What Fight Club Can Teach You About Personal Finance

OK...I know I broke the first rule, but given that my last post was accused of being a "fantasy" I thought...I will go with that. It's one of those random acts of Silliness.

I really like everything Chuck Palahniuk writes, but Fight Club is such a great visual by David Fincher, that it transcends for a lot o' folk my age. What a lot of people don't get is that the story is a great allegory for Consumerism and Commercialism. Frankly...a whole bunch of ism's, but we'll focus on the first two.

The narrator of the story is a never named character that is an insomniac, at least at the beginning. As the movie shows, and as someone who has lived through that hell, you live in a daze. Not really awake not really asleep. However you really believe at times that you discover some universal truths...

I am jack's list of things to learn:

• I am not my things - He is only free once his things are destroyed. I don't advocate this...other that your credit cards
• Don't have a house full of condiments and no food - Condiments are designed to Enhance the flavor of food, not to be food. The same holds true with DVD players, Plasma TVs and *Gasp* the Internet. These things are to enhance your life not to be the center of it. Otherwise known as "Stuffitis."
• Follow your Passion - Don't blackmail your Boss to do it, but...
• You won't be free unless you have no debt - You don't need to wipe out the data centers for all of the credit card companies. Break your debt chains as soon as you can.
• You have the control - At the end he has the control not Tyler. You just have to choose to have that power.

I know this because Tyler knows this...

OK...a bit inside, but watching it again the Commercialism allegory really hits home. Probably because I am writing multiple posts about personal finance and budgeting multiple times a day. You start to see better with the sunglasses on sometimes :) .