Nostalgia and Journey
Recently, I was digging around some archived files and I found an old journal. It was from 2009 and back then I did my journaling on my website. Reading through the various journal entries was a fun trip down memory lane. In one of the paragraphs, I described how earlier that day I found out that the hotel, where I was working, was in financial distress. The director of my department approached me, sat me down and told me that I would have my wages cut. My journal captured some of the uncertainty I felt receiving that news and it also detailed thoughts on how I might react, from a financial perspective, in light of how- earlier that week I signed a new 2 year rental lease on my apartment unit. It’s not really the point of this blog post, but the end result of that predicament was that I invited a friend from work to share the apartment with me and that reduced the burden of the rent expense. All is well the ends well.
The point of this blog post however, is that I went through an experience that changed how I viewed and thought about risk. It was a pretty encompassing ordeal too. At the time I was a Manager In Training (MIT). My latest post was housekeeping. One of my duties was to inspect the cleaning work being done in the guest rooms. Each time I entered a room, for inspection, the first thing I would do is turn on the TV. I’d learned about CNBC during my time at the hotel; So my normal process was to come in, turn on the TV, tune it to CNBC, turn up the volume and begin inspecting the room. In 2009 CNBC was otherworldly. I literally watched Jim Cramer, live, screaming into the camera, “They know nothing!” Cramer was infamous for that line. He was referring to the financial system regulators, including the Federal Reserve. In 2009 the global financial system was in disarray. In late 2008 Lehman Brothers had failed and this catalyzed a new leg down in the stock market.
The drama of CNBC aside, I sensed that important things were happening. I observed my 401(k) balance move down. My wages were affected. Fellow employees of the hotel were experiencing personal stresses. Things outside of my control were affecting my life. If the spark of interest in finance had been my course work in university, now it was personal and the fire had been ignited.
In later Blog posts I’ll describe some more of my journey. I plan to make my blog a place where I tell my story and also a place where I begin to curate interesting research and information that helps me synthesize what the world looks like and thereby where it might be going. If we can begin to wrap our mind around the probabilities, we may be able to magnify our chances of delivering our savings into the future.
Stay tuned!
