Mom Was Right: Don't Air Your Dirty Laundry

Brothers Judd blog links to this article which confirms something quite common in my parents' generation, particularly among the British:

Most cultures have developed rituals and practices to help people express grief, sadness and distress.

Contemporary therapies and counselling have attempted to take this this approach to emotional catharsis further - some have considered the meaning of a trauma and how the individual has reacted to it.

Now a study by the University at Buffalo's Dr Mark Seery has produced data which appear to suggest that not talking about a traumatic event (in this case the World Trade Center and Pentagon terror attacks of 9/11) may be a more successful way of coping than the alternative - sharing the experience.

I'm a recent convert to the idea that therapy can help people in certain situations, but I know individuals who have been in counseling for years searching for some "hidden reason" for their troubles when, in all honesty, life just sucks sometimes. The post above goes on to poke holes at the theory that we should all just shut up about our tragedies and get on with life, but I think there's an important point to be made out of all of it: everyone has tragedies happen to them, but perhaps it's time for us to become a little less Jerry Springer and a lot more stiff-upper-lip.

Too Many Cokes

When I was a young adult, my parents used to lecture me on "too many Cokes." That was shorthand for frittering away one's money on unnecessary and temporary things. If you spent a buck on a Coke, after all, that was a dollar you weren't saving for something else.

Of course, like most young adults, I blew off my parents' wisdom and spent the dollar on a Coke. And another dollar on a bag of chips or a pack of gum or whatever. But I thought about Mom and Dad when I read this article on the difference $10 can make.

If a person were to save $300 a month (approx. $10 a day) and invest it to get a 5% yearly return, that person would have $20,402 in the bank after five years. On the other hand, if a person ends up spending $300 a month more than he has and puts it onto a credit card that he doesn't pay off over the same 5 year period, that person will owe $36,259, assuming a 26% credit card interest rate. After five years, the difference between saving $10 and spending $10 each day results in a $56,661 gap in net worth between the two.

Liberal nuts will argue that poverty is far more about victimization and historical discrimination than individual actions, but even the $10-per-day experiment shows that in large part, it's based on personal behavior. The problem is that the system we have doesn't encourage different behavior.