From the early 90's until mid-00's I listened to AM Talk Radio on a daily basis, with Tom Leykis my usual afternoon show after listening to a morning full of right wing kool aid - ala Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Micheal Savage, Dr. Laura and other such personalities. The influence of the Tom Leykis show certainly laid the ground work for my eventual discovery of these fringes of teh Interwebz we now refer to as the manosphere. He was the first mass media voice I ever heard who really drove the point home about how corrupt and unjust the family court system and marriage 2.0 had become in our culture. He also repeatedly lamented the loss of masculinity in the culture at large and castigated network TV for becoming nothing but "One big, giant vagina."
A common feature of his show included segments in which callers would phone in with their personal stories of relationship woes, and ask him for his advice on their problems with women. Most of those callers problems were basically men who had become beta-ized, pussy whipped and forgot they had spines and let their women walk all over them and run their lives into emasculated disgrace. Leykis repeatedly excoriated the airwaves about this, and he was the first mass media person in my estimation to lay the blame for this widespread lack of testicular fortitude in the American male at the doorstep of the single mother household.
"I am the Father you Men never had."
Many of his shticks and routines have stuck with me throughout the years. He was preaching "Game" before we were calling it that here on teh Internwebz.
But his advice for men on love, marriage, divorce, (I believe he coined the term "vaginamony,") where only a part of his show.
He also spoke a lot about personal responsibility, and about making short term sacrifices to realize long term success. He frequently discussed how he was enjoying the best luxuries of life his radio show success has given him - owning nice properties, driving luxury cars, having season tickets to box seats at hockey and basketball games, and always drinking the finest vintage wines...but he always made it a point to say he only enjoys such things now because he was smart, frugal and lived within his means until he finally reached the point where such expenditures on these things would in no way endanger his financial health.
He frequently advised young men to avoid going into major debt to drive nice cars they couldn't really afford, or to take out ARM that would adjust in 5 years into mortgage payments they could knowingly never afford. Much of his advice to young men have been echoed for years now in these sectors of the web.
But one piece of advice he frequently gave out was something that stuck with me years later, and I've recently realized actually can be extrapolated into all areas of any person's life. He called it the establishment of the F YOU fund (of course, Federal Broadcasting Regulations prohibited him from saying what he really calls it).
The F YOU fund is one in which you set up a budget and figure out the bare minimum of your monthly expenses that you absolutely must have. Your rent or your mortgage payment. The total of your necessary utility bills like electricity and water, and the amount of money you need to pay for your groceries, gas and car payments. Unnecessary luxury bills, like cable TV, magazine subscriptions, etc., should not be included in the calculations.
Once you've come up with the figure required to pay for the bare necessities of your life on a monthly basis, you should always take any left over money on every pay day, and put it into your F YOU fund. Don't buy a bunch of nice clothes or eat out at nice restaurants or take girls out on expensive dates, or do anything else until you've built up your F YOU fund.
The point is to build that savings account to a level for which you could cover all your necessary monthly expenses for a year or more should something happen to your current employment situation.
Once you've reached that stage, you've achieved true freedom and self determination in our modern world.
Once you've got that amount saved up, you no longer have to compromise your personal standards because your boss or your company demands it of you. You don't have to take a pay cut or an assignment that compromises your personal integrity, because you've got your F YOU fund.
You can look at the person or persons, or company or corporation, that is asking you to sell out your principles or take advantage of you and simply tell them F YOU. Because you're not worried about ending up unemployed, homeless and losing all of your valuable possessions, you don't HAVE to compromise. You can walk then and there, and have a nice, comfortable cushion to go out and find another job elsewhere that doesn't require you to compromise and not worry about losing your house or your car or having the electricity shut off or resort to eating cat food and ramen noodles.
Because if you put yourself into a position where losing your jobs means losing your house, your car and your means of basic subsistence, then you are not free, you are a slave to your things. And Leykis larger point was a good one: If you are not free, then you are not truly a man.
I may not remember his words on this verbatim, but that was the essential point he was making.
Boiled down to it's essence, the F YOU fund is nothing more than realizing that you need to order your life so that you are not in a position to be forced to do something....or do anything you don't want to out of a position of fear.
If you haven't done so yet...start saving.
18 comments:
I spent the first two years out of university driving a fourteen year old shit box. I paid off 25k worth of student loans in that time, wore my clothes from college, lived at home etc. I didn't buy $600 smart phones, I didn't wear designer jeans, I didn't go on fancy trips.
Now I'm in my late twenties, I've paid cash for a five year old luxury sports sedan (my dream car!), I have 40k in an IRA, and ill have 100k cash in my bank account at the end of the year (I know hoarding that much cash probably isn't the best idea, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it just yet. I'm thinking about laying down 50-60k cash for a foreclosure if I find the right deal). I have been to fifteen different countries and last year bought a modest set of quality firearms (my main hobby). So at this point I can certainly start to enjoy the "fruits" so to speak.
