Don’t Listen to Anything Baby Boomers Say About Money

It’s a surefire way to end up old, bitter, and bankrupt

I’ve had a significant advantage throughout most of my life.

For my first 35 to 40 years, I surrounded myself with people older than me. So I was able to do things before my time. Over the last several years, I flipped the script. As I hit my forties, it just so happens — mainly by chance, a bit by indirect design — I tend to hang out with people younger than me.

In this article, I illustrate why this “advantage” matters with respect to my outlook on money, particularly crucial aspects of personal finance and investing.

Maybe you had older friends in your preteen and teenage years. There’s nothing like it. This circumstance remains one of my best childhood memories. My older friends led me down the wrong path so many times. I can’t thank them enough for this.

When I was a freshman in high school, most of my friends — on the block and in school — were juniors and seniors. I hung out with people my own age but spent ample time with these elders.

There’s often an older friend your mother trusts.

My mother viewed Traci as the big sister I never had who played the role of protector. She had full confidence that Traci was always looking out for me. While this is almost completely true, the rub is that Traci always looked out for my best interests, not necessarily my mother’s.

When there was a house party across the street, Traci shuttled me there. She fed me appropriately copious amounts of alcohol. She hid my buzzed and often drunken state from my mother. This was not necessary. In Traci’s hands, nothing could go wrong. Mom assumed Traci would shield me from drinking rather than facilitate my first experiences.

Then there was peak ninth grade. The first time I got drunk.

I wasn’t on the basketball team. So I’d often go to the games with a handful of seniors. Before one game, we got a 12-pack of beer and drove around my hometown. I got wrecked on two or three beers. I still remember the song that was playing when I realized I was drunk — Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World.

I had a conversation with a nun from my Catholic school while wasted. It was great.

I’d often take the “spectator bus” with these older friends to away games and get absolutely trashed on the standard 30-minute drive or so to the away team’s gymnasium.

Have you ever been on a “spectator bus” to travel to your high school’s away sports games? Lots of firsts — other than drinking — happen on these rides.

When I started working — in radio — I was only 13. By the time I was 17, 18, 19 years old, I was part of a crew of older radio and television personalities. After work, we’d roll out into Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood. Buried in this crowd of 20, 30, and 40-something-year-old men and women, I never got ID’d once. But I got drunk a lot.

You take these experiences into adulthood.

I’m glad I had them. Instead of turning me into a degenerate, they helped me properly place drinking in my life (for the most part). But, more importantly, they added to the experience of being an only child. I was always comfortable, in silence and conversation, with people older than me.

Fast forward twenty years, and I set writing aside to work in Los Angeles’s bar industry. A 40-year old guy working and hanging out with people almost exclusively under 40. Now, most of my close and sort of close friends are sub-40, even sub-35.

I mixed ages well during these two distinct halves of my life. It has paid off across life situations, including in personal finance and investing.

There’s something about being able to play both sides of the fence. Sort of like the type of person who’s comfortable at a black-tie affair, yet more than at home spraying champagne after hours from the bar top of a cool dive.

When you can see the perspectives of distinct sets of people — on the basis of age or some other defining factor — you can consider and maybe take multiple perspectives.

This goes back to the useful tool that has become a theme in my recent articles: Holding competing thought sets.

In the recent Reddit dust-up, I have been able to take competing perspectives.

This isn’t as much a battle of long versus short, David versus Goliath, or Main Street versus Wall Street, as it is young against old. Or, at least, the young-minded opposite the old-minded.

The young-minded crushed it in that they leveraged social media and the broader scope of technology to, if nothing else, shake up the stock market. We watched as so-called bandit traders made everything from a few bucks to not-so-small fortunes on the backs of hedge funds, some of which lost their shirts.

The old-minded just don’t get it. Because it’s not being done the way they think it should be done — by the rules they created — they take exception. To them, there’s something inherently wrong with different rules and tools governing how stocks act and react.

These relics are akin to your grandfather, who refuses to video chat, open a social media account, or even use an iPad on nothing more than principle. They’re fully capable, just set in their old ways. Old and close-minded.

It’s a destructively toxic mindset, so many old (minded) people take on.

Slithering into this dichotomy proves instructive.

More than anything, it allows for nuance. You don’t set up camp in either faction of this inane battlefield. You take both perspectives. You wrestle with competing thoughts. And, as is often the case, you emerge with a healthy subtlety of thought.

There’s something else that goes hand and hand with this notion of mixing with older people as well as young folks at distinct points of your life. You glean knowledge (by way of experience) from the older people and inspiration from the younger set. This isn’t to say knowledge and inspiration can’t interchange between age groups. I’m merely generalizing for simplicity’s sake.

Case in point — I removed myself from the emotional hysteria that surrounds the Reddit battleground stocks. So I took a position in Nokia, using the stock as well as options.

Of the group of stocks Reddit pumped (and, yes, this was something like a pump), the one I actually have some long-term conviction in is Nokia. I like what the company’s doing with 5G, particularly in Asia. But, beyond that, a couple of older, more experienced friends taught me much of what they know about options over the years.

I learned from them because I listened.

Younger and older people listening to one another. And vice versa. Sharing with each other. Moving forward together. It’s the world we ought to strive for, yet will probably never see, except on oases such as Medium.

Not to get too deep in the weeds, but I’m selling volatility in Nokia options. Volatility is high because of the recent movement in the stock and a pending earnings report (which Nokia probably released right around the time this article got published). I situated my trade — using the stock and options — so there’s literally no way I can lose money.

If there’s a middle ground in this mess, I found it.

I’m not going to banish the Reddit fiasco like some old, antiquated fart who thinks GameStop’s run is an assault on the rich. But I’m also not going to fall for the psychological allure of following the crowd into GME at like $400. There’s no way that was going to end well. And it hasn’t.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but meaningful experience with people considerably older and younger than you over the years can fuel an ability to take several sides in a debate. When you’re dealing with money, this is an important skill to hone.

Why?

Because you don’t walk into a situation fueled by emotion and passion (the way it appears a majority of the world functions), instead, you walk into it able to objectively sort through and make sense of other people’s emotion and passion. From here, you’re in that sweet spot where you make informed, rational decisions.

With money, there’s nothing better than informed and rational.

When you’re young, brash and married to the Twitter mob’s core arguments, you’re anything but informed and rational.

When you’re a stuck in your ways, old and antiquated (love that) fart adhering to outdated ways of doing life and work, you’re anything but informed and rational. Your advice sucks. Nobody should listen to it, especially young people who have yet to get all jaded.

A bartender friend who’s in his upper fifties or thereabouts once told me he takes every training the liquor brand reps offer. They’re usually younger than him, hocking the latest products and showcasing the newest ways to make drinks. While he says he might not necessarily buy what they sell or do what they say, he wants to know about the latest and potentially greatest.

Hold onto the people who are older than you yet remain young-minded. If I have one goal for myself as I age, it’s this. To never stop being curious, intellectually and physically. To always remain open to possibilities. To believe in the possibilities. To be optimistic, even if I’m uncomfortable with or not fully confident in something that’s new, even foreign to me.

This mindset provides alternatives. With a set of options to choose from or meld together. In areas of personal finance, such as budgeting, spending, and saving, this matters. It’s equally as vital when you’re making investment decisions.

So many people go into situations and uncritically take in the prevailing arguments. Then, they pick a side.

This is a recipe for disaster in life and money. That’s one thing I learned (again) this week because I paid attention.

This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.