*Minor spoilers below. If you don’t want to know what happened, feel free to skip to the next section.
Westworld Recap
Okay, I will attempt to summarize the show for those of you who aren’t interested in sci-fi or westerns. Or perhaps, you don’t have HBO. We get HBO for free as a packaged promotion so I can’t complain. In fact, the cable company just raised my rate from $65 to $95 this month. I called and got it back down to $67 for a year. That’s why it’s good to keep track of your bills and call to complain whenever they increase. Anyway, here goes.
Basically, Westworld is a futuristic theme park. It’s like Disneyland for the super wealthy. The theme is the Wild West and the place is populated with lifelike robotic “hosts”. Paid guests arrive on a steam train and then they can explore and find interesting things to do. It’s like a super immersive video game. Guests can be a either a good guy and track down bandits or they can be a bad guy and wreak havoc on the town. Doesn’t this sound awesome? As a former gamer, I would love to play this game. I haven’t played video games for years because I have too many other things to do. Video games are a ton of fun, but they just take too much time. Hopefully, I can get back into it someday.
In Westworld, the human guests can hurt/kill the hosts, but the hosts can’t hurt the guests. A bullet that kills the robots would just cause a bruise for the humans. Exploring the Wild West would be interesting, but you need excitement too. That’s why the hosts are programmed to entice guests to go on various missions. If the hosts aren’t on a mission, they will loop and restart the “narrative” in the same way. Guests can return and pick up a mission whenever it’s convenient for them. This mission loop should be familiar to any video game player. The hosts are occasionally moved to a new role and given new narratives. They are just robots so technicians can easily wipe their memory and alter their parameters.
Sounds like a good theme park so far, but there was a conflict brewing over the 30+ years since the dawn of Westworld. The two founders of Westworld had widely different views of the robots. One founder, Arnold, thought the hosts could become sentient and he didn’t want to open the theme park. The other, Ford, wanted to open the park and make some money, and the way to do that was to take on new investors.
To help the hosts evolve, Arnold added a code to the hosts so they could retain some memories even after their memory was wiped. The hosts could remember things from their past lives and these appear as dreams and gestures. The hosts got brutalized often because many human guests went wild when given free rein to do whatever they want to the hosts. (Wouldn’t you?) The robots remembered bits of past traumas and that helps them evolve.
The conflict culminated in the finale and the main protagonist robot went off script and started a bloody revolt. Well, other hosts went to town, too, but they were programmed to do so. Delores was the only one to break free from her programming and choose to go on a rampage. The humans were the bad guys in this show and it felt a bit strange to root for the hosts. Usually, robots are the bad guys when they are staging a bloody uprising. Season 2 is going to be awesome!
Awakening to Financial Independence
So what does Westworld have to do with personal finance? Here is the connection. Like the robots in Westworld, we are all programmed to behave in certain ways. We live in a consumerism society and it’s best if everyone acts their part. Every kid knows they need to get good grades so they can get a good job. Once you make good money, you can buy all the LEGOs that you’d ever want! Obviously, it’s not that simple, but here is the script I grew up with.
Get an education. Everyone needs to go to college and get a degree. The more education you have, the better your chances of getting a good job and earning good money. Of course, you need good grades to get into a good college, so study hard. It’s okay to borrow a lot of money to pay for college because you’ll make plenty of income after you graduate.
Get a good job. After you’ve got a degree, then you need to find a dream job with good pay. Land a job at one of the Fortune 500 companies and you’ll be set for life. After all, they are making a lot of profit so those corporations should be a secure place to work and they’ll reward their workers handsomely.
Consume. Once you have some money, you need to spend it to live a comfortable lifestyle. You need to drive a fancy car and live in a big house with nice furniture. Tech gadgets are awesome too. Everyone needs to buy the latest version of the iPhone, XBOX, laptop, and the connected refrigerator. As you get older, you need to spend more and more money to stay comfortable and live a happy life. There are endless things you can spend money on and consumers are happy to oblige. The more you spend, the happier you’ll be.
