On personal finance and capitalism

As someone who spends a lot of time reading about personal finance, one of the most interesting things to me about the personal finance world is the relationship of personal finance to capitalism. (I know, heavy shit.) Honestly, personal finance is a hobby of a diverse set of people with fundamentally different worldviews -- thrifty, traditionalist Christians and Mormons, scary BIG CAPITALISM businessmen, saavy Stanford-graduate Google-generation businessmen, lefty Portland residents who grow their own food, and even hippies who want to tune in, turn on, and drop out. About the only thing they share is the desire for people (or at least some people) to achieve financial security and independence. Everything else -- motivations for doing so, political views, etc. -- is up in the air.

I've noticed that a lot of personal finance writing actually undermines traditional economic thinking. The authors of Your Money or Your Life suggest that you work until you have the money you need to maintain your (extremely frugal) lifestyle permanently, and then cease to work for pay. That may sound like "retirement", but they envision you doing this at 35 or 45, not 65. They ask you to calculate things like your "real hourly wage" -- the wage you make after you account for all the money you spend to be able to work -- and make a case for why volunteerism is superior to paid work. This is not traditional economic GDP-maximizing thinking. It's similar to feminist and leftist economic criticisms in that it points to other values and kinds of work that get left behind in the quest for constant economic growth. But it does this in the language of self-help. I find that fascinating.

I think a lot of current national trends -- DIY, urban farming, local food, knitting, Zipcar, the list goes on -- are reflective of this kind of reluctance to view economic growth as indicative of growth overall. And I think that's a great sign for the spirit and health of this country and the world -- because the voices of the libertarian economists have been drowning out those of everyone else for too long.