I live in a region with a lower cost of living and I work as an engineer in manufacturing. I know that not everyone will be able to make the same progress/everyone's circumstances are different. With that said I'm just sharing what I was able to do with where I'm at.
Your advice is sound, it hurts early on but is worth it down the road.
For me my F YOU fund isn't so much a fund, but the income stream from my first book.
Really, really, really pissed my old boss off lol. I've never seen an employer act like they got dumped before.
I'm a serial software entrepreneur: start companies, build an asset, build a customer base, sell company to major corporation (that has lost the ability to innovate), start over and repeat cycle. I'm on my fourth. This will be my last.
People in this world use a term called F U Money. The paradox of high risk development is that, as soon as you take a venture capitalist's money, they think they own you. They will march you toward their presumed liquidity event at any cost to your life, your family, your psychology, your health.
This is a paradox because the VCs are usually wrong in what they think a company can or should do. Therefore the only executive worth a shit is one who tells them no, we are not doing what you want this time, and stop calling me when you're drunk at 11 p.m. with your next great idea. I did not have F U Money until company number three, which meant for the seven years of number three, I was playing five card stud with four cards. Very stressful, wife bailed. But I made it to the finish line, got paid, got my F U Money, VCs thanked me for not letting them roll me. Wife was pissed because couldn't take half of the winnings. She had to content herself with taking my home and my children.
Number Four will pay me better yet because I had enough F U Money to self-fund this thing, and only have investors who understand that they invested because of me, not because of their beknighted sense of VC perfection. Sometimes I call my investors back, sometimes I send them an email because I am too busy. They know I'm going to get them a 10:1 on their investment.
F U Funds and F U Money, in my view, are central to successful business success, and central to a reasonable home life (until, anyway, the wife meets someone with more F U Money).
When I was married and did not have F U Money I acted like I did: expensive house (mortgaged), leased fancy cars, trophy vacations, juggled credit cards.
Now that I have F U Money I drive a 10 year-old Porsche, a 12 year-old SuperDuty, paid cash for my house, and vacation in the rural midwest. I do not use a credit card except for business expenses. I am hopeful that my children will help me jumpstart their way to F U status, and let me buy them their first house so they don't spend 20 years renting from bank. Of course, they may, if they choose, use that dough to leverage up if they want. But I'm pressing hard for them not to spend the 25 years in economic and social servitude, and if they marry (I'll be stunned, having seen my life, if my son will marry) perhaps they won't have the daily grinding diminishing pressure of servitude screwing up their home life.
Was $50,000 in debt. Used Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace Plan to eliminate all debt in 18 months. Now have Lots of FU Money!
Have anyone from the sphere phoned in to the TOm Leykis show to tell him about the manospehre and the red pill? Ven if he is aware of it making his listeners aware of it would be very useful. It is a HUGE marketing oportunity for the sphere. Alternatively someone could email the shows staff with descriptions of the manospehre and links, for example to Captain Captialisms welcome to the manospehre post.
I have always been frugal and careful to save money (my father died when I was 15 and my mother actually took $800 from my savings to help keep the family afloat in the short term). My wife... not a clue. Finally selling a house I should never have bought I am finally pulling us back up to the surface. That being said, I started buying gold years ago that beyond 5 ounces I needed to cash in to get by at one point, I have never relinquished. Judging by all the management and funds that my various jobs have gotten me into, this has been a far better investment than almost anything else.
Even if you manage to raise an F YOU fund, you may be raided by the State via the IRS or Social Security. Under the disguise of "the law", the State might use such divisions to raise your liabilities by "resolving" that you owe a certain amount in backdated taxes to the IRS, and a certain amount in backdated compulsory contributions to Social Security. Since neither IRS nor SS resolutions go through courts, you have to dispute their claims in the offices of these same institutions which created those liabilities against you in the first place! It's madness! These sort of stratagems are used in 3rd world countries to seize the wealth from political enemies by the ruling party. And in those crappy countries, it is even worse, because the judges are aligned with the president of the State.
In a sense...I'm storing my funds in Heaven.
This world give you no guarantees of wealth.
Buena - great post. In a similar vein, I was a C level exec at a startup, sold out, and got some FU money. But what did I do with it? Buy a multi-million dollar home? No. Blow it on coke and whores? Fun idea, but no. I rolled most of it into the founder's next venture. That investment is throwing off low 30's IRR's for the last 4 years and I couldnt be happier. Gee, if I was married I am *pretty sure* the misses would insist on the 6k sq ft home. Fuck that nonsense. I've been living in the same condo for 7 years, no mortgage and when I asked two different financial advisers "Do I ever have to work again?", they both said "Nope". Now I am a fulltime angel investor helping startups and I couldnt be happier. Freedom is better than sex, it really is.
- John Galt
Just a heads up to anyone who isn't aware. Tom Leykis is back on the "air" (Internet) 5 days a week with 24 hour replays. Go to www.blowmeuptom.com to stream his show.
Galt2: it's interesting, the relationship between freedom, our appeal to women, and the cult of conspicuous consumption (Veblen).
