Let’s talk about money, why the idea that “you get what you pay for” is almost always true, and why not having money can cost you money. To set the stage, I’m going to share the Samuel Vines theory of Economic unfairness. Who is Sam Vines? Sam is a character in Terry Pratchett’s 1993 book Men at Arms.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
There’s a lot to this idea. First, it offers an easily understood example of how buying the cheap version of a product can cost you more in the long run. Conversely, it also shows how spending more for a quality product now can save you from having to replace it later. (Neither of these are the primary ideas of the theory, but hang with me and I’ll get to that one as well.)
Here’s my caveat: High cost does not always equal high quality, so don’t confuse or equate the two. Designer items or brands marketed on prestige and perception may cost more but be of complete shit quality. For example, a Maserati Ghibli starts at $71,000, but according to consumer reports, it scored a 1 out of 5 for reliability. It might do one-eighty-five, but when it breaks down again? Well, then you can’t drive.
The Toyota Camry starts at $25,395, but is widely seen as one of the most reliable cars you can buy. And before you ask why I just poked a hole in Sam’s theory, he wasn’t comparing the Toyota of boots to the Maserati of boots. He was comparing a 20-year old PT Cruiser that’s been in 3 accidents but only costs $1,000 to a new Toyota that costs $25,000. I stuck the Maserati in there so I could include Joe Walsh lyrics and remind you that spending more doesn’t always mean getting better things. This holds true for almost anything though, so do your homework on what you’re buying; Yeezy shoes don’t cost $250 because they’ll outlast Nikes. They cost that much because a famous rapper designed them.
That said, lots of people can’t spend more because they don’t have more to spend. This is the next insight from his theory. It demonstrates why quality products are out of reach for some people, and that the decision to pay more for a quality product isn’t one everyone can make. His metaphor uses boots that wear out after a year, but the two cars I’ve compared would do just as well. For that matter, there are no shortage of real world examples: Owning a washing machine vs. going to the laundromat, having a bank account vs. using check cashing services, or getting cheap credit vs. a no-credit check payday loan. It’s easier to save money when you already have money.
If you don’t already have money, there’s no easy solution. Credit isn’t readily available when you’re broke, and you often pay higher interest rates and more fees if you do qualify for credit. The best you can do is scrape by as best you can, suffer through wearing cheap boots, and try to make smart choices about where you spend what money you have.
The American dream tells you that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work hard, and eventually make enough money to not be poor anymore. And for some people, that works. A good friend of mine spent years skipping lunch and eating the same thing for dinner so he could pay off his student loans as quickly as possible. These days, he is very not poor. But for lots of people, one mistake can put them right back to zero, or even into debt. Because they’re operating with no margin for error, unexpected medical bills, the loss of a job, or even a busted water heater can empty their savings account.
Which brings me to the most important thing I want you to take from this. Being poor is not a moral failing, or an indictment of your character. Our society isn’t built to make upward mobility easy. If anything, it’s the opposite; the rich mostly stay rich and the poor mostly stay poor. And while your financial circumstances can be a result of your decisions, some of us have more options than others, while some of us have only bad and worse choices.
If you find yourself broke, be careful how you spend what money you have. If you find yourself rich, be smart about how you spend your money so you stay that way. And above all, remember that nobody goes to bed dreaming of spending their last dollar on boots that won’t keep their feet dry, but some of us wake up to that reality every day.
I love you,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.