Drowning in Red (and blue) Ink

I recently saw an article about author Stephanie Land’s new book, “Class.” Netflix watchers may recall seeing the series, “Maid,” based on the autobiographical novel about her struggles to navigate the social services maze as a single mother while barely surviving on the income of a housemaid. It ends on the triumphant note of her acceptance to college.

Her new book covers the period during college when, as she continued to do battle with the beauracracy, she accumulated a debt in excess of $50,000. I hope her success as a writer turned her financial woes around.

Lamb is clearly to to be admired, but her photo gave me pause. It revealed her arms are completely covered with tattoos, and I wondered when she’d had them done. Unless her bestie is a tattoo artist, those tats alone set her back as much as ten thousand bucks. Would it be unreasonable to assume several more such masterpieces are concealed beneath her clothing? Ten thousand dollars invested in an index fund in 1972, the time around which I made my first meagre investments, is now worth close to a million. Them there’s a lot to tattoos, folks. I certainly hope she waited until her royalties kicked in before she began transforming herself into a human canvas.

Speaking in general, not specifically about Stephanie, if a person has limited financial resources, it’s a matter of common sense to deny oneself what is optional and beyond one’s means.

Call me a cheapskate, but what many consider necessities, I often consider luxuries. Such things as the most expensive cell phones and service, multiple streaming apps, frequent dining out or buying take-out instead of cooking, overspending on housing, clothing and cars, grabbing coffee every day at Starbucks instead of brewing your own. I don’t begrudge people a little enjoyment in life, but maybe, if money is a problem, they could get by with a little less?

I admit, their cost aside, I am not a fan of tattoos, always having associated this sort of bodily “adornment” with circus sideshows or with sailors who, in a drunken moment, had the name of a soon to be ex-sweetheart permanently imbedded under their skin. If I ever set out to blow a wad of dough on an indulgence, a tat would never be a consideration.

Why, in recent times, so many people, many of whom do not appear to be financially well off, have taken up the practice of covering their skin with ink, has always been a mystery to me. My guess is it is a reaction to an affliction common in our modern world, the lack of a core identity. We denizens of corporate America are all the same. Merely consumers.

Tattoos are sort of social media posts published on the human body. They represent an effort to establish a unique identity and to display it to the world. The problem, as with all passive attempts to gain recognition, is that this only makes the wearer more like everyone else while rendering them significantly more impoverished in the process.

When, as a young teen, I read “David Copperfield,” I took away a piece of wisdom from Mr. Micawber, arguably Dickens’ most memorable character. It guided my financial decisions throughout life. Micawber, who spent most of his time in debtors prison said, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds and six. Result, happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds naught and six. Result, misery.”

It’s true employers pay a pittance of what they should to employees while rewarding CEOs and management with huge salaries and bonuses and stockholders with maximum gains. But if rank and file workers live as though they are paid more, then bemoan their poverty as though it is none of their own doing, it’s hard to muster much sympathy. Some of the perception that the economy is worse than it actually is may well be based on people not recognizing their own wasteful spending habits.

I don’t deny times are hard for the many people who are in the situation Ms. Lamb’s was in, nor do I lack compassion for them. In her case, to be fair, I will assume she waited to get the tattoos until after she cleaned up on her first novel and its movie rights and paid off her college loan. If so, good for her. If she got the tats when she was still financially behind the eight ball, however, imagine how much better off and attractive, (to my eyes at least) she would have been had she invested in an index fund rather than having chosen to cover her beautiful skin with thousands of dollars worth of ugly ink.