If you follow money twitter or whatever is trending you likely watched the viral TikTok video referencing a group of friend’s finances and the poorest of the group Broke Bobby. Broke Bobby makes $125,000 a year and I thought I would record a quick podcast about this video and what I observed and what I thought about when watching it.
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Show Notes:
- Here are some of the tweets that I read about this.
- “What in the wealth is this?”
- “Broke Bobby checking Instagram to see what trips he was left out of.”
- “Broke Bobby “You don’t understand what it’s like to struggle” earning $125,000″
- “Here I am wishing I was Broke Bobby but instead I’m Poverty Pete”
- There were more comments but you get the gist. I was happy to see that the personal finance community has steered clear of this conversation and hopefully are thinking about the underlying financial conversations this video touched on.
- First and foremost, I want to bring up the fact that if a group of friends feel comfortable enough to discuss money and finances that’s a wonderful thing. The spreadsheet indicated what everyone earned, how much time they could take off for vacations, what their budgets were and where they preferred to travel to and where they were open to visiting.
- The list that they created respected financial boundaries, eliminated awkward conversations around money and set financial expectations.
- I love that they’re earning fantastic money and wonder what are the different fields that they’re working in.
- This conversation also brings up the old adage look at who you hang out with and those people may potentially be a mirror of your:
- Financial values
- Earnings
- And even social class, a topic that makes most Americans very uncomfortable.
- But, upon rewatching the video a couple of times. I starting to make note of the financial conversations that were at the heart of the strong reaction to the video.
- In 2019 the US Census reported that median household income was $68,703. The real median income for women in 2019 was $47,299
- Broke Bobby apparently makes $125,000
- Access to time off-You’ve heard me bitch about this before but lack of mandated time off and time flexibility is a huge problem for American citizens/labor. The time off that this group has access to is almost as big a deal as their earnings. Broke Bobby gets 9 days off where as Shawn gets unlimited PTO
- This TikTok video also created an unexpected conversation around class in the United States. We often pretend like classism doesn’t exist here. But, the same people pretending that classism doesn’t exist are the same people that believe racism is made up.
- How does class show up in this video?
- Professions-I wondered what type of work are these people doing and what is their expertise
- I found myself thinking about which industries they were working in?
- I asked myself where do these people live and how did their friendship develop?
- Where do they live? I’m thinking New York
- Is Broke Bobby broke because he’s around people who encourage (even on a subconcious level) spending beyond he could afford. In fact, in the book The Millionaire Next door, one of the practices is to live in communities that are a lot less expensive than what they can actually afford.
- Confusing financial priorities in what they’re willing to spend on different trips. Doesn’t make more sense to spend $10,000 on a 7 day trip vs. $10,000 on a 3 day trip? Oh, but Broke Bobby only gets 9 days off a year.
- Some more reactions
- Luvvie Ajayi, author, and all around cool person had this reaction that she shared on Twitter.
- “That Broke Bobby video is trash and indicative of how callous we’ve been about the accumulation of money. To turn your friends’ ability to hang with you into some spreadsheet and then classify the one who makes the least money as “broke” is cold. This is not aspirational” Interestingly, Tom the guy who posted the video did respond to one of Luvvie’s comments that he and his friends joke like this often
- “Been feeling bad all day for Broke Bobby. Damn.”
- Greed, admiration, frustration and bafflement all came up in the Twitter threads
- Luvvie Ajayi, author, and all around cool person had this reaction that she shared on Twitter.
- Eagle-eyed folks also noticed that the video’s poster makes money purchasing section 8 properties, renovating them and selling them for more than his original investment. Basically, he makes money via a gentrification business model.
- I’m not sure what the poster’s original motivation was to share this video. Given that he is good at list building maybe he felt this video had the potential to grow his business leads (which I’m sure it did) or maybe he was just thinking it was something funny to share.
- The more I reflect on this video the more it leaves me with a negative reaction. Something about it just lands…wrong even though I laughed when I first watched it.
- I’m relieved to see that personal finance and money Twitter has surprisingly held off on making too many comments about this video. People in the personal finance space are likely leery to touch the content of this video for fear of being seen as tone deaf, not being thoughtful enough about the topic or just being disconnected from the reality of the lives of their communities. But, when the financial bad takes come, and they will I will share them with Matt Lane. He is the creator of the Financial Bad Takes Bracket and was a guest on my show earlier this week. I’ve included a link to the episode in the show notes. Here’s the link to Matt Lane’s podcast episode.
- This video inadvertently exposed a lot of the unspoken financial tensions that we’re dealing with in America right now.
- Conversations around increasing minimum wage. I even recorded a podcast episode about this issue.
- Work flexibility and time off. With a large percentage of American workers having experienced time freedom for the first time during the past year.
- Lack of respect. The joke just doesn’t feel funny. But, maybe it’s because we’re on the outside looking in, in more than one way. What are your thoughts about Broke Bobby?
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