Financial Failures
Great estates may venture more,
But little boats should keep near shore.
– Benjamin Franklin, “The Way to Wealth”
June 14, 2000
Today I graduate from Harvard Business School with honors. Today
is the true beginning of the rest of my life. I wonder what the world has in
store for me… What sorts of jobs will I have? Who will I meet? How much money
will I make? Will I be happy with my life in 20 years?
I’m starting my internship at a local stock investment
company in order to make connections in the world. I certainly don’t want to
end up like half of my high school class having to work blue-collar jobs to pay
off student loans.
***
January 28, 2002
I got the job! I start at Goldman Sachs tomorrow! I can’t
wait to start my life as an investment consultant… I finally get to use the
skills I learned at HBS in the real world to make money! I’m excited to invest
in the stock market!! I’ve done all of the research, and I’ve put in the time
and effort. There is no way that anybody
else is as qualified for this job as me.
***
February 17, 2005
I love my job. I’ve been making the right moves and the
right choices so far. I’m expanding into commodities now that I have the money
to do so. You have to fight and claw your way up the investment ladder to earn
the opportunity to invest in riskier assets – people of lower privilege than me
have to wait. It’s my time to shine, baby! They aren’t as good as me!
***
March 4, 2005
Funny thing happened today – a man with almost no money came
into our New York office to ask for a job. I laughed myself silly when I saw
him – he looked frazzled and uneducated. I doubt he could do anything in this
world successfully – he would mess up working at a cash register! I think that
the lower classes of society really need to get into their minds that they
can’t achieve overly ambitious goals like making hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year. They need to let go of their dreams to focus on working the
jobs they can. They should leave people with money and power like me to take
the risks in the world to make money – we can afford it after all.
***
March 29, 2005
Why do these funny things keep happening to me?
First, as I was walking to work, a homeless man asked me for
money. I laughed in his face. Do you know why? That man was the bully from high
school that always picked on me. Now he has no money and can’t to anything in
the world, where as I have the money to do almost anything!
Second, a man dressed in a Jets t-shirt came in to ask for
my services. We talked for about 30 minutes before he told me that he has about
200 dollars to invest in a stock portfolio. After hearing that, I told him to
get lost. Why would someone waste my time with investing 200 dollars? 200
dollars gets an individual barely one share of a company’s stock. Like I’ve
said to people before – if you have no money, don’t get your hopes up.
***
September 15, 2007
I feel like the world has turned upside down. The stock
market lost thousands of points today – my investment portfolio literally went
down the toilet. All of my stocks, options, and returns went red. I don’t have
the ability to calculate the full extent of my losses yet… Hopefully this
doesn’t get worse. If it does, then I might lose not only my money but also my
job.
September 22, 2007
I. Hate. The. World. I wish life would stop testing my will
to exist. It has been a week since the stock market crashed…and I am now part
of the nearly 10 percent of Americans without a job. Adding insult to injury, I
am virtually broke. Most all of my money was invested in personal accounts at
Goldman Sachs – when the stock market fell, all of my investments turned into
losses. I now owe Goldman Sachs a lot of money for the losses I have
accumulated over the past week. As a result, my house is being foreclosed next
week as collateral for the money I owe… I guess I’d better start looking for
somewhere to live…
September 28, 2007
The police came to my house today to force me out of my now
foreclosed home. I have no place to live. I see now how hard it is to live
without money and limited resources in the world. I’d better start looking for
a new job. I’m moving back in with my parents next week. Hopefully life will
start to get better soon…
***
October 28, 2008
Do you believe in Karma? I didn’t three years ago. Remember
when I made fun of that guy who had no money? I wish I hadn’t done that. I see
that I am now in fact one of those people – a person with no money who
desperately wants a job to get it all back. I think life is teaching me a
lesson for being so elitist towards those who really couldn’t help being of
lower class.
I now realize how little the average poor person can
actually do in the real world. I’ve tried to get a new job to no avail – nobody
is hiring in this economic climate. The average person may be able to do what I
previously did at Goldman Sachs, but socio-economic bias prevents him from
doing so. The average person doesn’t have money to invest in his ideas. With no
job and no money, he can’t invest in his future and remains stuck in poverty. The average poor person doesn’t have the
resources to make the connections to advance his life because people of wealth
refuse to acknowledge him.
I hope that I can get a small job soon – I hate living off
of my parents’ money. I have several interviews lined up over the next week for
some small, odd jobs that pay modestly. With some luck, my impressive HBS degree
and my work experience at Goldman Sachs, I’ll be able to land one of these jobs
so that I can get on with rebuilding my life with my education, work experience
and social standing to fall back on, I have an easier chance of climbing out of
this hole and “venture” forth. The
underprivileged and poor, I now realize have fewer opportunities and skill sets
and consequently must “keep near” their own class and their limited choices in
life. I sympathize with them, but I recognize
there is probably no other way to wealth than to take advantage of class
differences.
This will be my last journal entry – I am going to start a
new journal to symbolize my new life. I bid you farewell.
It was an interesting idea to make the format of the narrative a journal, although I think it may have also benefited more from being written as a third-person story so dialogue could be present. Brief conversations could have helped to portray the narrators elitism in a more subtle manner and also the less wealthy and humble nature of the individuals asking him for investments. Also although I like the plot of this story, I think in a way it misses the boat (pun intended) of the proverb. The proverb indicates that people from humble origins should be less risky in their attempts to acquire wealth, but it doesn't address what happens to elitist individuals like the narrator in quite the same way, or "karma" for that matter. I could see however how his lack of appreciation for his position of wealth made him realize that the less fortunate are not inferior, they just have less opportunities which was explained well in this narrative. Overall, I think it was well-written and made for an interesting interpretation of the boat proverb.
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