You know what really grinds my gears? The never-ending negativity in the media. Especially when it comes to economic and personal finance news. When was the last time you’ve heard a good news story that didn’t involve saving a cat from a tree?
Turn on your TV right now and you’ll quickly learn:
Middle class is disappearing, and unless you’re born rich you will never experience financial security.
Seniors don’t have money. None of them. They all eat cat food and pinch pennies to make rent.
There’s absolutely no way for young people today to succeed unless they invent Facebook. And Facebook has already been invented by some Mark guy, so they’re all screwed.
Investing is basically gambling. Nobody can win at it.
No one ever gets ahead in life. We all start well, but slowly drift into mediocrity.
Our parents (grandparents) had everything going for them. We’ll never have what they had.
Basically, it’s a never-ending rain of negativity, coupled with weather forecasts (also lies for the most part).
I get it. Telling good news doesn’t produce good ratings, doesn’t keep viewers glued to the screen. We as humans have been wired to pay attention to trouble signals since the beginning of time, when assuming the worst about rumbling in the bushes meant survival by running away from bears. Optimistic people assuming it was just the wind went extinct.
Fast forward to today. If our news outlets broadcast how things really are, people would probably stop watching television:
“Hey, listen up! Everything is pretty good. Our economy is still one of the strongest in the world. Some people suffer, we get it, but we have societal safety nets and support for them. Your chances of becoming a victim of a crime are so low it’s laughable. You’ll never experience sufferings of an armed conflict like the rest of the world. You’ll never die of hunger. You have all the luxuries other people can only dream about, even if you’re living in a simple one bedroom home. Your phone can do 17 things that older phones could not. We’re almost done researching flying cars. Life is awesome.”
At this point, people would probably turn off the TV and go enjoy life, while news channels went out of business. So, I get where the need for negativity comes in. Nothing keeps people close to television like bad news:
“Everything is awful, there’s a new incurable disease, economy is in shambles, people are losing jobs, factories are closing, the economy is in recession, gangs are prowling the streets, and half the kids have to eat soup out of their boots.”
Call me naive. Tell me I must be wearing rose-colored glasses. But I’m choosing to ignore all the negativity, and focus, instead, on the realities of life.
Canada is still a country with the highest social mobility in the world. ‘Social mobility’ is a fancy term for moving up in the world measured by income. According to the Fraser Institute, 87% of people in Canada move up over time from the lowest income bracket into a higher one. Remarkably, two of every five Canadians in the bottom income group in 1990 ended up in the top 40 per cent of income earners by 2009.
Translation: The vast majority of people who start working minimum wage jobs don’t continue earning minimum wage. They advance their careers, earn more money, and move up – sometimes all the way to the top.
I can tell you the same, from personal experience. My first jobs in Canada were all minimum wage jobs. What else would I get, being an immigrant with no experience and skills, and who could not speak English very well (. . . and still can’t).
But you work hard, you gain experience, and little by little your income goes up. Slowly but surely, you start investing some of your money, and your net worth goes up and up. Social mobility is alive and well.
As far as our parents and grandparents who had a good thing going? Do me a favour, ask anybody over the age of 70 about it. Besides telling you how they walked to and from school in snow uphill both ways, they will tell you that all their lives they worked hard.
Some of them had meaningless labour-intensive jobs just to earn enough money to put food on the table. Hunger was a real thing back then, houses were smaller and crappier, cars were luxuries, dialing phones was a physical exercise, and when you were out of money you had nothing to fall back on. My grandparents, who experienced World War II, and years of suffering following it, would probably slap me silly for implying that they had a good thing going.
So, let’s summarize. You live in one of the best countries in the world. While everyone’s situation is different, there’s a very good chance your life is 500% better than lives of people outside North America and Europe. You have the luxury of being in control of your life. It’s possible for you to go back to school if you’re passionate about doing something else.
Over time your life will likely only improve, financially, as you gain experience and pick up more skills. We have public healthcare, so you won’t have to cook meth if you get cancer. Your cell phone has more computing power than was necessary to launch the moon expedition. If you run into financial troubles, you’ll figure things out. Perhaps somebody even loves you and thinks the world of you.
Turn off your TV. Go out and enjoy life.
Yours truly, Financial Underdog
Questions or comments: [email protected]
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.