Web of financial complexities in consumer lifetimes

 

Advice to customers of retirement accounts, 11/2024 brochure.

Many generations ago the average peasant or laborer used cash intermittently; it was not part of daily habits, necessarily. After the pace of commerce and interactions accelerated during the creation and growth of industrialization, though, more frequent and bigger exchanges began to happen. Now in 2024 a person has automatic payments (subscription or billing debits) happening in the background to their lives. At (self) checkout counters there are touchscreens asking what manner of financial currency the shopper will be using: digital payment from cellphone, cash, credit card, debit card, gift voucher, Bitcoin, and so on. Not only are daily transactions complicated and increasingly at risk for information crime (fraud, hacking, phishing), but the arc of a person's life is nothing longer as simple as "you come into the world with nothing and you leave the world with nothing" (you can't take accumulated wealth and debt with you after dying). Instead, it is not uncommon to have some net worth to distribute by written instructions, or if no legal arrangements are prearranged, then division of assets by governmental formula.

This screenshot is a simple overview to the kinds of financial decisions that many people should be aware of. There are lots of poor people for whom such things may seem irrelevant or alien to their experience. But for many others a failure to think through options, obligations, opportunities and other factors leads to losses, or at least foregoing of possible gains and costs to reduce or avoid altogether. In other words, the landscape of financial life in 2024 is altogether different to 1824 for many, many people; some more complicated than others. For the poorest, perhaps the difference from 1824 to 2024 is not as big, though. Looking in the opposite direction, not to pre-Industrial social experience of going from birth to the end of a long life but into the future, maybe the current range of complications will persist. But maybe there will be even more forms of payment and commodification of daily life needs. If that were to be true, than what today seems already too complicated, by comparison, will be viewed as "the good old days."