Sign Here
I met a blog reader yesterday. We spent about an hour together, and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together. We dabbled in conversations around careers, meaning, materialism, parenting, debt, marriage, and budgeting. Overall, it was such a treat to meet him, and I hope it's the first of many encounters.
He said one thing that was particularly fascinating to me, and on the spot, I told him that it needed to be today's blog. I'm going to paraphrase him, as I don't remember his exact quote. In short, he said that between the ages of 20 and 30, we tend to make financial decisions based on what other people tell us to do. Parents, mentors, co-workers, friends, family. After all, we're young and this is our first time dealing with real-life money stuff. Thus, we trust.
He also added that we spent much of that decade "signing away":
Sign here, and these loans will pay for your college.
Sign here, and you can use this shiny plastic card to buy whatever you want.
Sign here, and you can buy this car (but only after you sign here on this other document for the loan).
Sign here, and you will own this house (along with all the not-yet-known responsibilities that come with it).
Sign here, and you can take all these furniture and appliances home without paying interest for 36 months.
Sign here, and you can marry this person (this one is actually pretty awesome).
Sign here, and you'll be the parent of record on this child's birth certificate (this one is pretty amazing, too!).
We sign, sign, and sign.....for a decade. Then, we wake up sometime in our 30s and realize our life looks a lot different. The wisdom (or lack thereof) in each of those signatures has set the foundation for what our life now looks like. For many of us, it's scary, daunting, and suffocating. We realize some of those signatures, in hindsight, caused tremendous damage to our lives.
As my new friend was sharing this idea with me, I couldn't help but think back to all my "sign here" moments during my 20s. Each of those moments, without knowing it, caused ripple effects that I still feel 15-20 years later.
Perhaps we need to slow down....especially in those young adult years. Perhaps we need to more carefully consider our "sign here" moments, thinking through the ripple effects it might have on our future. Perhaps we need to surround ourselves with a wiser circle of influence, one that won't lead us down these dangerous roads.
If you're well past your 20s, as I am, perhaps you need to find some young adults in your life and invest in them. These young men and women desperately need strong influences to help guide them to places they won't regret 20 years later. It's our job, collectively, to help this generation avoid so many of the crippling mistakes we made. We might not be able to go back in time to help our younger selves, but in a poetic way, perhaps serving this next generation well is our DeLorean.
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