I resist following the suggestions of others.....

[poltr1]

[Parts of this were originally written on 6/28/12.]

One of my friends -- Julie -- is quick to suggest ways for me to save money. From doing my own car maintenance, to getting get reduced-rate dental care from the local community college, or selling my excess things on Craigslist, to getting free boxes, she's suggesting things for me that she's done herself.

And frankly, I'm starting to feel that I'm being manipulated by her and her suggestions.


There are reasons I do what I do. I don't do my own car maintenance -- oil changes, A/C recharges, etc. -- because it's against my condo association's bylaws to do this type of work on my property. (Plus I'm lousy at car repairs, unless they're simple fixes.) I already have a dentist, but I haven't seen him because I haven't had dental insurance. And I don't exactly trust Craigslist, or the people on it. And as for the boxes -- I"m not interested if they're not just the right size, shape, or style.

What I don't think she understands is that I am willing to pay a little extra to get what I want. If I try to save myself a little money, I often short-change myself, accepting less-than-ideal quality goods.

I feel the same way about salespeople: they'll try to sell you things you don't need, in order to make their commission, and not accept no for an answer. Deep down, I know that not all salesmen are like this, that there there are some good salesmen out there who will work with me to get me what I want, and not try to sell me things I don't need. But I seem to
encounter more of the bad salesmen than the good salesmen.

If I have to bend and say "yes" to one person, then I have to bend and say "yes" to everyone else. And if I do that, I'm not standing up for myself -- I'm a spineless dweeb, saying "yes' to everyone and everything that comes along. And that makes me a sucker.

I hate being manipulated or suckered by other people's suggestions. If I accept advice from someone, whether or not I ask for it, I feel like I'm being subordinate and subservient to them. In other words: I'm a sucker, a patsy, their puppet, and a fool. And I'm dependent on them. I should be capable enough to do everything on my own. If I'm not, what good am I?

And I really wish I knew when this first started appearing in my life. I'm thinking back to high school, when it was "the in thing" to mislead and dupe other students. And me, being the trusting type, fell for it, more often than I care to remember. I think one of the niucknames people called me was "bait".

But to take the polar opposite -- "trust no one and always paddle your own canoe" -- isn't healthy either. Where is that balance point?

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

If I have to bend and say "yes" to one person, then I have to bend and say "yes" to everyone else.

Not so. You have free will; you can evaluate, and choose, on a case by case basis. It may FEEL like you set a precedent if you make a choice, but the precedent is only that you choose. Inflexibility is as problematic as spinelessness.

If I accept advice from someone, whether or not I ask for it, I feel like I'm being subordinate and subservient to them. In other words: I'm a sucker, a patsy, their puppet, and a fool. And I'm dependent on them. I should be capable enough to do everything on my own. If I'm not, what good am I?

Well, to start with, none of us do everything on our own. How many people did it take to put your breakfast on the table? (Farmers, road builders, truckers, truck builders, people who developed the recipes, packagers...I'd estimate thousands, or tens of thousands.) You're a part of a society, where interdependence is far greater than independence. That said, you're FINE, however you choose to be (barring your exceedingly unlikely choice to harm people for no reason).

If you accept advice, it's because you judged it, thought it was a good idea (or the best available option), and chose to accept it. It doesn't make you subordinate or subservient; it merely means that someone else had a good insight into your situation and cared enough to communicate with you about it. Accepting advice isn't the same as "me-too-ism", nor is it servitude. It's a normal human interaction, and usually shows maturity and strength of character. (Think about three-year-olds who can be manipulated with unwaveringly negative psychology, asking them to do the exact opposite of what they ought to so so that they rebel directly into the actions desired.)

The balance point is your free will. Your choice. Your intelligence, soul, life experience, and other instruments of judgment, which you can either bring fully into play, or bypass in favor of rigid patterns. Making choices in every situation costs a little more in terms of work and energy, and, in my experience, produces significantly better results. I know which of those options I choose. ("If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Nu?)

Getting back to your first point for a moment: Paying a little extra for quality is a very good and time-honored method of ensuring you get what you want, in good quality. For the most part, that seems reasonable to me. It doesn't hurt to use reasonable methods to save money: coupons, sales, etc. Selling on Craigslist or eBay is different from buying there: if you're selling, you set the terms, including when and where you meet potential buyers, and how they can pay. Again, no one pattern, no one algorithm, is applicable to all those situations. I would thank Julie for her assistance, and if she suggests something that you're not likely to do or use, tell her so and why (if appropriate). Eventually, if she's smart, she'll understand the sorts of ideas that you can use, and only suggest those.

Good luck!

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Fixing your own car "to save money" only works if you're sufficiently mechanically skilled that it will actually save money. It's possible, even likely, that you will screw up the job sufficiently badly that you'll have to pay a professional to fix your mistakes, and that that will cost more than if you had simply paid someone else to do it to start with.

Not to mention, many car-repair jobs involve a safety component. If you attempt the job and do it wrong, you're placing other road users at risk. (Think 'doing your own brakes.') And if you're unfamiliar with basic workshop safety procedures you could be hurt and even killed (e.g., by an improperly-supported car slipping and crushing you while you're under it).

There's also a nontrivial investment of several hundred dollars in tools. And the need to have workshop space. Plus, in many places that have neighborhood or homeowners' associations it's illegal to do car repair work in your driveway.

that said, I've been doing my own car repair for 25 years. But I'm sufficiently skilled that I'd probably be doing it professionally if I weren't beating on computer code for a living.

[zorya-thinks.livejournal.com]

What Redaxe said. I agree with his post. If you resist all advice are you not allowing it to control your actions as much as taking it?

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

This made me think very carefully about how I understand the word "advice". In my lexicon, it is simply the view of the person offering it, and built into that understanding of "the view", is the possibility that it might be right or it might be wrong, and only I am capable of making the decision as to whether it is useful or not.

If I tried to do my own car maintenance, I would be using public transport very shortly :-)

However, if I am faced with a decision or situation in which I know that other people have experience, I often ask for their advice. I'm not asking them to tell me what to do, but sometimes their experience can help me to short-circuit the difficulties or effort that lead them to their view. I often choose to ignore the advice when I think that their world view or set of circumstances varies enough from mine as to make the advice useless for me.

However, I've also avoided some very bad situations by listening to advice that I judged to be useful to me.