Dream. Invest. Live. That’s the book about personal finance that I published; let’s see, Amazon says November 26, 2008. It’s time for a sequel, especially considering everything that’s happened since then. The writing has begun. Here’s a bit of why and how I’m about to devote time in the next year or so to writing yet another book.
OK. My friends know me well enough that I was going to be writing some sort of book. Why stop now? In my opinion, two of the major trends in today’s world are artificial intelligence and economic upheaval.
Artificial intelligence inspired my science fiction novels, with more to come in the Exodus/Genesis series (Firewatcher, Fire Race, ?, ? ,?…).
I feel that much of what I wrote about in Dream. Invest. Live. is evergreen content that is valid and fundamental (Spend less than you make. Invest the rest.) My financial life has not been straight up, down, or flat. It has been bouncy because it has been real. My financial life has been so real that it has provided a very real in-person set of experiences from middle class (and arguably touching lower income), to being a millionaire, to muddling by with hints of a comfortable recovery. A few years ago, I realized that, without intent, I’d been on a rollercoaster ride through America’s wealth classes.
There might be a story in that. There might be a book.
For most of my early financial life, I was young. Duh. That also meant I was ignorant of much outside my perspective. Figuring out me was enough work. Then I earned money, spent it on a degree, earned more money, invested it, my money made money, then we all lost money, then my investments made more anyway, then criminals cratered my largest holdings, and since then I’ve been muddling by thanks to gigs, friends, and Social Security. The older I got, the more experience I had, and the more experiences I heard.
Without intending to, I listened to a swath of opinions about what it was like to be poor, barely getting by, maintaining a middle-class normality, experiencing wealth, and hearing from billionaires and their ilk. There was one common complaint: people didn’t understand each other. No one was listening to the troubles of the fill-in-the-blank. I felt as if I could stand in a circle of invalid assumptions that were stereotypes and fantasies, a cacophony of people who felt that their perspective was not appreciated. Welcome to humanity.
A writer can decide to tell people what they’re working on, or not. Choosing Not means a lot less explanation of a process that is uncertain and highly variable. I choose to tell people, which means it is a good idea to have a better title than ‘Work In Progress’. That’s like walking into an art gallery and finding yet another painting titled ‘Untitled’.
I’ll skip the suspense. Here are two titles that I think are too long for a book cover, but are good for conversations:
From Middle Class to Millionaire to Muddling By
and
A Rollercoaster Ride Through America’s Wealth Classes.
Each can be the main, with the other being the subtitle. I won’t worry about it until it gets closer to publication. In the meantime, the main consequences are that I have a way to talk about it, and my filenames are temporarily long and messy.
As with writing about AI, the trend is moving quickly enough that delaying publication can mean the early efforts become irrelevant. When I started writing Firewatcher, many of the projections for AI were for 2010. I thought it would be quicker, like 2040. By the time I finished, it was happening as I typed. At least my characters escaped Earth, even if none of us actual pesky humans have.
As for personal finance, maybe everything will calm back down, income and wealth inequality will fade, and everyone is going to get along well enough. Ain’t fantasies great? (joke) At the other end of the extreme are conversations about accelerationism, secession, references to the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or so many other revolutions. One possibility that I’m considering is what I’ve termed a Magna Carta Moment, when society transitions from monarchies to parliments. (Maybe A Magna Carta Moment)
Dream. Invest. Live. is written for evergreen content, a description of the fundamentals of personal finance, but with an assumption of a stable economic system. Stability has become a foreign concept.
Pardon me, as I already truncate the working title of the book for the purposes of this post. From Middle Class to Millionaire to Muddling By becomes Muddling By.
Muddling By isn’t intended to propose solutions. Muddling By is intended to provide one person’s perspective based on their experiences (mine) and from what others have said. Ideally, those perspectives and experiences would be chronicled by the same person at the same time. A series of clones, dropped into the world, spanning lifestyles from nothing to too much. Instead, what I can provide is me. My recollections, which of course include imperfections, and a world that changed dramatically in a few decades.
We, society, our civilization, is in the midst of phenomenal change. I continue to be surprised at people who think we can return to some earlier time. Time doesn’t work that way. Humanity doesn’t stand still. Nature and technology are shifting, but less like someone shifting in their seat and more than avalanches shifting down mountainsides reforming the terrain.
The writing of the sequel to Dream. Invest. Live. has begun. For now, the structure is a series of chapters, each chapter a topic, each topic something that can be viewed and referenced from poor to rich to in-between.
If the work becomes an opportunity for conversation, great. All we can do as writers is provide the words and hope they help.
If the work gets published and forgotten, at least I’ll have possibly provided some historian something to study as a chronicle of an era.
If I never finish, well, it gave me something to do.
Writers have asked me why I write. I didn’t give it much thought at the start. I merely succumbed to friendlypressure from friends to chronicle my bicycle ride across America. (Just Keep Pedaling) (For future historians, America actually references the United States of America from an era when there were states, they were united, and most folks in the states called themselves Americans as if there were no others in places from Canada to Chile.) That ride accidentally chronicled a slice of life in America before and after 9/11. That book also chronicled a technological shift as the internet and cell phones existed but were not ubiquitous. It also chronicled an episode in my personal finance life as the Internet Bubble burst and my time as a millionaire passed. Some things can best be recorded in the moment, not upon reflection. And yet, that’s the best I can do as I try to encapsulate this rollercoaster ride.
Enough for now. I wanted to make this announcement, introduce people to the idea, and begin documenting parts of the process in case other writers are curious. I’m first posting this on my writing blog (https://tomthewriter.net/), and will cross-post it, possibly with some edits, to the blog that was spawned by Dream. Invest. Live. (https://trimbathcreative.net/). Thanks to everyone who has stayed tuned in, particularly those few, those stalwart few, who’ve been reading my work for over two decades. Thanks for being there. I hope I’ve helped.
tomthewriter.com 
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