The biggest news in the Money Wizard corner of the internet remains the viral spread of my strategy to stop wasting money.
Framing your spending in terms of time spent, not pieces of paper, apparently makes for a pretty catchy story.
The story was first written by Business Insider, who approached me about doing a piece on the psychology of saving. From there, the story was picked up by Yahoo Finance, and eventually made its way to the #1 story on Yahoo.com’s front page.
For an encore, the piece then made its way onto the front page of MSN.com.
Last time I had my 15 minutes of fame, I joked about how crazy it feels to see yourself featured next to leaders of the free world. Well, it’s even more surreal to see yourself featured above leaders of the free world!
All this has made for fun times in blogging land. This site blew past its previous record of views in a day (15,000) and set a much harder to topple new record (22,519). Lively discussions abound on this site’s comments sections, my email inbox is overflowing, and we now have over 3,300 email subscribers!
Of course, there’s one group of people who simply aren’t impressed by any of this. I’m talking about the internet’s premier experts on everything – the Yahoo.com commenters.
These guys are quickly becoming my favorite part of any major media appearances. Not only do their bizarre tirades make for some pretty hilarious one liners, but I always learn all sorts of new things about myself.
Facts be damned, without even reading the article they commented on, here are 7 things Yahoo commenters automatically know about anyone who manages to save some money:
1) Big savers ALWAYS live in their parent’s basement.
It doesn’t matter if you haven’t lived at home since high school. It also doesn’t matter if you lived in Denver while it was the hottest real estate market in the country, and you managed to weather the tsunami-like rise in rent prices there for years. Nor does it matter if you currently live in a slightly too large and slightly too fancy apartment in Minneapolis.
The unfortunate truth is that anyone who saves over 10% of their income lives with their parents. Crazy, I know, but the Yahoo commenters were pretty confident about this one, and who are we to argue?
2) Big savers are ALWAYS single.
This one was especially surprising to my girlfriend of the past three years. Not only did she learn that she didn’t exist, but she also learned from the comments that it’s impossible for her to save any money at all, simply because she’s a female!
3) Saving is pointless, because unexpected things happen.
I always thought saving was smart planning in case something unexpected did happen. I figured setting up a rock solid foundation of savings could only help to handle life’s surprises.
Instead, I’ve learned it’s better to design your finances like a house of cards. That way, when the inevitable light wind comes along, you can be sure your finances come crashing down. At least this way you’ll know what to expect.
After all, what’s the point in even trying to secure your future when there’s new luxury cars to finance?
4) Only people who make $80,000 can save money.
I thought I remembered saving money from part time jobs in high school and college. I also could have sworn I was saving nearly 40% of my income when I got my first salaried job earning $50,000 a year, which is the figure I think “GaborS” was shooting for before he got worked up and accidentally smashed the percentage key.
Luckily, Yahoo readers were quick to correct that my entire nest egg was because of an $80,000 a year salary. On the plus, this means I managed to save $183,000 in the few months since my recent promotion! Go me!
5) Savers will NEVER be able to access their retirement accounts before age 65.
We’ll go ahead and ignore the fact that the normal penalty free withdrawal age for retirement accounts is 59.5, not 65. We’ll also ignore the countless retirees who have successfully accessed their retirement accounts in their 30s and 40s using Roth IRA Conversion Ladders.
Even if IRS rules clearly allow you to rollover a 401K to Traditional IRA, then covert the Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, wait five years, then withdraw the conversions from the Roth, tax and penalty free, we’re probably better off listening to the conventional wisdom…
6) Big savers have NO life.
I thought I was living it up by maintaining a great circle of friends and family, many of whom I spent the past year traveling with to New Orleans, Seattle, Alaska, the national parks of Wyoming and Montana, the beaches of Florida and Cape Cod, plus ski trips to Denver, Utah, Lake Tahoe, and Canada.
