Radical Pragmatism
How I found personal power in my messy finances
Right now, it seems like everyone is either hustling or struggling. Maybe both.
Bad news, pointless work, and a direct deposit that’s spent before it even arrives. Does that resonate?
Even in our free time, we’re stressed about how to live life to the fullest without completely blowing the budget in a single weekend.
It’s easy to assume helplessness, that it’s all inevitable. Among thinkers and concerned persons, issues like housing affordability, inflation, retirement planning, and real wage growth weigh heavily on our minds and hearts.
To me, it’s a classic David and Goliath struggle, except it’s the 99% vs. the capitalists, capital holders, and institutional investors—forces of “the market.” But for whom does the market serve?
Are we (non trust-funders) overlooking an obvious path forward, one that doesn’t require mass legislative change or political might? It requires each of us to reclaim our individual economic power, and then move together as a unified mass.
I recently witnessed the power of the collective in the case of the Los Angeles teachers’ and school employees’ strike, which ended with an approximate 30% wage increase for the lowest-paid workers.
It’s not a perfect example of collective bargaining, but it does remind us of the rules: In order for it to work, individuals have to agree on their shared interest and their desired outcome—and be willing to compromise to some degree as a whole. None of this absolutist extremism that’s so popular in online echo chambers and on network news.
We’re more alike than we are different, despite what identity politicians would lead us to believe.
I wonder, as a society of mostly work-a-day folk, if we had a shared sense of identity and interconnectedness—if we couldn’t better effect some change in our economic lives.
By that I mean, things like a four-day work week. Rent controls. Transparency in pay. If we all decided to just not work on a single day, make the entire system grind to an awkward halt for just 24 hours. What might we accomplish, for ourselves and for our communities?
The law that allows organizing and negotiating is nearly 100 years old, and not only has the American workplace has evolved since then, it’s been undermined by decades of deregulation, automation, and globalization that have all made it easier to replace workers.
NPR sums up the current state of global collective bargaining here:
“France, Iceland, Belgium, and Austria conduct their collective bargaining differently and...they have higher rates of union membership to show for it. Instead of putting the onus on workers to organize individual businesses at the establishment level, these countries' labor laws and customs empower unions to make collective bargaining agreements that cover whole sectors of the economy, whole classes of workers, or even their entire nation.”
Sounds pretty cool.
But is there another way? Something that doesn’t require painstaking organization? (you ask)
To reclaim power over your financial life and contribute to the wellbeing of the community, consider smaller changes in your personal habits and values, things that could add up to a real shift in economic trends.
One way I have found personal agency and a sense of power, in a world that often feels rigged, is to look highly critically at how I spend my own money. After all, the entire global economic engine is built on aggregated individual behaviors.
It’s no longer a question of which chains to patronize and which chains to avoid—though that is a great start.
It’s about ruthlessly analyzing your spending behavior, and forensically tracking where the majority of your disposable income is going, and deciding if those experiences or possessions are actually bringing you joy, helping you advance, and supporting like-minded others. This is especially true if you’re spending on credit, which makes those things doubly expensive.
For years I thought I overspent on stuff.
I like clothes and shoes and precious little luxuries, so I imagined that’s where I needed to cut in order to do what every financial planner will tell you you need, to avoid personal financial catastrophe: save a 6-month emergency fund equal to your entire take-home pay (in other words, a personal 6-month severance cushion); begin contributing to a retirement account like a Roth IRA; pay down debts by transferring as much as possible into a zero-interest account and pay it down aggressively.
After some analysis, I was actually spending the majority of my monthly take-home on food!
Eating out, coffee, a smoothie here and there, and several carts of Instacart groceries each month. And I’m not even a foodie! I just wasn’t being very smart.
I was living on credit and avoided looking at balances, without any real plan for my future. I’m starting to get gray hairs, so this isn’t a joke anymore.
What I hadn’t realized is that connecting my spending habits to the areas in my life I value, knowing where my money’s going and why, makes it far easier to resist temptations. Cleaning up my financial picture helped me clearly see dysfunctional habits elsewhere in my life, like munchy eating and doom scrolling.
Whilst the wheels of adulthood churned, I improved my credit score, paid down debt, and established some savings and investments, all of which started to feel like a rich, nourishing meal for my body and my soul.
Not that it was or is easy to do. It’s not easy.
But if you have some help and support, from a financial advisor, and from sage friends with savvy sensibilities, then you’ll find it’s as painless as closing that SSENSE tab, with the sick hiking sneakers that would really accentuate your calves this summertime. Or cooking at home for yourself and for friends instead of eating out so much.
Moms everywhere will agree. Some of the best things in life are free.
Sidebar article idea: The way to win in life and in money is to have discipline.
In under two years, I’ll have less debt, be paying less interest to major for-profit financial businesses, and have a healthier savings cushion. If the first few months are any indication, I’ll also feel lighter, less restricted, and be less reliant on my pay check as the only thing sitting between me and a panic spiral.
So how does this relate to collectivism and the 99%?
Hear me out:
If we all could look past the gimmicks of slick product marketing, peel ourselves away from the addictiveness of content platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and understand how technology and psychology are used to separate you from your money, and think more rationally—more radically pragmatically—with regards to each of our financial habits, how much more collective economic power we would have?
I see it all the time, because I live in one of the many urban temples of consumerism.
Those of us with easily inflamed senses of FOMO and a need for constant external validation comprise great customer bases for many of the most profitable and highly wasteful businesses. The world’s richest man is no longer a techie or a financier, it’s LVMH’s head Bernard Arnault, maker of luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Celine.
A nation and world with less consumer debt, greater savings rates, and perhaps a more financially savvy populace would cripple many of the world’s most profitable businesses and predatory business models, and in their place would allow space and seed funding for more b-corporations, unions, collectives, and co-ops.
We might even accelerate solving the our pressing and existential challenges, instead of designing yet another version of the same sneakers, over and over.
It’s time to wake up.
Human civilization has a desperate need for both more individual economic responsibility and collective democratic economics. Or “representative economies.”
Whatever word soup we decide on, something that better serves us, the 99% who maintain the order, enforce the rules, and who deserve a less precarious existence, fleeting and profound as it is.
Our shared experience as small but numerous economic players must be viewed as a potential source of community and organizing power.
If we each take personal responsibility for our role in that collective, and for our own financial behavior, and commit to viewing our spending or saving power—however large or small it is—as a way we can exercise our voting power in a globalized world where businesses are our representatives, imagine what we might accomplish.