Marcus Aurelius as financial advisor

SPQR CFA MBA

In our media-drenched hyperreality, entire livelihoods are built around making you want to buy things you didn’t know you needed. It’s the Influencer Economy and it’s big business.

In fact it’s huge, projected to be a $21 billion business by the end of this year. Up from just $6.5 billion in 2019. If that much cash is being funneled to content creators to push product, it sure as shit must be doing something.

I see stats like this and can’t help but get a little perturbed. It’s not that I’m opposed to content creators making a few bones (I do write online, after all), but it’s hard to take this in without remembering that the average American is drowning in debt.

According to TransUnion data at the end of Q1 2023, Americans now hold a record amount of credit card debt. Carrying around $5,700 on average.

And a 2022 LendingTree Survey found that 65% of credit cardholders carry a balance at least some of the time. While nearly half of cardholders surveyed said they have credit card debt that would take at least a year to pay off.

When it comes to living beyond our means, we are the best in the world.

Interestingly (alarmingly?), nearly 70% of US GDP is reportedly driven by consumer spending. One has to wonder…how much of this is driven by people spending money they don’t have to buy goods peddled by influencers?

I reckon it’s a lot. In fact, there is no doubt. It’s been reported that Americans with a household income of less than $50,000 make up about 27%(!!!) of regular luxury consumers.

How can this be explained without the potent combination of social media and easy access to credit? It can’t.

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I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts five or six years ago. It wasn’t long afterwards that I found myself way less trigger happy with my credit card. I’m no cheapskate, but frugality comes much easier when you aren’t fed an endless feed of people pretending to live it up.

It was around this time that I discovered the Stoics — ancient Greek and Roman philosophers whose core message is, in essence, that it’s what you have inside and the people you have around you that matter. Not external accolades or the things you accumulate. The original purveyors of the old adage that “the best things in life are free.” It’s good advice, but increasingly difficult to follow in a world full of digital distractions.

I’m a firm believer that you have to dive deep into the work of the Stoics for the message to take root in your subconscious. But I think this quote from Marcus Aurelius, Stoic philosopher and Emperor of Rome, does justice to the heart of the message:

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not. But reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.

It’s made more profound by the fact that it doesn’t come from a speech before a crowd. But from his personal diary, which was filled with similar useful advice that he gave himself day-in and day-out. As many undoubtedly already know, this diary was later discovered and turned into a book (Meditations.)

Marcus Aurelius: Emperor of Rome, accidental financial advisor, and original self-help author.

I try earnestly to live by this quote. And I sometimes imagine what might happen if the average American did the same. Especially given that our economy is overly dependent on consumers consuming things.

Honestly, it would probably lead to an economic and financial crisis that would make the GFC look like a little baby. Like the ending of Fight Club, only without the explosions.

I’m sure it would be painful. But in the long run, I like to think we’d all be better for it.

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