“I’d rather be uninformed than misinformed.” Samuel Clemmons aka Mark Twain
As we approach NBA playoff season, optimistic fans turn their attention to their brackets and bet on outcomes that see their favorite teams winning it all. Pragmatic fans do the same, but then turn their attention to the injury list to determine which version of each team is likely to show up to the dance. Injuries are a part of sports. However, they are a bigger part of sports now than they ever have been. To figure out why, we have to go to the 80s and 90s.
A program known as Bigger Stronger Faster (BSF) was hitting critical mass. Every sphere of sport performance began to abandon the kinetic wisdom of the ages for a new approach to sports training. The basic premise was based on the idea that speed and agility were functions of strength, which is true. It assumed then that in order to increase speed and agility, the primary role of a sports training program was to increase strength, which they measured by the amount of weight athletes could move in the gym.
The consequences? There are many. The big one, though, is that we have manufactured a persistent, orthopedic surgery industry that is completely unnecessary and costing the families of young athletes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and the athletes themselves, time in pain that they can’t recover. All this trouble we get not because the info isn’t out there, but because all parties involved with the BSF system are so convinced that they’re doing it right, that they’re not even willing to consider alternatives or to imagine that their strategies are causing the problems.
As crazy as that sounds, far more people use money than play basketball. And yet, the industry also gets away with staying stuck in its ways, despite the ramifications.
The old financial services industry that has in part created the financial illiteracy problem are often the same people we still look to for advice, even if it is in the form of a super-generic radio program.
How is it that the financial services industry is almost as big as the next two biggest industries added together and then doubled, yet 95% of Americans say that they don’t have a financial advisor?
It’s not that people aren’t doing anything with the money they earn. It’s that the things they’re doing are often based on bad information that doesn’t consider how interest rates, or taxes or inflation or fees affect our savings in the context of an ever-changing market.
When it comes to knowing how money works, it isn’t taught in schools. When we don’t know how money works, we unknowingly and unnecessarily lose it. If you were unknowingly and unnecessarily losing money, how long would you like to wait to find out?
If you’d like to check what you think you know against what you should know to achieve your goals in today’s environment, hit me up on social media and get an invite to the next How Money Works workshop!
Kelechukwu “Chu” Oparah is a Licensed Financial Professional Serving your Dayton Community. For more content, Chu is on Instagram @chuoparah.
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