Live Poor and Hamburger Buns

I was looking up an article on the Wall Street Journal and I saw this video in the list of other articles: "Five Things Rich People Know that You Don't."  I was curious.  I have been fairly reasonable at managing money, especially when Jack and I didn't have much except for his massive student loan debt.  My Uncle Bob once said, "Money doesn't come with instructions."  I always thought that was interesting.   A few years after my first job, I decided to look for instructions.  I've read a fair number of money management books, my favorite is The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias.  I have read pop books like The Millionaire Next Door and The Wealthy Barber.  I have read half of Benjamin Graham's classic The Intelligent Investor, one of the more academic books on money management.

I had a great Aunt and Uncle who, later in life, made more money off their investments than they earned from their day jobs.  When my Uncle Tom lost his job as a manager at some manufacturing company, he had the freedom to look for other things.  He thought he'd try his hand at selling cars.  He didn't want to sell any car, so he got a job selling Mercedes at a downtown Chicago dealer.  Anyhow, I learned having your money work for you = freedom.  I also learned that I had to figure out how to make that happen; hence, my independent study of managing money.

So I was curious.  Did this two minute video contain something not covered in Jane Bryant Quinn's 1,066* page Making the Most of Your Money?  Did this contain the secrets to becoming the next Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or the guy who owns Ikea?  When I worked at E&Y, the partner I worked for said being a partner was a good gig, but the best way to make money was have something that would sell while you slept, like Coca-Cola.  Did this video tell how to become part of the ownership class where you start your own business that refines or creates its own industry?  How to recognize which companies are worth investing in?  Lessons on how to get that CEO gig with an obscene amount of stock options**?

No.  But it wasn't all that bad, either mostly common sense ideas.  (Didn't someone say that comment sense isn't all that common?) The first four points of the video were simple:

1.  Start early
2.  Automate your savings
3.  Maximize your retirement savings
4.  Don't carry credit card debt

I have checked off the first four, no problem.  The fifth was interesting, and the hardest.

5.  Live Poor

My good friend Carla is the master of living poor.  She used to work in international finance, so has she has a clue.  She makes her own hamburger buns.  She could very easily afford to buy hamburger buns, but she doesn't.  She bakes them herself.  I've had them before.  They are really good, and she makes them small, like the size of reasonable hamburger that a middle aged woman should eat, not some monstrous 3/4 burger that would give you a heart attack three minutes after you ate it.   Her family has prioritized traveling, so all of the money they don't spend on hamburger buns gives her the choice of going to New York City or Istanbul for Spring Break.

It isn't just the hamburger buns by themselves that create the savings to travel: it is the whole philosophy surrounding it.  A woman who makes her own hamburger buns also paints her own house,  does her own home improvements, and saves more money than I do at the grocery store.  She drives used cars.  Granted, her husband has a nice job, but he is not the founder of Microsoft.

My other Seattle friends are super thrifty, too.  My friend Jane is the best thrift store clothing shopper ever.  (She should enter one of those Seattle Times contests on best thrift shop wardrobe.  She'd win.) Jane said the other day that Seattle covers its money in fleece.  Which begs the question: do people have money because they are so thrifty here?  Which came first?  Seattle was a blue collar town for decades.  Houses are smaller here than in other parts of the country.  Having lived in both a large house and a small house, I buy way less with the small house because I have less space to put stuff.  We have natural beauty and a climate that allows us to be outdoors for a large part of the year, so we don't need a beautiful indoor environment to keep us in frigid winters and melting summers.  A small house in a moderate climate encourages us to be outdoors which means we spend less on furniture and wallpaper.

I digress.   Did I learn something from the video?  It didn't tell me how to live poor, but it made me look at some of my friends who do it with grace and elegance that I admire and aspire to.


* 1,066 is an auspicious number.  It was the year William the Conqueror invaded what is now France.  It is one of the few years I remember from history.
** I used to work in compensation consulting for a few years where we would recommend how much executives should get paid.  I analyzed the value of stock options using the Black-Scholes model.  I am sorry, America.