Some People Just Don't Know How Money Works, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: two adults who really don't know how to use money, the human cost of Amazon's free shipping and influencer marketing is out of control.
This Is Most Upsetting Account Of Personal Finance Ever Published
My favorite thing about reading money diaries like this is the writer spending most of the time patting themselves on the back for being so frugal and on top of their spending habits only to reveal in the final third of their essay that family money ended up paying for some of the biggest and most necessary things people can buy — a house, a car, a college education and so on.
I used to think that these were the only people who don't really know how money works. But, reader, this week I'm happy to say that I've been completely proven wrong. Here, two post-grad-educated adults — Kate, an insurance claims agent with a law degree and her husband, Tom, an insurance claims manager — just blow the doors clean off any sort assumptions you might have about just how bad two adults can be with money.
They have credit cards in the dozens, most of them maxed-out. They still carry student loan debt in the high five-figures, on top of the tens of thousands they took out to send their children to private school. They have two mortgages. They are approaching 50, their debt is easily six figures, and it's only getting worse!
I wish I could say that reading it will help you glean some important things not do with your own personal finances, but it's more akin to watching a trainwreck and coming away with "Well, I guess don't get on a train that doesn't have any brakes or whatever."
The only faint glimmer of hope comes at the very end. "This is the kind of thing poor people do," says Tom. "And I'd consider myself that."
Amazon's Free Shipping Isn't Free
Today, and even moreso on Monday, you will see headlines everywhere screaming about the deals on Amazon. You will most likely even see it here. And they're hard to ignore! Amazon is the biggest freaking online retailer on the planet. Ordering things online is easier than going out into the world and braving the crowds who all just want to get nice things for the people they love.
It'd be a little silly and naive of me to just tell you that Amazon is a bad company, and that you should not shop there. You know this already. But what are you going to do? I suppose the best you can do is just educate yourself as a consumer, and make the decisions you need to make. For that, you should read Chavie Lieber's interview with an Amazon Fulfillment Center manager.
Know that being able to buy and receive just about anything within a few short days is the product of an incredible amount of human labor — the surplus value of which just goes straight into the pockets of Jeff Bezos and Amazon shareholders.
And I know that you've probably heard "no ethical consumption under capitalism lol" a million times over. And you probably believe it! But, look, I know that life is difficult. You endure your own unique set of slings and arrows and then, in the few short hours of respite, you gotta find a way to get something for your mom. Amazon makes that easy. But in the process, it makes life hard for a lot of other folks. Just keep that in mind, I guess.
[Vox]
The Influencers Cannot Be Stopped
We're at a weird time in the way products are marketed and advertised. After about a decade of the social web, we've gotten to a point where people all have a fairly intuitive understanding of how personal brands work. Instead of untouchable celebrity figures hawking products, we have people who, more or less, seem like a real people telling you to buy stuff, or vote on this, or support this cause and so on. It's become so effective, that nowadays it's the only way brands can see themselves reaching people.
What I think is going on right now is a mass cashing-in of all that "authenticity" built up over the past decade. In 2012, building a personal brand was all the rage — everyone was, more or less, expected to do it because everyone is, allegedly, immune to the traditional forms of advertising. And now, if you have any sort of following, it's time to harvest.
I can see it happening within my own social circles. Anyone I know who take riding and racing bikes semi-seriously is tagging brands in their Instagram stories, either trying to get a brand to send some free stuff their way for the trouble, or perhaps even worse, trying to appear that they're living the lifestyle of an influencer. The ideal life is one in which everything you own or do is a carefully chosen, carefully negotiated brand relationship because only suckers pay retail for things.
It's hard to tell if we're going to realize that everyone is just hawking stuff all the time and just stop, or if it's just going to get a lot worse.
