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Smarter Than The Jonses
Gary Vee, who is a bit of a charlatan, has some great core ideas. Keeping up with the Jonses' is what he yells at broke people who ask him how to get rich. "Stop keeping up with the Jonses' and go sell coffee mugs you find at garage sales!" Technically he is right. Save well, make income, and you'll do fine financially. Benjamin Franklin said the same thing, "A penny sav'd is a penny got." We engineers, famously frugal and income driven, do the same thing! Just not with money. Most of us do it with knowledge. It's a problem. Why is keeping up with the Jonses' bad? I'm an engineer and a writer so I'm going to ride this metaphor into the dirt. Then I'll explain how engineers do it. Keeping up with the Jonses' is the idea that if you compete with others for status by accumulating the same wealth signifiers, you will probably go broke. The Jonses are not just the average family, they are a mythical family...
Read more…A more thoughtful way to work
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