5 Big Money Traps Society Wants You to Still Believe and Fall For. Say No

Mine is the best

Photo by Clem Geiss on Unsplash

I just lost $1,000.

Yikes.

That was the first thing that came to my mind when instead of buying a MacBook Pro, I ended up buying a social suit to go to a school prom party. But before you judge me, I will tell you that this was 4 years ago. I admit I was not very smart.

I was just a kid who liked to impress everyone and everything. Even my teachers. I would go three days without eating in order to impress the most beautiful and desirable girl in school.

The lesson here is that most of us do stupid things because of society. They set a lot of standards for us all our lives. Believe me, it is hard to escape. I’ve seen smarter people fall into these traps. I still see it all the time.

That’s because money is a highly sensitive subject for most people, and it’s often difficult to make rational decisions. We are guided by the media, Instagram, and our neighbors.

Besides emotional barriers, there are also psychological ones that make us fail.

We are capable of amazing things, like going to the moon, but sometimes we are a bunch of failures at things that really matter.

There are many thought patterns that affect both the way we think and act.

Mine is the best

You have spent hours assembling a piece of furniture and are full of pride for the hard work you have done. Even if the doors on the shelves are crooked, or the back door of the house is not closing well, deep down you know how much effort you put into it and wouldn’t give it up in any way.

We value things that we have built or created ourselves, higher than they really are. Self-validation can be a nightmare.

As a child, drawing was a trend at my school.

Back then, I proudly drew a picture of a fish and painted it with my younger sister’s colors, and forced my parents to hang the ugly picture in their living room. Which, of course, they did without a second thought and without looking at me to avoid drama, tears, and crying all night.

If you are planning to make an extra income online with Facebook Marketplace and sell the romantic flowers that you have taken out of your own vase, it is best to first ask your best friend or your girlfriend who will give you her honest opinion of how much she would really pay for them.

Or better yet, ask someone you don’t know. Or take a poll in a Facebook group. Then you can get the most honest answer and know if your romantic flowers will have buyers. Or if it is a total waste of time.

Something is not right

We judge a person because of an action or situation. This judgment or distortion can happen in different ways.

If you know someone who has a lot of money or even retired at 31 and is now enjoying his life from island to island, you think that this person is not honest and only got this far with shady dealings, or exploited poor guys.

Sometimes he just saved a lot of money and invested most of his income successfully. Or he started even at the age of 10. Believe me. And even before the early retirement, there were many years of hard work and sleepless nights. Maybe the guy ate too much rice and beans.

But it is also possible that you consider this person very hardworking and very intelligent. But really, it was just inheritance and this person was just a spoiled child.

Without knowing much about a person, we think we can know the true story based on assumptions.

I see this mistake a lot on Instagram.

You see a picture of someone with an expensive purse in a fancy restaurant or driving a Mercedes and you immediately think that person must have a lot of money. Sometimes the account is on credit and is in the red or even borrowed the purse.

Risky stocks usually catch fire

Most people don’t dare to invest in the stock market, let alone the financial market. Because they read too many bad things about the markets in the press. Things like the collapse of big corporations, financial crisis, or economic crime. Few newspapers and TV report good stocks or good corporations. The media loves to gossip, you should already know this.

Just as it is in most people’s minds: stock market = you only lose money.

Except that this thinking can fool even investors with many years of career.

If a company like Tesla is always in the media, investors usually buy the stock because they expect big profits. Financial market analysts agree that Tesla stock is overvalued. Even though Tesla sells few electric cars, it has become the second most valuable car company in the world. Second only to Toyota

I’m about to win

This is more like casino stuff.

If red wins several times in a row at the roulette table, gamblers expect black to win the next round.

Many investors believe that when a stock rises, it is likely that at some point the price will have to fall again.

Only most forget that you should never think about the future based on the past.

Losing only hurts

I myself have been through this countless times.

I still see many investors selling too quickly the stocks that went up in value and keeping the ones that went down.

Instead of getting rid of the losing stocks, they keep them in the portfolio. Some even do stop-loss orders, when stocks are sold automatically as soon as they hit a certain floor.

We feel more for the losses than for the winning. Even if we win 8 times and lose only once.

I had this experience recently when I bought the season of a series on Apple TV+ and Amazon Amazon Prime. Through my mistake, I ended up buying the wrong season and didn’t realize it until I watched the first episode. The worst part is that Amazon Video does not accept returns. The anger over the lost $30 was much greater than the joy over the $30 I earned in my first month of writing online.

As always, society wants you to do something stupid with your sacrificed money. Say no.

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