Beyond Greed

October 20, 2007

Pursuit of Happiness: Money

One huge obstacle people often face when they’re ready to make big changes to improve their lives is money. At least, it looks like money’s the problem to most of us. We want a different job or a completely different career but need the current salary level to cover all our bills. There’s no time to go to school, even part-time, without risking the salary.

We want more family time but we think the kids will suffer if they give up the things our extra work hours can buy. We want a dramatic change, maybe moving to a new place and starting a business, but the equity in the house barely equals the balance of the mortgage and the emergency savings fund is—okay, we don’t have an emergency fund. That’s what credit cards are for, right?

When people feel stuck in a job or stuck in a pattern because they need money to change, they’re likely to give up their dreams or get desperate because of money. Sometimes we get desperate even when we have the money—at least I did. I had saved up about $30,000 to cushion the transition from business ownership to a new career when my mother and I decided to sell our preschool and child development center. Instead of following my own plan of living on the proceeds of the sale through the transition and keeping the cushion until I saw how things were going, I spent it before the sale was final.

I bought a “small business opportunity” along with my parents and set up an office and paid for some marketing. Just over a year later the parent company was crumbling, and we found out they had thousands of people in different industries who had paid them tens of thousands of dollars for different businesses that didn’t work. The Federal Trade Commission closed them down. Nearly one hundred million dollars was gone.

Boy, did I learn my lesson! The next time I paid for a scam small business opportunity, I spent lots less. I came across a business selling discounted products over the internet and pulled money from the sale of my business to buy it. Two months later I heard my first ad for Overstock, a national company doing the same thing with real success. Six more months later, that company was also taken over and closed down by the Federal Trade Commission.

Both losses were hits to our family financially, but they didn’t take us down. However, I was on e-mail lists as both companies were collapsing and heard stories of people taking $20,000 advances on credit cards and expecting to make the payments from their profits. They had no cash reserves and their current income just covered their bills. Some were retirees on small fixed incomes. They wound up in serious financial trouble.

Now I’m extremely skeptical of any opportunity that is marketed based on greed. Some do work, such as specific training in a field from a respected organization, but when the ad copy tells me I’ll be earning six figures for a four-figure investment, I cringe. I’ve seen too many people who feel trapped by debt fall on their faces borrowing even more money they can’t pay back to chase a dream of finally earning enough to catch up to their debt.

It doesn’t have to be that way! I advocate a different relationship to money, to things, and to work. Let’s discuss it here each month.

Posted in Pursuit of Happiness: Money, Zine 1: October 2007, Zines in 2007