It jars even my longtime friends that I now keep a condo two blocks from my office so that I can walk to work, rather than the high-status house I used to have, which 'allowed' me to spend a minimum of 1.5 hours a day sitting in traffic with the drones. I think it embarrasses my children, too.
With new women friends it's jarring that I a) pay for dinner with cash; b) could give a shit about spending a week in the Turks and Caicos in February, and would rather drink beer with farmers at my prairie house; c) have more invested in bicycles than the car I use to run errands; d) will pick them up in that car (a 1992 Volvo) in a bespoke suit (they don't depreciate) before a night at the symphony and the Hay Adams; e) my plane is worth more than my prairie house, an inversion in acquisition value that causes many women to simply LOCK UP/MUST CONTROL/ALT/DELETE; f) the paintings in my condo (paintings don't depreciate) could be in a small regional museum; g) my vintage mid-century furniture, or the furniture I have built for me to my design (none of this depreciates), is the stuff they admire in magazines. And on and on.
They lock up because, to a status whore, there's no point in having a plane no one ever sees or can become envious of, when instead one could leverage up and have a massive shed of a house filled with crap from West Elm. To status whores, freedom is just another word for what they seek -- while the man labors in servitude to meet his payment books.
Rich girls seem to get it: they know a sigma from an omega. They also know how dull a status-whoring alpha in a baggy suit can be.
I prefer to pick up my first dates in my 92 Volvo, actually: if/when they freak, then I know I am dating a status whore. This is extremely important information. I know she doesn't want to spend time with me reading, she doesn't want to be served breakfast in bed in a small rural town (and will demand that three-day weekend in Paris). I know that we won't have dinner anywhere that the Washingtonian doesn't frequent. I'll still date her, and she will still sleep with me, but I know what I'm dealing with -- in the first five minutes of the evening. She'll still sleep with me because their hamster figures I'm ripe for feminine improvement. She'll still sleep with me because I'm not sexually dead, puffed out and fat, and stupid about all the stuff she vaguely remembers studying in college. And she'll still sleep with me because I take my job seriously, in the sack, and I give it to them as they've never had it given to them before.
Veblen had it so right. The American culture of conspicuous consumption drives haute-bourgeois ambition, social organizing, and coupling. I did that for 25 years. At the bottom of the last J-curve my ex- decided it was time to punch out, and I punched out, then, from Veblenville. It was all a lie -- Hemingway was never happier (nor more productive) than when he was destitute, living in a two-room cold water flat with Hadley. If you can't be happy in 200 sf, you are never going to be happy period. Freedom enables us to bequeath to our children and those we have influenced something more than suburban detritus and trite photographs of stupid vacations.
Freedom permits us to bequeath a body of work that endures, and the example of a life in which we imperfectly attempted to live by principle instead of arbitrary obligation to creditors. In this society there is no freedom if you are chained to life on the installment plan. I am doing everything in my power to encourage my children to consider this model of living.
My husband has always been a saver & very frugal & that really rubbed off on me. We have lived debt free ever since paying off my student loans (very small since I worked through college & paid cash for most of it) decades ago. We bought a very distressed house in an unpopular area of town & we fixed it up & lived there free for 17 years. Bought the house next door (also very distressed), fixed it & sold the other, much bigger house (just before the housing bust! Holy cow!). Now we have a nice nest egg & a small house that is paid off. That & a couple of other investments & we are almost retired.
We don't do cable, we buy our books at Goodwill (you can find very interesting, obscure books there), we do happy hour instead of late night, we buy cars for cash that are a couple of years old & drive them for years & years. The thing is to keep your monthly cost of living expenses as low as humanly possible. A tiny house costs almost nothing in heating & cooling. Cooking your own food saves a ton of money & gives you control of what ingredients are used, which will increase your health & save you money on doctors & prescriptions.
We just don't feel a need to impress anyone by living large. Living frugally is very low stress & when you can add up your monthly expenses & realize that a part-time job will way more than cover them, you have true freedom.
You know he is on daily at blowmeuptom.com
There was no better moment in my life than when I finally became debt free... it was more than debt free - it was free!
Then get $15,000 or $20,000 in the bank, and you get even more free, but with an attitude!
I will never go into debt again. Sure, a new car would be nice... but not as nice as my freedom!
Hey Keoni thanks for the linkage. I'll be sure to do the same.
Keoni:
Once there was MGTOW, and then there was MGHOW. Given the speed that our culture's declining, it looks like MGNOW might be the next phase. Men are going to have to start DOING before it's too late!
Thanks for such a great blog to share with.I enjoyed reading it and I think other readers might enjoy reading it as well.Thanks for the good info!
Also known as talking back money, contruction workers talk about having enough money in the bank that they can walk off a job in an instant if they are asked to eat shit.
Letting your boss know you have talking back money helps ensure you don't have to use it.
I tell guys at work to never bitch about late paycheques, as far as the bosses need to know you are independently wealthy and are working there because you feel like it, not because you are late on your mortgage payments.
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