My wife listens to Dave Ramsey to fall asleep, he is overly simplistic and disagree w/ stuff like pay lowest balance first no matter what but overall he is fine. The way I take his advice is that he turns getting out of debt into a game/competition.
Like if you are training for a 10k, a basic thing you might do is say “no junk food until I whoop this 10k’s ass!”
Someone might come along and say: well, once a week won’t kill you, and once a month is definitely fine.
Response: I know that dumbass but I’m in the mindset of going all out to accomplish this 10k and the thought of some goddamn potato chips getting in the way is not acceptable
Someone: but potato chips are good and you can still have some…
Response: I said I don’t want any fucking potato chips, I want to run a goddamn 10k. I’ve had plenty of potato chips, eating potato chips is not what I’m trying accomplish in life right now.
Someone: what about a Twix? Twix are good…
Response: I don’t want a fucking Twix, I want to run a 10k, and I want to do it as fast as I can. Yes, I know that running 10ks are not the end all be all secret to happiness in life but that is what I’m doing right now, okay!?!?!?
+1 to the Eff Dave Ramsey Express. I have no problem with the patently-obvious-if-you-spend-five-seconds-thinking-about-it advice he dispenses. It’s the fact that he acts like he’s the first one to think of this stuff coupled with the fact that he’s just a complete dick about it.
Doesn’t seem true at all. It may increase the impact of your good and bad deeds and activities. It may make some people worse and perhaps some people better, but a general rule about it accentuating virtues and flaws seems wrong and pretty gobblygookish.
A billion? No idea. I’m a better person with less money though or at least I have been up to this point.
(Also, ime poor people are better people irl. My car breaks down, I have no cell phone and I need help? I’d find help much more easily in a poor neighborhood. Not that there aren’t lots of people that would be happy to help in a rich neighborhood, but it’d be easier in a poor one. I’m really stuck and it’s midnight and someone invites me to stay at their house? Ok, few people will do this, but rich people pretty much never and poor people will do stuff like that sometimes.)
If I needed an emergency blood transfusion in order to live and I could ask everyone at the Yacht Club or a street gang or a biker gang? I’d take the gang.
What’s the Robert Mitchum movie quote? IIRC he typically spends his time hanging around rich people. For whatever reason he spends a night in jail. When he gets out one of his richy folks asks him about the experience. Mitchum says it was great because he met a better class of people in jail.
I guess? I just think poor people are more likely to help on average. I think there are some explanations that aren’t just “poor people are better”. I think poor people are more likely to base their self-worth more on things like helping strangers. But, also I think struggling yourself, at the moment, makes you more empathetic. I didn’t pick a blood transfusion because I don’t want rich person blood in my body. I just picked something that’s an equal sacrifice for a rich or poor person.
But I’m basing this on my own experience as well - empirical, though anecdotal.
Poor people are more likely to help because they’re much more likely to understand needing help in similar circumstances. They will empathize with you. The prick who has never wanted for anything won’t.
I’m basing this on myself too. I don’t think I’ve ever been a bad person and I helped people when I had money, but not having much I almost feel obligated to help whenever I can.
Haven’t there been studies showing that giving people money makes them more of an asshole? I don’t think that counts as revealing who they are (unless you believe that all people are assholes, which… I won’t argue with).
Currently watching a hilariously bad shark movie on Amazon prime. I feel like “wearing earbuds” is the modern-day “wandering into the graveyard at night” of shitty horror movie tropes. Death is sure to follow.
