make more. This is the time to
00:25:22.400 | change jobs. If you haven't changed jobs in the last couple of years, but you're not making as
00:25:26.400 | much as you think you need to or something like that, this is the time. If you're not buying the
00:25:31.280 | stuff while it's that you need, while it's cheap, this is the time. This is the time right now.
00:25:36.400 | Things are good. If they're not good for you, make sure you understand why.
00:25:43.120 | Because in the future, things will not be good. My hope is if you do the right things today,
00:25:52.240 | that even when things aren't good, things can still be good for you.
00:25:56.480 | I guess today I'll advertise my how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis
00:26:00.240 | course. If you haven't taken it, you really should. I don't know what to say other than that.
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