Zen and the Art of Personal Finance Part 1

[Chett]

I want to do something a little different here at 5k5k.org. I regularly write about fitness and finance and reaching ones goals in both areas and I still want to stay on topic with these subjects, but go about it in a different way.

Several years ago a friend recommended I read a book titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Persig. A few days after he mentioned the book I found a copy in a local book store, flipped through a few pages and really couldn't get into the book. Last spring someone mentioned the book again and I decided to take a second look at the book. Something had changed and this time. I was hooked and I began reading the book. When I began reading I noticed a lot of parallels in the book that could be drawn into personal finance, so I decided to take notes as I read and use the book as material for future writing on this site. Here is the beginning of a series Zen and the Art of Personal Finance.

The book is a biography of sorts about Robert Persig. It is part travel log, as he and his son travel across the Midwest to California. The other portion of the book deals with his reflections along the journey as he remembers what led up to his mental break down and how he flirts with re-entering his former disabled mental state. The book begins Persig, his son, his friend John and John's wife Sylvia begin their travels in the Midwest.

In this book, Persig is a hands on type of guy. If he owns something he wants to know how it works and how to work on it. He feels the owner of a thing has a certain responsibility in knowing how something works and being able to fix routine problems that may arise from owning something. His friend John, on the other hand, feels that you should pay "good money" for something and if it doesn't work you take it to someone else to fix it, or you simply ignore the problem. I think this is true with money as well. There are two types of people regarding finances. Those who have ownership of their money and want to understand how it works and how to control it, and those who feel their financial lives are out of their control and they are left to the winds of fortune or misfortune.

At one point early in the trip Persigs friend and travel companion, John, is trying to start his brand new BMW bike. He pulls the choke wide open and begins pumping furiously on the kick start. As he continues to try and start the bike Persig smells gas in the air, a sure sign that John has flooded the bike. John begins to cuss the bike and how he was sold a lemon. Persig mentions the bike may be flooded and offers to help pull the spark plugs and let the engine dry out for a second. John says he doesn't want to get in to all of that "stuff." He hates the idea of maintenance and working on things. He honestly feels thing should just work and if they don't you wait it out, or take it to someone else to fix it. This didn't stop with motorcycles. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) Persig wrote:

"I might have thought this was just a peculiar attitude of theirs about motorcycles but discovered later that it extended to other things............Waiting for them to get going one morning in their kitchen I noticed the sink faucet dripping and remembered that it was dripping the last time I was there before and that in fact in had been dripping as long as I could remember. I commented on it and John said he had tried to fix it with a new faucet washer but it hadn't worked. That was all he said. The presumption left was that that was the end of the matter. If you try to fix a faucet and your fixing doesn't work then it's just your lot to live with a dripping faucet.

This made me wonder to myself if it got on their nerves, this drip-drip-drip, week in, week out, year in, year out, but I could not notice any irritation or concern about it on their part, and so concluded they just aren't bothered by things like dripping faucets. Some people aren't."

As I read this I smiled. I thought of how many people I know, or have encountered that treat their financial life the same way. They tried a budget once, it didn't work, so they resigned to struggling financially. Many people believe they have been dealt a hand in life and they are stuck. As Persig alludes in this portion of the book. You are only as stuck as you decide to be. Things can be figured out if you go about it in the right way, which is a good stopping point for the first part of this series.

Do you know anyone who has this attitude towards life, or finances? How do you help them overcome it, or should you even try?