Experience can build your financial muscle
- B.J. Yoder: Young Money
- August 24, 2021
- 777
Being in the area we are in, most of the readers are familiar with chickens and chicks popping out of the egg.
When I say popping, I don’t mean like in the cartoons where the egg magically breaks open in a matter of seconds. I mean the strenuous process chicks go through to enter their new life. I have never seen it in real life, but from what I understand, to see a brand-new chick struggle to get out of the shell is tough to watch. It is human nature to want to help them, but helping the chick hatch is not recommended unless it is an absolute emergency.
There are many reasons to disregard the struggle, but one reason is this hatching process is preparing the chick for life. It is building muscle as it pecks its way out of its old home. Everyone has struggled in finance at one point, and almost every one of those situations have built “muscle” and prepared us for the future, no matter how terrible it was to be in at the time.
Everyone can think back to when you were 18 and how much you knew about the world, especially finances. There is always one dumb purchase that sticks out in everyone’s mind at that time.
In my case it was several dumb purchases. My dumb purchases were buying clothes I would never wear because there was a good deal on them. It took several purchases of those clothes and then several trips to Goodwill with the barely used clothes to get it through my mind that no matter how good the deal was, money was still being thrown away. This lesson taught me to buy clothes based on use value, not monetary value, and that has paid off because the trips to Goodwill consist of used clothing now.
I know one objection I can think of is the stock market. “I got burned in the stock market, so I learned my lesson there. I will keep my money safe and sound, away from that money pit.” This can be one lesson you glean from the experience, but there also is a flip side. Maybe you didn’t do the research needed. Maybe you don’t even know how the market works, or maybe your buddy who had that “hot tip” on a stock isn’t so knowledgeable after all. This experience could have been a sign that more needs to be learned about the market.
Of course, we do not see what we could learn from a lousy situation — there’s too much emotion and our judgment is clouded. Eventually, whether it is a day, a week or a year from that situation, we can see what we can learn. If you paid someone through an online platform and never got your money or the promised product, you will be more wary of the next online purchase. It could be something as simple as telling yourself “no” whenever you pass a Wendy’s and try to convince yourself you deserve it after a long day of work. Normally, there is food at home, and after seeing how far over budget you were on eating out, skipping one meal out won’t hurt.
See every unfortunate event as a positive, an opportunity to learn, not a negative. In the past the “why me” attitude has always crept in, and I have closed my mind off to what I could learn from a miserable experience.
I am sure the chicks are not this cognitive when they are pecking through the shell, but if they were, they would be griping “why me” as well, not knowing the experience will benefit them in the future.
Holmes County native BJ Yoder is an insurance agent by day and a finance enthusiast by night. This column is for informational purposes only. He can be emailed at benjamin.john.yoder@gmail.com.