But unfortunately, like most people who save a lot of money, I’m missing the point. Without the luxury of the latest Macbook, more extra bedrooms than I’ll ever use, monthly car payments, or a nice amount of credit card debt, disciplined savers are living a giant void of a life.
7) People who save money are just lucky, because the world is not out to get them.
Gross, who talks on the phone while taking a dump??
Obviously I’m poking fun at some bizarre comments in this article, and I could go on and on with the examples. At last check, there were 492 of these wild responses, just on Yahoo’s version of the article.
And while it’s fun to have a sarcastic laugh, there’s a more concerning issue at hand.
There are two types of people in the world…
There’s people who look at something and say, “I can never do that.” And then there’s people who look at something and ask, “How can I do that?”
One is a scarcity mindset – there’s never enough to go around. The other is an abundance mindset – anything is possible, the trick is just finding out how to create the reality that you want.
Psychology has a fancy name for these two differing attitudes – an internal vs. an external locus of control, and there’s perhaps no better predictor for your success in life than this little shift in mindset.
A locus of control is the degree to which people feel they have control over their lives.
- Someone with an internal locus of control believes they can strongly influence the events and outcomes of their lives.
- Someone with an external locus of control believes the outcomes of their lives are influenced mostly by external forces beyond their control.
This isn’t a small nuance. Research shows that people with an internal locus of control:
- Do better in school
- Deal with stress better
- Are less likely to be depressed
- Find solutions to problems easier
- Report stronger satisfaction with their jobs
- Make more money.
And this makes sense. Action creates results, and someone who believes they can influence their own world is more likely to take action.
The world doesn’t care about all the things you tell yourself about it. The world only cares about the actions you take.
If you’re not happy with your position in life, it’s time to take action change your situation. Drastic change, if that’s what it takes.
If you’re a manual laborer tired of low pay, this does not mean sending job applications to every similar position you can find, in hopes of a $1 an hour raise. That’s nothing more than spinning your wheels in a bad position.
Instead, evaluate your position on the chess board. Note if you’ve made any wrong moves, then make strategic changes to improve your situation.
After all, making money is nothing more than a game, and your overreaching job, at all times, is to take advantage of the game’s rules.
It may be entirely unfair that manual laborers make so much less than office workers, but that’s not your job to figure out. Your job is to recognize the nuances of the game, then reposition yourself on the chess board.
It may not be easy, but it’s never too late to go back to school, learn a new skill, pursue a new career path, start a side business, or change your saving habits.
You can’t control the hand you’re dealt, but you can make the most of it. And if you keep getting dealt bad hands, you can always stand up and move tables.
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Great post! Don’t let the haters get to you! There will always be people who will try to bring you don’t or say that you don’t deserve what you’ve built for yourself. Set your own path, then go get to work. Don’t worry about other people. Just worry about doing the best you can and constantly improving!
Thanks!
Great advice btw. Hopefully our Yahoo commenters will find their way to it, but I somehow doubt it.
Congrats on the exposure, hopefully those 22k+ additional readers decide to listen to the Wizard!
Thanks, and hopefully so! It’s been a fun and busy few weeks.
This really hit home. I try to convince all of my friends to live modestly and save as much as they can as soon as they can. I am compensated a similar salary to yours, so I have the same problem convincing them that you can do the same thing with a much smaller salary, but because “I have never did it,” I don’t know what I’m talking about. Keep up the great work! I love reading your articles and hope to someday have a financial blog do my own. Thank you!
It’s a big reason I was hesitant at first to share exact numbers. Some people get too caught up in the numbers and miss the message.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the site, and let me know if you ever start that blog.
This is so funny, it’s unfortunate though that when someone reaches some level of success everyone else is ready to criticize. Instead of them asking more questions about how you did it, they would rather comment about themselves being disadvantaged or claiming you got handouts.
Anyways, keep it up man
Thanks Eric. Definitely unfortunate, but like I said… two types of people…
I am a Money Wizard and I think your are very balanced and have a strong center with that important internal drive. It is easy to be a naysayer, it takes determination to improve one’s self. Keep it up! I share your insight with my two twenty something sons!