Build a family. Get married and have a huge expensive wedding. It’s a once in a lifetime event so don’t hesitate to spend. Then have 2 kids and spend a lot of money on daycare, private school, lessons, sports, and college.
Make more money. Of course, everyone needs to make more money to keep up with their ever increasing expenses. You should move up the ladder and take on more responsibilities! You need to work harder, work smarter, work more, change employers, get more education, and do whatever it takes to increase your income. If you’re not making more money every year, you’re losing.
Repeat. Here is the problem. Living in a consumerism culture is like living in a loop. You need to keep making more money so you can spend more. Things that satisfy you today won’t be as satisfying tomorrow. You need to keep buying the improved version just to keep up.
Does this sound familiar? How many of you grew up with this vision of life in America? Personally, I think it’s good for society for people to work hard, increase productivity, and spend a lot of money. This drives innovation and decrease the cost of consumer goods. You are improving the lives of everyone around you if you’re stuck in this loop.
However, there is a downside, too. The relentless pressure to make more money and take on more work isn’t good for the individuals. The corporate environment has become a pressure cooker with very little security. Everyone has to work like a Super Chicken and you can get laid off at anytime. Today’s corporations are more concerned with rewarding the executives and shareholders than taking care of their workers. Fortunately, we are human and we can go off script anytime we want.
Breaking Free from Your Programming
In Westworld, Delores got fed up with being treated like a toy and she broke free after playing damsel in distress for 30+ years. That’s just a TV show, but I agree that it takes suffering to break free from your routine. After all, there is no reason to change if things are going well, right?
I enjoyed being a computer engineer when I was in my 20s, but it got too stressful once I became more senior. The job wasn’t the right fit anymore and I was stressed out all the time. My physical and mental health deteriorated to the point that I needed to find an alternative lifestyle. I wouldn’t have been able to walk away from my engineering career if I still liked my old job.
Here are some of the keys to breaking free from my programming.
Suffering – Ugh! How many of you enjoy going to work? Engineering was fun when I was young, but it got more and more painful as I took on more responsibilities. The corporate culture sucked, too. If you don’t like your job, you need to figure out an alternative. It will only get worse if you keep pushing through the pain. I always recommend trying to find a job you like first before considering early retirement.
Living a modest lifestyle and started investing in my 20s. I wouldn’t have been able to quit working full-time if I didn’t have any savings. Luckily, we lived modestly and started investing early in our career. By the time I was ready to quit working full-time, our net worth was just about enough for me to retire early.
Exposure to Financial Independence. Financial Independence is like a virus. Once you find out about it, you will re-examine your life and see if you can do it. I didn’t find out about FI until my mid 30s, but the concept was very attractive to me and I made it my goal soon after.
Ignore the nay sayers. When you do something different, you’ll get a lot of negative feedback. People will be skeptical of your plan and they will want you to stick to the conventional path. They won’t be supportive because you will be invalidating their worldview. Sometimes, you have to ignore even people who mean well and go your own way as long as you have a solid plan.
A willing partner. Mrs. RB40 didn’t like the idea of early retirement when I first brought it up, but eventually she got on board. I wouldn’t have been able to retire early if she wasn’t supportive. Now she wants to retire early too and we are working on getting there in a few years.
Flexibility. I’m flexible and I don’t mind working for myself after leaving the corporate world. Blogging is a great part-time gig and the income will help us put off withdrawal from our retirement accounts.
All these things came together at the right time and I was able to break free from my social programming. Luckily, I didn’t have to stage a bloody revolt to find my way to freedom. Knowing that I had a choice as to how I wanted to live gave me the confidence to set the stage for an alternate way of life, and to finally go for it.
How about you? Do you want to break away from the conventional path? What did it take for you to realize that life doesn’t have to follow a script written by someone else?
Image from HBO
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