Special Bonus Post/Rant

I just read this article that discusses how people who hang out together usually have the same spending habits. Oh really? How about, DUH!

I'm sorry, but to think that this isn't obvious information really baffles me. Maybe I read too much or at least more than other people, but the idea that people living together or spending a lot of time together do the same things seems pretty much like common sense. You see articles that discuss how people who have been married for 25 years even start to look like each other because their natural biorhythms cause them to use the same facial expressions as each other, which over times causes the same wrinkles.

They end the article discussing how kids whose parents own stock are more likely to own stock themselves. This is another duh. The same goes for other behavior like drinking and smoking and the person's overall temperament. Also, the value system of the parents is usually reflected in their children as well. Why wouldn't it be?

The bottom line is that we are all animals. We learn from the other people around us. If someone does something a certain way and we don't have another way to do it or their method seems more effective, we will adopt their method. It's natural. That's why if your parents have poor spending habits, so will you unless you break free from them.

This is also why their are tiers of schools. The better schools have better methodologies for doing things. Maybe they are more complex or harder to do and only brighter people are able to execute them, but they still produce more effective results. The better schools are the ones innovating even better methods all the time because they are pulling in the money to do the research. The lower schools just copy their methods as they trickle down. I know this first hand as my teachers would steal lectures and projects from Carnegie Mellon.

Anyway, to end this on a positive, it just goes to show you that if you want your life to change, you have to change your environment. Sometimes this means ditching friends or family members to hang out with other people who have the habits you want to develop. This will prevent you from lapsing into what you are trying to avoid. This is also the reason why they should never put a reformed criminal back into the same neighborhood they got arrested in. It's too easy for old habits to come back when one person is trying to push out their changes on a larger group. The group just has too much momentum in a majority of cases and the individual can't win. So be aware of your friends and your surroundings.