No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER EIGHT

LAUGHTER CAN DIFFUSE THE PROBLEMS

Americans, more than most peoples of the world, love to talk about themselves. We feel a great need to unload on others. I've always thought that you should give it up to very, very few people and that you should always be somewhat of a mystery to others.

For instance, we all greet each other every day with, “How are you?” “How you doin'?” and “What's up?”

“Fine,” “Great,” “Doin’ well,” “Fantastic.” Knee-jerk questions and knee-jerk answers. Most people don't really care how you are, and anyone answering, “Fantastic” is probably far from that condition.

When people ask me, “How are ya?” I answer, “Every day is an adventure, and some of the adventures are really good.”

The answer is always true. Every day is an adventure and no one else will have this answer. It's neutral, saying nothing, really. But different as well. And you want to be different.

You cannot force funny, but you can learn to diffuse difficult business situations by bringing smiles into the equation. It can solve problems. For instance: last fall there was a longtime client in his mid-eighties who ran a large margin account (borrowing against his assets to buy more stock). Our legal compliance department wanted to talk with him about appropriate behavior, meaning, “You're in your eighties. Do you really know what you're doing? Leveraging yourself with so much debt? At your age?”

All you people out there thinking of going into the investment business in any capacity ...