What movies teach us about money

I recently read an article at Mint.com called “Ready, Set, Action! What TV characters teach us about money“. The article is entertaining but way too short, but they do mention my favorite TV show, “The Office”, and specifically laud Michael Scott for now living within his means. They vaguely referenced one of his most cringeworthy moments when he admitted to a graduating class of high school seniors that he couldn’t fulfill his promise to fund their college education.

The article also references 90210, and I confess that I just might have watched the original show (pictured on their blog) when I was in school. (Awkward silence at that admission). You can read the full article here.

The article reminded me of another article I’d read years ago (which I can’t reference because I can’t even remember where I’d read it or when) that said the TV show “Roseanne” was one of the first shows in a contemporary time period (i.e., not “Little House On the Prairie”) in which the average financial situation of many Americans was realistically portrayed.

The Mint.com article prompted me to think about movies I’d seen and what they can teach us about money. Here are a few tips:

• If you love someone, you jump on a plane and fly wherever they happen to be. Forget about the consequences of your career.
• If you need to make a lot of money fast, you go to Vegas and play poker or blackjack.
• Everyone has the latest and shiniest everything, including cars that are less than 6 months old.
• Young, good-looking people are super-successful without seemingly having to go to school or win the lottery or work hard.

Ultimately, in all media, we see people living with their money as if there were no consequences. That’s fiction, I suppose. However, in real life, we understand (or, we SHOULD understand) that there are consequences to every action we take. During any given moment we can spend or we can invest some combination of time, money, and effort into the things in our lives. If you want your business to be successful, you need to spend time, money, and effort to get more money. If you want a relationship to be successful, you need to spend time, money, and effort to achieve that success. But every time you choose to spend or not to spend, you need to also accept the consequences that result: A business with more or less revenue, a relationship that may or may not have a strong foundation.

IAC-EZ plays a role in that by helping you to see the consequences and impact of every financial decision you make. Ultimately, the more we consider the consequences and understand the give and take involved, the better we can be at investing the right combination of time, money, and effort at the right time for the right results.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