My New, Adult Fear
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Until this point I had only really invested in my 401k, following Dad’s advice to max it out and to keep my spending below whatever income was left over.
I was doing that, and I was skeptical about the whole bonus concept, meaning I wasn’t convinced that it was something I could rely on. This was in spite of the standard institutional explanation that “total comp” and not base salary is how you should measure yourself. And yes, everyone on Wall Street knows that it’s not what you know, or who you know, but how much you MAKE that determines how valuable you are.
So I had received this additional payment for my first bonus. And I had the money left over in my savings account. Any financial advisor would say that I was holding too much cash.
My earliest fear of money had been that it would cause me to waste my life in a soul-sucking job because I wanted it too much. My later fear of money was of not having enough of it and being forced to waste my life out of desperation. But now that I was making it in capitalism I learned a third way to be afraid of money.
My new, adult fear was the fear of inflation. That the purchasing power of my savings would be eroded by excessive government spending. All of my blood, sweat and tears over the previous years were now represented by that deposit; just some numbers inside of a bank database. They weren’t even printed on paper. It’s kinda scary when you think about it.
I passed through Union Square each evening on my way home with the giant National Debt Clock towering over me, physically and spiritually. I was surprised to learn that when inflation was calculated they didn’t include the real-estate prices. It was part of a big government conspiracy to make us think that inflation was lower than it really was.
Rents were on fucking fire. I had begun poking around on real-estate sites to see if there was anything Emily and I could afford to buy in Manhattan. Condo and Coop prices were going up like crazy, but they were a good investment at any price. “Buy now or be priced out forever!” was the expression du jour in the forums I was following.
Was my money really safe?
Was my money really even real?
