(03) 9020 2905God has the Anti-Christ. Superman has Lex Luthor. Roadrunner has Wile E Coyote. Julia Gillard has Kevin Rudd. Shane Warne has mobile phones.
Hippies have Debt Man. Yes, a Hippie’s nemesis is … me!
I think I might be the Anti-Hippie.
I honestly don’t believe that, outside of recylcing newspapers and booze bottles, I have a single thread of Hippie DNA in me. None was passed on from my still-practising Hippie parents. I don’t do tofu, mung beans or lentils (unless camoflaged in a soup).
The only long hair I’ve ever had was a mullet – the party at the back. I have minor trust issues with people who won’t eat meat (usually eventually overcome with familiarity). My parents once threatened to install long-drop, self-composting, toilets into their eco-friendly house – until I warned they might never have their son, or their grandchildren, visit them again.
Debt Man and the Hippie movement are opposites. But, maybe in a positive sense, like yin and yang.
Which is why, with respect to my parents’ generation, I’d like to make a constructive criticism: Hippies stuffed up their timing.
If Hippie-dom was all about living a chilled out lifestyle in the now, despising social and political orthodoxy and doing as they wanted when they wanted, then the 1960s was, like, 50 years too early to hold Woodstock.
Why? For Anti-Hippies like me, there has never been a better time to be alive than right now – and there’s no protestors! They should be marching in the streets now – 2011. Yeah, baby! If you wanted to drop out of society, now would be a far better time than when Robert “Pig Iron Bob” Menzies was in charge.
Now is awesome. I’m all for now. No commune for me. I like having my own house. With my own family. Happy to visit others, but don’t need them hogging my toilet.
I love email, sms, the internet, access to 1000 TV channels, cheap international travel, the expectancy of a long life, great healthcare, smartphones, $25 share trading, 248-inch plasmas for under $250, cheap cars …
Immediate, exciting, with unending fun at your fingertips. But it’s all got to be paid for. So, a Hippie’s hatred of capitalism doesn’t sit so well with me.
Proudly and loudly, I’m in favour of money. Precisely, of me having enough. Though I’m definitely not against YOU having lots too.
But with all of 2011’s speed, immediacy and awesomeness, not everything has changed from 50 years ago. Some stuff takes just as long to do as it always did.
For example, the length of time it takes to get a (guy’s) haircut hasn’t changed since scissors were invented by the Mesopotamians 5000 years ago. Cooking a hearty slab of steak still takes 12 minutes (while newcomer tofu can be cooked in three). Walking the dog still takes 30 minutes. And getting a tantrummy two-year-old to eat dinner still takes an hour and a half.
And getting rich still takes a lifetime. Unless you were born into it, inherited it, or won it with six numbers in Lotto.
It’s probably the number one thing that irritates Generation X – Generation Now. We want wealth immediately. Let me tell you, immediate riches ain’t going to happen.
Even ageing, REFORMED, Hippies, which most of them 60s refugees are, have given away “living in the now” for accepting the immovable rules of money.
And those rules are: (1) delayed gratification; (2) trading risk versus return; (3) compounding growth; (4) diversification; and (5) the power of leverage.
They are the “secrets” to making money, except they’re not secrets. They’re obvious. You want to create wealth, just throw them into a mixing bowl with your own money.
Except for rule number one: delayed gratification.
For a generation reared on immediacy, the bit about not spending money now to leave it growing for the future can be a bit hard to swallow.
But by planting that little financial seed now, you can have a money tree to feed off the fruits of later. As Neil, that dastardly boring Hippie from The Young Ones, said: “We sow the seed. Nature grows the seed. Then we eat the seed.”
OMG! Damnit! Did I just quote a Hippie? Ssssh. Pleeeease don’t mention this to Lex or Kevin.
Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser. bruce@debtman.com.au .