Awesome to hear Brad. It feels amazing to hear that people are spreading the message, and I hope to see them around!
I needed to hear your response since I read this article on the internet and saw all sort of negative comments. Your sarcastic tone did relieve my internal rage when reading the comments. Silly internet commenters.
Haha, the negative comments are par for the course. Doesn’t matter if it’s a youtube video about make up or a 27 year old saving money. The comments aren’t worth the rage, KH. Pity, maybe…
Haters gonna hate. It must be fun to see all these people react to something you have written. It shows that you are making an impact (hopefully positive). Plus, who said being a single 40 year old man living with mom is bad….ummm….just kidding.
People want to believe making change is hard. Therefore they make excuses instead of the simple things that can get them ahead in life. Oh well. Hopefully sites like this and mine can help them in the future.
I’ll admit it’s pretty fun. I was seriously disappointed when some of the other media outlets removed their comment sections from articles.
Good point about change. Our minds have a funny way of tricking us into avoiding it.
Oh lawd, Yahoo. Your commenters are truly the cream of the crop! But it’s sad that these attitudes are so prevalent. I told a friend that we recently paid off my $25k student loans in 7 months. I was really proud of it, but they were taken aback and said it was because I must have high income. I do have a good income for someone my age, but again, that came from a lot of hard work and some plain dumb luck.
I really wish people would be more open-minded about a savings-first lifestyle.
It is a shame how many people dismiss advice if it comes from someone earning “too high” of an income. The great irony, of course, is that the basics are the same whether you make $10,000 a year or $10 million.
I used to get frustrated when I saw people talking like that but now its just sad and funny.
If people aren’t willing to make their lives better then there isn’t much you can do.
I’ll have to tell my wife that we need to stop saving because we are married, have kids, and don’t live in my parents basement.
Also what if something terrible happens?! We can’t have money saved so we can get through it without going into massive debt.
Haha! Love it!
LOVE LOVE LOVE this. I recently read that article again and the comments are simultaneously hilarious and, like you said, concerning at points. Good on you for not letting the haters get you down, and identifying the real cause for their reactions.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what anybody else says or thinks. If you’re happy, that’s what matters. And if people are going to try to piss in your cereal when you tell your story, it’s their loss – not yours.
Thanks Dave. You hit the nail on the head – the comments are a strange tight-rope balancing act teetering between hilarious and very sad.
Oh wow, some of those comments are harsh! Luckily you are taking them with a grain of salt and humor… keep it up! haha- I think you are doing great 🙂
Thanks Mrs. Adventure Rich!
As my mom would say, they are just jealous ;-). Great post, keep the advice and the information coming!
Thanks, and don’t worry… there’s LOTS more articles stockpiled and ready to go!
This post is hilarious. Nothing like some good comments to scroll though. Keep doing your thing! Freedom awaits!
Those whiners essentially represent the ~95%. If one notices the Yahoo comments section, the positive comments that approve of and support the author’s point of view are few and far between..and they represent the ~5%. I have found this to be the case for articles related to saving, early retirement, etc, written by any author. Its amazing how the 5% vs 95% holds good in any forum related to wealth.
Funny truth – I actually intended to end this article by balancing out the negative comments with some equally positive ones. I gave up when I couldn’t find any.
Can’t agree enough of what you said about “locus of control”. I have been on both ends of the income spectrum. I used to work in sanitations in a fruit warehouse, I would say one step up from cleaning toilets, minimum wage 6.25 hr. However, I had not given up going to school even if I had a few bumps along the way. A lot of my friends are contented working in warehouses. I went and took computer science classes. Got a trainee job as programmer with 10.50/hr. After 6 months, it went up to 15/hr. After graduating and getting my diploma, got a job which pays 35/hr. And many years after, now have a stable government job with 90k salary and now a follower of the Money Wizard. I have fought with naysayers every step of the way. So it depends on how much you wanted something and how much you are willing to sacrifice to achieve it.
