I’ve been a mortgage loan officer now for more than a quarter century. This week, someone said “wow, you’re like an expert!”. I told her I was going to put “Jeremy Plouzek, Like an Expert” as a new title on my business cards. She didn’t seem to think that idea was as funny as did, but that’s usually the case with all my jokes. But when you invest 60,000 hours of your life into a field, you’re bound to find humor in many trivial things.
Experts are people who get paid to give their opinions. They’re on talk shows and podcasts, wear a lot of tweed, and have a well-curated selection of books in the background. Experts also have initials after their names that represent big achievements. My last name is difficult enough to get through without any additional suffixes.
Over the last 28 years I’ve read hundreds of books, digested thousands of articles, and worked my way through countless personal and business financial statements and credit reports. I’ve helped people who are at their best and others at their worst. I’d like to think that I now know a thing or two about matters of personal finance. But rather than calling myself an expert I really think I’m more of a student. I’m always learning new surprising things from individual cases I work on and compiled research I read.
After digesting the decades of longitudinal studies, my own meta analysis postulates that two things are certain. The first is that there are patterns to be learned from and that all things–including life itself–are cyclical. Some days we feel amazing and some days we may as well have been run over by a truck. Some months are flush with cash and others require further financial assistance. A chilly winter is a stark contrast to the heat of summer. And some years are just plain difficult.
The second thing I’ve concluded is that effectuating a desired change always requires additional exerted effort. Losing weight requires mustering the willpower to ingest fewer calories–or to burn more; the work is either mental or physical. The same is true if you want to reshape your financial picture; you can spend less or you can earn more. Buying a bigger house requires more money out of pocket or a larger monthly payment. Nothing in life is free. Whether you’re a single person or a sovereign government, the laws are universal.
Asserting that others are at fault for the bee currently in your own bonnet is the attitude de rigueur. But the blame game has never and will never accomplish anything of worth. The accurate axiom that has been independently authored by the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, and even Albert Einstein is the hard truth: “lasting change must come from within”.
