Saturday, July 5, 2008

Principles, Ideals and Relationships: Why PF and Hollywood don't mix (to recap)

I love to read J.D.'s fantastic blog, Get Rich Slowly. Not only does he have fantastic, well-written articles that come so fast it's almost too much to keep up, but he has a great readership, and looking through comments often gives me a lot of inspiration for my own, much less read blog.

After responding to a comment on his blog, I came to mine to write about it and realized that, yet again, I've left my blog for too long. I also realized that my last post might be confusing; I argue that giving an expensive gift is better than giving an IRA. I just want to say that if, hypothetically, I was a person who had $7500 to give, I would want to give someone a gift they would want, not a gift to "teach them a lesson." Let me expand on that:

First off, I've spent far too much of my life with people who give me things to teach me a lesson, whether it is political (my in-laws gave me a subscription to the ultra-conservative World magazine for Christmas one year) or religious (I have many, many Bibles from my mother). I get the principle thing, but I'd really just like, oh, I don't know, a candle? Some flowers? Or even an IRA, because that's what I'm into, and I would really appreciate it. My point is: give the gift the other person would want.

Secondly, I wanted to emphasize that the ultra-rich world of Sex and the City is not the real world. Let's not take our personal finance ideas from Hollywood! This is a pretend world that doesn't exist for most people, and we should always keep that in mind. Hollywood is not our teacher, not for relationships (who really has sex with new strangers every week?), not for ideals (like letting the guy buy the apartment), and certainly not for finance (in make-believe, you can make as much or as little money as you choose). Even the writers of the show knew they were stretching.

Last, I think it is important to find balance in life. Sometimes gifts are required in order to keep your social capital, and that social capital can be more valuable than dollars.

I am constantly in the search for balance in life and in finances, and while I am still learning, here's one thing I know: Hollywood ain't got it. And now I've done enough posting about Hollywood (there's too much in this world about Hollywood as it is) so let's get on with some posts about real finances, because that's what Tired in Tucson is about!