There is an old adage that says that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day–but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. That adage is often mistakenly credited to the Bible, but more than likely it came from Lao Tzu, the Chinese founder of Taoism.
I’ve been thinking about that adage quite a bit lately, as the federal government shutdown is leading to inconsistent distribution of food stamps benefits and federal employees are going unpaid for more than a month. While we have a lot of people that “need fish” right now, many of them also need training on “how to fish”. Unfortunately, the biggest obstacles to that happening are the “fish givers”.
We’ve seen a number of stories the last couple of weeks about self-organized food drives and distributions. Churches, non-profits, schools, senior centers, even airports are collecting food and handing it out to those claiming they need it. Here at the Radio Ranch we’ve been asked to bring in food for donation. But never have I seen a church, a non-profit, a school, a senior center, and especially an airport ask people to come in and help those struggling with need to work on their finances.
What do you think the response would be if I went down to a food pantry or one of those parking lot distributions and set up a card table, a few chairs, and a sign that said “FREE HELP CREATING A BUDGET”? Would organizers of the food drive and distribution run out to thank me profusely for giving of my time to help people learn how to manage their money and to provide them with tips to create more room in their budgets to purchase necessities like food? Would they direct those picking up food to stop by the table and see how I might be able to help them? Would they make financial advice a part of all their food distribution efforts?
I can tell you the answer to all of those questions right now: No, they would not. In fact, in most cases, I would be asked to leave–but not before I would be admonished for thinking that need might be tied to personal finance and individual choices.
I don’t know if it was my recent visit to Ramsey Solutions in Tennessee and talking to people looking to do a debt free scream or those that were just getting into their journey toward financial peace, or if it’s due to my watching a lot of Caleb Hammer videos lately (for those not familiar, Hammer hosts the “Financial Audit” series. Imagine Dave Ramsey but as a millennial with more hair, a foul mouth, and knowledge that insulting people on camera produces a lot of views) but I’m thinking about volunteering financial help again.
I served as a facilitator of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University a couple of times in the past. I started out every session thinking “Man, I’m about to help so many people turn their lives around so they can learn how to live like no one else and not have to worry about things like layoffs, cuts in government benefits, or major, unexpected expenses because they will have their financial ducks in row!” And many of those who were attending the weekly sessions started out with that same enthusiasm. But, as we started talking about the Baby Steps and the sacrifices that would have to be made–and holding discussions about what was done the past week to complete those Baby Steps–the enthusiasm of the participants began to wane.
Couples hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt admitted to booking major vacations with their credit cards just days after pledging to stop using their credit cards. Adult kids with their own financial issues were given money to “get out of a jam”. House or car repairs came up before the emergency fund could be fully funded. One guy even got pretty angry and said he was “never going to give up his truck” when it could have reduced his debt by 35-thousand dollars. Many participants just stopped coming–and that degraded the confidence of those that stayed. Even those that went through the entire program and got the certificates would tell me when we ran into each other at the grocery store a few months later that they “just couldn’t stick with it, it was too hard!” Out of a couple of dozen enrollees, I only heard from one that made it all the way to paying off all their debt.
While that was discouraging, I took solace in knowing that at least I could help them see the possibility of reducing expenses after they insisted there was just “nothing to cut”–usually because they just flat out refused to look at the checking account and credit card statements. I had to live with the fact that I could “teach them how to fish”, but I could not “fish” for them.
But what would happen if “learning how to fish” was the first option presented to those in need from now on? Want free food assistance? Go see our financial advisory team right over there. They will go through your budget with you and see if they can squeeze out another 50 or 100-bucks a month to feed the kids with food from the grocery store. Want to come back next week? Just show us you followed the recommendations you were given, and if that’s not enough we will send you over to our employment support team over there and they will see if there might be a way to get you into a higher paying job or a side hustle to boost that income. If you think that there should be a line item in your budget for booze and drugs or gambling, our addiction services team is next to that wall over there to get you the help you need too.
On my desk, I have a stack of press releases from non-profits from every corner of Northeast Wisconsin detailing the “good work” they are doing to help “those in need” in this “time of crisis”–all of whom are just “handing out fish”. Not a single one is telling me how they are “teaching someone to fish”. And if we did a lot more of that, this entire political battle between the power-hungry in Washington would be something a lot more of our fellow citizens could just roll their eyes at, instead of it being a “catastrophe”.
