I Don’t Get It

Fun fact about your least favorite blogger . . . me! I often—if randomly—come up with inspirations for blog post topics. Could happen anywhere. At home. While hiking. On an airplane. In my sleep. While dangling upside down outside a 10th-storey window, held loosely by my foot by some goon directed by a neighborhood thug. You know, anywhere. 

Anyhoo . . . when said inspiration strikes, I try to jot down the idea on my phone. Because I’m old. And I forget things. Lotsa things. Things like silly ideas for blog posts.

I have a list of probably 25 blog topics I might bore you with write about. I’ve written draft posts on probably 10 other topics.

For some reason or other, I bunched together a handful of these topics one after the other. All separate subjects, but in reading them over while trying to figger out which to write about, I realized that they each share a common thread in meaning and lesson. So, I decided to whittle down my possible-blog-post-topic list kill several birds with one stone and incorporate them all into one post. You . . . are welcome, Dear Reader!

The common thread mentioned above is that there are certain things that lotsa people do that make little sense to me. I admit that this is not just a little old-man-yells-at-clouds. But indulge me, Dear Reader, won’t you? Actually, you have no choice as this is my blog and here I rule like a spoiled-child tyrant. Which isn’t actually that far from how I behave IRL. Oops! Methinks I’ve revealed too much!

With that, let’s get to it, shall we?

Lobster tale

A while back, I was on a plane. It’d landed and taxied to the gate, where we all were waiting for the doors to open so we could deplane. Btw, Dear Readers of a certain age, am I the only person who, upon hearing or thinking about the word “deplane” immediately thinks Fantasy Island? 

A guy near us was on his phone talking to someone he was to meet for dinner, discussing what type of food to eat. During the course of the conversation, the guy said, “Fifty bucks for an entree [they were specifically referring to a 7 oz. lobster tail] is not that expensive. You spend more than that for sushi!”

Now, I like lobster. Sushi, too. I have a decent idea of what each would be priced at on a restaurant menu, too. I also most certainly do get why someone would want to eat either item, either at home or at a restaurant. Both are nice treats. Every so often. 

But what I don’t get is someone saying that $50 for each is “not that expensive.” That’s inaccurate. 

A lavish dinner at home can be prepared in my relatively high-cost-of-living area (where this person was gonna have his lobster) for $10/person (our average home-cooked dinner costs less than half of this sum). And that’s including not just the main course, but all the fixins, too. I dunno if I could quite do this with a lobster as the main dish. But I know I could do it for way less than $50/person. And I know for sure that I can do so with sushi. Cuz I’ve done it when we’ve DIYd sushi at home. 

And a filling, delicious meal out of, say, healthy Middle Eastern, Mexican, or Indian food can be had in my neck of the woods for less than $20/person. Far more expensive than the non-lobster lavish homemade meal. But far less pricey than the $50 7 oz. lobster tail. 

So, no, $50 for an entree is not “not that expensive.” It is expensive. It’s only not “not that expensive” for exorbitantly wealthy or otherwise devil-may-care people (the person on the plane seemed to be the latter, but not the former). And even then, only relatively so. Rather, in my opinion the entree should be described as “expensive” and appreciated and savored all the more for that fact. 

Lunch punch

On the subject of food, I’ve mostly been a DIY guy all my life. My parents made me lunch when I was a kid, and I’ve mostly brown-bagged it/cooked at home ever since. Sure, I’ve lunched out many times. But, over my adult life (which, notably, included lots of time working from home), probably once a month on average. I got plenty of free lunches along the way, too. 

My lunches mostly could be described as serviceable, but tasty. A sandwich, crunchy snack, piece of fruit, and if I feel a little wild, maybe a small dessert. While working full time, I had little need for more because the meal was: (1) easy to make; (2) quick to eat (which I usually appreciated as I’d need to get back to work); (3) and no more extravagant/expensive than necessary given that I often couldn’t eat at a leisurely pace and adequately savor the food and time. If my average dinner costs less than $5/person, and lavish ones cost $10/person, my homemade lunches cost far less. 

So, Dear Reader, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that people who mostly eat lunches out mystify me. I recall the first time I learned that not everyone was a brown-bagger like me. Early in my full-time working career I was talking to a friend who’s the same age as me and then was working a pretty low-paying job. He casually mentioned going out for lunch. I then was desperately poor and basically never ate out. My friend didn’t have the crippling debt burden I carried, but, like I mentioned, wasn’t earning much. So, I expressed shock that he was eating out at all. Then I asked him how often he did that. His reply stopped me in my tracks: every day. 

Every day?! OMG! Doing some quick math in my head, I figured that my friend was spending not just probably many multiples more on lunches than me, but likely close to 10% of his gross income. Madness!, I thought. Throughout my career I met many others who did just the same. 

Now, I admit to loosening the purse strings as my income rose far higher than what I made in the early days. But even then I rarely ate out more than once per week. And when fancypants food courts—which pretend to be cheap but are far from it—began their heyday in the 2010s and my friends started almost instinctively suggesting we eat there instead of some more pedestrian but perfectly fine place, I cut down my eating-out days a bit in the interest of not being liberated from my money even faster. 

The mere thought of spending many thousand dollars a year on lunches out still makes me shudder. 

Show time

I’m old. Like really old. Not only didn’t I grow up with social media, I mostly didn’t grow up with home computers. Like I said, old. 

I’ve written before about my general antipathy for social media, including people who often publish posts of them seeming to be living their best life. Sure, a post here and there might be fine. But a constant stream? That’s not someone wanting to post an update. That’s someone trying to impress others. 

But why? To what end? Life’s not perfect. Tough, even. No one goes unscathed, even if some of us are good at rolling with the punches. If I see nothing but a relentless stream of posts on social media of someone summiting a mountain, splashing around in crystal-blue waters, and dining at pricey restaurants where a lobster tail can be had for the inexpensive price of $50, I’m not just not impressed, I’m wondering what this person is hiding or, perhaps, insecure about.

I’m not saying I never try to impress other people. I do. Wanting to do so probly is hardwired into humans. But I’m more interested in doing and thoroughly enjoying “the thing” in the moment. Not broadcasting about it and painting a wildly incomplete—if not wholly inaccurate—picture about myself. 

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world

What I guess all this brings me to is that I generally question everything. No more so than when I think I’m seeing a maddening crowd, which I try to steer clear of. This goes for personal finance as much as anything. 

Meme stocks? No way, Jose. Crypto? You to you, bro. All in on FAANGs? I’m good with my broad market index funds.

And in the end . . .

I say all the time that I like to live a life enriched by practicing addition by subtraction. That is, eliminating from my life things that might just cause me to wring my hands or furrow my brow. Or both. All this helps prevent my brain from hurting.