Today’s Rant: Money

Ah, “money makes the world go ’round,” as they say. I’ve never even known what it’s like to have a lot of money. I am intimately familiar with having “enough.” Variations on that theme include “just enough,” “barely enough,” “enough to scrape by,” and on the rare occasion, “slightly more than enough.” Having been post-college and employed for various lengths of time totaling about 2 years, the sense of entitlement my B.A. had bestowed upon me has been obliterated, and replaced with a malaise common to most people with a useless degree (or in my case, degrees). However, education is another rant for another time.

I was sitting there at work, and saw a pile of interest income tax forms on my desk. Basically, I had to fill in (with a typewriter, obnoxiously archaic I know, but that’s the IRS for you) the amount of money that the VPs of our company made on interest from their various sources.

Upon idly glancing at the amount of money, I realized that these people make in interest what I get paid yearly to do this dismal job. Their money is almost literally doing the same amount of work that I am. Of course, the interest is riding off of an investment of some magnitude, but they’re not losing money; they’re just skimming off the top of the interest they make. Jesus God Almighty, I wish I had money to invest. I can barely afford to pay my stupid gas bill and these people can just literally sit at home, masturbate, and make money.

In all fairness, these people are in their mid 40’s minimum, and probably had to spend 10-15 years clawing their way up to the financial situation they are now in. The fact that I don’t want to pay any dues means that I don’t really deserve the money commensurate with paying said dues. So as I said, my sense of entitlement has gone out the window. Although I do feel I am entitled to make enough money to be able to save a little bit of it. Too much to ask apparently.

Look at hedge fund managers. These people get paid to move other people’s money around; some hedge fund managers can make a billion dollars a year. Do you have any idea how much money a billion dollars is? Because I don’t. Let me break it down for you. I always find this exercise amusing:

Someone who makes $50,000 a year will probably consider 1/1000th of their income chump change, so consider $50 as money they can easily part with at any time. Just throwing around $50 now and again. You know what I mean.

With the same logic, someone who makes $500,000 would throw around $500, and someone who makes a million would throw around $1000.

Hence, someone who makes a billion would throw around a million.

That’s right, a billion dollars is a thousand million dollars. This is so much money it boggles the mind. There is NOTHING you can’t buy with that kind of dough, except maybe a space shuttle or island. Buying a Bugatti Veyron, a million dollar car, would not be a noticeable blow to your finances. I mean this is beyond rich. If money were a measure of holiness, these people would be gods.

Thankfully, that’s not the case. But as I sit here making 17 grand a year after taxes, I rue the day I learned to think like a rich person. Basically, a poor person works for their money, and a rich person’s money works for them, like in the example I gave at the beginning. So if I had the money, I would invest it wisely. But sadly, since I have not made anywhere near enough money to invest, I just have to sit there and curse every dollar I spend because it’s a dollar I can’t save or invest. Living hand to mouth is an extremely irritating state of affairs when you know you should be throwing money into a money market account or mutual funds. It feels like you aren’t making any progress when you can’t save money.

I’ve been told that at this point in my life (I’m 23 years old) I shouldn’t worry too much about that, but slaving away for tuppence a day is not my cup of rosie, if you get me.

Perhaps this would be a good time to address the politics of the rich (Reaganomics) and why they are so horrible for 90% of Americans, but politics is going to have to be a seperate rant. Until next time, keep your nose to the grindstone. Somebody gotta make that money.