A Fool and His Money

2/23/2019

Sometimes when I sit down to write, I look into my current mind and measure what I see against my memory banks of the second half of the 20th century. Many things I saw and did and put forth as a good idea in that former 50 year period are still very valid. Many things are not. I don’t view myself as a “wise old man” now, however, I also don’t view my past self as being stupid. Naive, maybe; uninformed, most definitely. But, by examining when, how, and why the pattern of thought changed and I am not the same man exactly, yet hold to some absolute truths that do remain and shall remain, keeps me aware of myself. I’m not a “fool on a hill.”

Which was my SIMH this morning: “The Fool on the Hill”—written by John & Paul (Beatles) and made most famous by Sergio Mandes/Brazil. “Day after day, alone on a hill, The man with the foolish grin is sitting perfectly still, ….Nobody wants to know him, They can see that he’s just a fool. But he never gives an answer…..But the fool on the hill, Sees the sun going down, And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning round!”…..”His head in a cloud, The man with a foolish grin is talking perfectly loud,…but nobody wants to hear him, They can see that he’s just a fool….”  —-Maybe the foolish man had something to say, right?

In February of 1950, 69 years ago, the first “credit card” ever, came into existence. Known as the Diner’s Club, it is still in existence today. It started with 200 people having the card, 14 restaurants honoring it, and the rest, as they say, is history. Ten years later (1960) on my Senior class trip to New York/Washington, DC, our sponsor used one in a restaurant to show us how it was done. Most of us thought, pshaw, big deal, who would ever want to do that! Why not just pay for it. One boy in our 4-person hotel room thought it was a cool thing to do. The rest of us, just the opposite. 

Then, in 1970, another ten year period, our bank (in Danville, IL) sent a representative into the carpet store where I worked and taught us how to use cards, manual card readers, and how to refer to it as cash, even though when we put it in our bank account we didn’t get to keep it all, and it was OK with us.?? That was a dual system called Visa/Mastercard: ever heard of it? Then, of course, American Express, which was an old “traveller’s cheques” company for more than a hundred years, brought out their card in 1958, which became an elitist’s card by the time V/MC made cards available to the common man. Discover Card by Sears/1985 offered extended spending limits and changed the paradigm, once again.

There is a certain “air” which came about when people used these cards back then. An air of superiority by some who almost gloated over the fact that you didn’t get their cash when you took their card—as if that proved something, But, an air of apology by some because they just didn’t have the cash to buy something they either needed or wanted really badly. I believed back then, when seeing these two attitudes, the superior air came from that person knowing there was no doubt he would simply pay the card balance when the bill arrived, The other was most likely from one who doubted he would be able to pay the whole balance and would wind up paying high interest on what he still owed.

Some may not see this as major, but it signaled an overwhelming shift in the individual thoughts concerning buying power and what constituted a good personal budget and, subsequently, a solid national economy, and neither of these indicators has ever shifted back to the way things were.

In none of these money management shifts did anyone seem to pay attention to the biblical admonitions about borrowing and lending. After all, that was archaic thinking. It took about 50 years before a biblically principled man began to teach people a solid way to discipline themselves out of debt and into solvency—Dave Ramsey. Dave wrote a book about it in 1990, then promoted it by doing (free) a one hour radio program each day for a month in 1992(still syndicated.) He makes good biblical sense and it works if the people work it into their lives. They are taught to tear up or burn their credit cards, and pay off their mortgages (a thing which was originally thought of as bringing one to penury as late as the crash of ’29.)

It isn’t my purpose to rant about credit or rave about being above it. My business is mine and yours is yours. But, I wanted to show one of the things which has entirely happened in my lifetime, mostly in my adult lifetime, which changed the world we all now live in. 

The “fool on a hill’s” purpose never was known. What purpose does this fool carry? or the next fool coming down the path.

Thanks for reading, the Elder