INCREDIBLE story Wernhs, and just a great example that anything is possible. Thanks for sharing.
Outstanding…very inspirational!
People spend their lives being overweight and when they’re diagnosed with preventable diseases, they pray and say that their life is “in God’s hands now”. Given this, I’m not really surprised that people will also give credit for their financial health to some external force.
A great man once said that “with great power comes great responsibility”. This is may be true, but what’s more applicable to most people is the fact that responsibility is just a mindset, and once you take responsibility for your actions you’ll have power. Taking responsibility is taking power. Ignorance is bliss, but it also means not taking responsibility for your actions. Many people are in the US are in a mindset where “they” are responsible for anything bad that happens. “They” could be the democrats, republicans, whites, white males, blacks, Mexicans, terror, drugs, Trump, or whoever the enemy of the day happens to be. Somehow this has fed into consumerism to the point where presidents have told citizens to “go shopping” to help their country because “they” are trying to take away our greatest past-time. Mindlessly giving up personal financial responsibility, compounded with a consumerist approach to lifestyle is the perfect environment to breed oblivious people who blame others for their financial peril even when they have the tools to succeed right in front of them.
To the credit of people with an external locus of control, some people are in fact handed pretty crappy cards. Humans may have evolved the ability to have an external locus of control in order to be able to psychologically endure high levels of oppression from things like slavery. Even still, many people reading this blog are lucky enough to live in the US, in which case there are many opportunities available if you have enough grit. You can’t win the lottery if you don’t play and just sit on the sidelines. Just show up and try and the results can surprise you.
Perfectly said Julian. If this comment section had a “like” button, I’d spam it for that one.
Especially true about blaming “them” for the problems. “They” are a moving target, and everyone’s eager to accept the scapegoat if it means avoiding the mirror.
Obviously this isn’t to take away from people truly dealt a bad hand. But most who think they have a bad hand would be making a mistake to trade theirs with the hands of 99% of the rest of the world’s population.
Haha. That is so funny. I’m actually jealous. The more haters you got the more ass you must be kicking. It never ceases to amaze me how absurdly ignorant and mean people can be on the internet. It is like there is a contest going on.
I like your closing arguments about internal vs external control. I completely agree with you. My last post was actually about free will and why it’s so important.
http://www.lifeprepcouple.com/why-i-choose-free-will/
You would think these 95%ers would be cheering us money savers on, since we will be the one’s paying the taxes to fund their penniless futures.
I look at it differently. At my workplace, all hourly employees are paid within 50 cents per hour of minimum wage. Total payroll is approx $500,000 and our employer nets about $3M per year. He’s in the top tax bracket while every employee is in the 10% or 15% tax bracket.
If you do the math, you will see that our low wages actually MAXIMIZE TAX REVENUE. Imagine if our employer magically doubled the hourly wage of every employee: payroll would increase to $1M and his net would fall to $2.5M. Because he is in the TOP MARGINAL TAX BRACKET and we are in the TWO LOWEST TAX BRACKETS, if we were paid a higher wage, TAX REVENUE WOULD FALL.
By working for low low wages, we are actually enabling the maximization of tax revenue. Maybe you should be cheering us on while you enjoy your mortgage interest deduction (our home ownership rate is ZERO) and your employer-paid health insurance (it’s not paid by our employer and we cannot afford to purchase it).
Look at any income statement, and you’ll see no company will ever pay you what you’re worth. If they did, they wouldn’t make a profit. Income has to be more than expenses, and payroll is an expense. It’s simply a fact of the working world.
Some jobs have it worse than others. Complaining about it won’t get anyone anywhere. Internal vs. External locus of control…
If we want to get ahead, we have to find fields that pay well, choose jobs that pay us as close to our worth as possible, then save aggressively. Breaking free through investment is the only way to start getting paid our fair share.
