Weekend Reading – Debt, everyone in sales, millennial tips, 50,000 visits per month

Thanks so much for the inclusion! Even if not everyone was a fan 😉 hahaha

Nelson nailed it. Hard.

“Every personal finance blog is identical.” Indubitably.

I’ve been paring down my PF blog responses from daily to weekly but finding the effort to muster even those once a week replies an exercise in futility. I might bookmark Nelson’s article to read first as a reminder whenever I feel the urge to wade into the PF muck.

The PF community publishes to appease more of the same and dig the trench even deeper (the ‘Weekend Roundup’ props are especially amusing. Like a bunch of old golf buddies high-fiving each other just for showing up.) A fly in the ointment only serves to irk those of cemented beliefs instead of being a signal to put the lid on the GD ointment! The internet certainly amplifies our weird behaviours.

There are exceptionally few high-impact decisions we make in life, those which create the majority of circumstances in our life. Do a metastudy of the PF realm and you’d most likely draw out a duo of high-impact decisions: save as much as you can in a diversified portfolio, and don’t use debt. Commit to these decisions and the probability of having a healthy financial life is high. Everything else is brain-wasting dross.

E.g.: My Mixed Up Money — “Good Debt” Doesn’t Exist…complete rubbish and demonstrating a deep non-understanding of economics. Let’s throw another qualifier in there — Good CONSUMER Debt Doesn’t Exist. Good INVESTMENT Debt Does Exist. But in the world of PF, “debt is a nasty thing/four letter word”. These extreme half-myths only muddy the waters. Let’s investigate further…

As per your question last weekend, “I wonder how much credit card debt GDP?”, I did the calculations 2 or 3 years ago, and from memory outstanding CC debt is somewhere in the range of ~5% GDP; total consumer debt (ex-mortgage) is ~30% GDP. To all those PFers who believe debt is a “social obscenity”…I doubt your economy would look so hot sporting a 30% haircut. However, we could definitely cut out the credit card debt (-5% GDP) and usage (-3% prices) without any major disturbance (-2% broad economy). Thus, paradoxically, debt has become almost a good thing, especially in support of our modern way of life — even to those who harbour no consumer debt:

New report highlights worrying trends in Canada’s comprehensive wealth
http://www.iisd.org/media/new-report-highlights-worrying-trends-canada-s-comprehensive-wealth
“Canada’s real per capita comprehensive wealth grew by just 0.19 per cent annually between 1980 and 2013. In contrast, real per capita consumption of goods and services grew by 1.36 per cent annually. The gap between these two trends is a cause for concern, as consumption growth in excess of capital growth is likely not sustainable in the long run.”

What, dear anti-debt reader, do you think has fuelled that 35-year stretch of consumption and built your comfy Canadian life?

To those on a high, white, male, middle-class horse…put yourself on the left of the financial bell curve — physically and/or mentally — for an entire year and see how well you do without debt. And to those who are employed by any level of government, such as I, good luck getting paid without the use of debt.

And then I read this: Dear reader: what type of product might you be looking for from me?
(https://www.myownadvisor.ca/frugality-saving-investing-blogging-and-more-cpfc16-recap/)

NO. (in size 3,000 font)

Stated countless times, we the people do NOT need more information or products.
What we need is to change how we think and of what we think. Proof? After decades of mounting PF material, from both amateurs and professionals, the bulk of Western populace is still floundering in relative poverty.

Almost every identity within the PF community is a producer, not an innovator. Thus, by design, it’s groupthink.
So, unless your “product” is powerful and/or unique enough to change how we operate, it will do nothing except add to the noise.

I suppose, however, it’s de rigueur that in a Capitalist society, the end game is to monetize absolutely everything.
After all, everyone is in sales.*

I’ll leave you with this, if you choose to pursue the long climb out of the PF trench, as Nelson recommends:
Curating a Social Media Feed to Make Better Decisions
http://www.pragcap.com/curating-a-social-media-feed-to-make-better-decisions/

“The lesson is that we’re failing to understand the full composition of the world we live in because we’ve created echo chambers that curate the things we want to hear and reinforce our confirmation bias.” — Cullen Roche

Time to harvest my December crop of jalapeño peppers. Enjoy the freeze, East Coasters.

*Starting 01/01/2017 I’ll be selling my blog comments: $5 for a standard hi-5 reply (e.g. “Awesome job with the dividend run!”), $25 for a nails-on-chalkboard reply (“Are you insane?!”). Interested parties can email me. Thanks.

Thanks for the inclusion this week, yes Debt is a nasty thing. I was astounded I hadn’t written those exact words. Enjoy the weekend, sounds like we might get some snow back soon