I'm Gonna be Rich

Well, not for a while...

While I'm spending the year as an AmeriCorps volunteer, I'm being paid just enough to cover, bare expenses.The Corporation for National Community Service, which pays my salary, bases our pay on the federal poverty level for the state in which we serve...which is not much.

Clearly I'm not in this for the money.

A friend and I were once having a discussion about our careers and I mentioned that I'd be interested in doing something different and interesting, even if I didn't make a lot of money doing it, arguing that being young is the best time in my life to not be making very much money. In econ-speak (because I'm a big dork) the "opportunity cost" of doing something like joining the peace corps is much lower when the amount of money you'd be making in anything else is less.

My friend replied by saying that "this is the main difference between you and me. I don't think about things in those terms". Asking what she meant, she explained that she didn't equate things in life in terms of money. Other things are more important.

Now I feel that the distinction is really a suckers choice: at its core money is just one abstract measure of the choices you have available, both how many and what kind. Trying to make the most of your resources does not need to be about some heartless pursuit of wealth for its own sake, but can rather be about getting what you want out of life. It's not money I care about. I care about my family, food, music, a good education. All of these require resources to sustain them somewhere along the line

That's also the philosophy of blogger Ramit Sethi, whose book I will Teach you to be Rich I discovered through a friend and who maintains a blog of the same name. He writes about personal finance and one of his core philosophies is one that makes a lot of intuitive sense to me; that money isn't an end in and of itself. Personal finance should not be about bragging about the hot stocks in your portfolio, but about helping you get the things you want out of life, whether it's saving up for an education or being able to retire someday and travel the world. For most people, money isn't really something that they want to spend energy caring about--as Sethi puts it, getting your personal finances under control allows you to worry about more important things in your life.

I bought Ramit's book and started on the six-week plan for managing my finances (such as they are), which isn't nearly as corny as it sounds like it is. As I figure out what I'm doing I'm learning some stuff and some of it I'm finding kind of interesting.

Ok. So maybe I am treating financial knowledge as an end unto itself. Maybe though, if I share useful things I find and my own experiences my friends and neighbors can benefit in some way. That would be rich (now that is corny).