Hi bro, while I understand what you say, here’s something to keep in mind. What a person earns is directly proportional to that person’s skill, knowledge and drive and desire to not settle for the average. Regardless of where you are today or what your employer makes or what the tax rates are, what are you doing to improve your skills and earn more than hourly wages? 20 years ago I started with $36K annually….today I make many times over…all by improving my skills and thus my value in the marketplace. A lot of people with no college degrees are successful because they strive constantly to improve their lot and to not be shackled by where they are. You sound like a smart tech savvy guy..figure out a way to earn more and not remain an hourly worker for ever. The more income you have, the more freedom and flexibility you have to save and invest for whatever financial goals you may have – all when living below your means.
I’m nearing 27 and have always been good with my money. I was laughing out loud reading the Yahoo comments because I’ve either heard them said to me, or I’m even more surprised by the amount of excuses people make as to why they’re not saving. I think one thing to hone in on is the percentage piece. People look at salaries and get all “woe is me”, but the fact of the matter is- you were saving 40% when you made $50k and can still save 40% making $80k. Sure, if you’re good at math you realize the dollars at the end are higher with the $80k of course.. but at the end of the day the percentage is the same with both salaries so the ability is there.
Someone else said it in a comment on this, but it’s sad that human nature seems to gravitate toward criticism and victimization rather than trying to learn from one another and give praise. I can’t count how many times I’ve offered financial advice to friends and they turn it down and continue with their horrible spending habits. Those same people, who know I live frugally, are quick to say “must be nice” when I do decide to make a decent purchase. Some people just won’t get there until they remove being stubborn.
Congratulations and keep the posts coming!
Thanks Heather! Lots more posts coming!
This is a great turn around on all the Yahoo know-it-alls. I wonder what they would do if they saw this article. How would they make fun of themselves?
I keep preaching Plato’s Cave to explain scenarios like this. What you are doing does not fit with the reality most people know. You somehow escaped the cave and saw the proverbial light. When you came back to share this information, you found that people will lash out and tear you to pieces rather than give up their reality.
Seriously awesome! I like what you said about there being two kinds of people in the world. Even if you are in a “must be nice” scenario, like making 80k, how many 80k-making people blow all their money too? A LOT! And it is nice! So what?! All of those people calling you sad or my favorite, “looser” (btw did you ever notice that people who call other people that in writing always spell it wrong?) are in the victim mentality mode. They may never get it. Hey man, I’m jealous of your retirement too, but I’m taking that as inspiration and DOING SOMETHING! 🙂
That list was great! I didn’t catch your article, but I see the same thing with pretty much every article on big savers, so you really nailed it. I can’t believe the self defeating attitudes of some people. It’s absolutely mind boggling!
Laugh about their comments all the way to the bank! All of the intelligent comments are on this post not on the yahoo post. I absolutely love the locus of control explanation – so true.
#6 kills me that so many people don’t know about substantially equal periodic payments/reg 72(t)
Wow! People can be so cruel. I love the comments section on blogs because they are usually very positive. Don’t let the haters on MSN and Yahoo get you down. You are absolutely killing it!
It’s easier to blame others than be accountable for the actions that led you into the spot you’re in. I figure if you don’t have trolls along the way that you’re not doing something right 🙂 Awesome job getting featured above our World Leaders!!!
Shows how poor financial education is here in the US. Scary at the same time. I wonder what life would be like had I not come to the crossroad, frustrated with spinning my wheels financially, and decided to educate myself. I am glad that there are those like you Money Wizard, out to educate.
Very amusing post and great points at the end! Good on you for your thick skin. It’s pretty hard for me to put up with an “I can never do that” attitude in others and I’m working on busting through it within myself, too.
Hah! Fun reviews. Congrats on getting featured on Yahoo. I got a couple on the front page in 2017 too, but didn’t read too many of the comments. For some reason, my weren’t TOO harsh.
Good luck for 2018!
Sam
You missed out on the comments! Definitely some gold in there.
Best wishes in 2018, Sam!