"There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else."
— Andrew Carnegie
The world of the entrepreneur or investor can be all consuming. Unchecked, our life becomes one of chasing one task list and fire drill after another. Unless we take the time to step back and look at the larger picture, we will lose perspective. This also means we often focus not on what is important, but on what is most urgent or troubling. We will also put importance on those things which really have no meaning to us in the long run.
When I was a kid, my friends and I would joke about our parents’ efforts to get us to finish our meals (the old "kids are starving in India" bit). In reality, there was some truth (though no effectiveness) in all of this. We had moved so high up Maslow hierarchy that we no longer strived for food or water but got ulcers over what clothes made us fit in or who was invited to what parties.
A friend, Whitney Tilson, wrote a quick blurb that does a great job laying out this contrast. While he is a successful hedge fund manager, his family lives in Africa, helping villages over there cope with life. He writes:
The New York Times sometimes captures our world with such clarity and brilliance that there is nothing more to add. Of course, much of the time, it’s completely inadvertent.
These two articles ran yesterday, the first from the front page and the second from the front page of Thursday styles:
Africa Adds to Miserable Ranks of Child Workers In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in four children below age 14 works, and some are not even paid. A boy named Alone Banda works in this purgatory six days a week. Nine years old, nearly lost in a hooded sweatshirt with a skateboarder on the chest, he takes football-size chunks of fractured rock and beats them into powder. Lacking a hammer, he uses a thick steel bolt gripped in his right hand.
In a good week, he says, he can make enough powder to fill half a bag. His grandmother, Mary Mulelema, sells each bag, to be used to make concrete, for 10,000 kwacha, less than $3. Often, she said, it is the difference between eating and going hungry.
Fashions Aims Young Premium jeans, for instance, an item coveted by Maisy Gellert, a third grader living in Westchester County, N.Y. "I’m very particular, Maisy said. Sevens are the only jeans I actually wear."
Like many girls her age, her fashion antennae are finely tuned, her standards exacting, her desires well defined. "I like the stuff that’s in style, like leggings and shorts, tank tops and flip-flops, she said, promptly adding to that list: Gap camisoles that are white, because I can wear them with just anything. Puma sneakers, pink and gray — I’m on my third pair — and ballet slippers, but those are hard to find for my size foot."
Humbling stuff. Makes me stop and think about how raise our children. I would certainly hope that they relate more to the first article than to the last. Else, it will be time to move them down a few rungs in Maslow’s hierarchy.
Along those lines, there is a good website that deals with the issues of raising children with a helathy financial perspective – http://www.sharesavespend.com. Come to think of it, I think you Matt are the one who introduced me to the site!