Aaron Endré

Since I launched my own freelance tech PR and marketing business a few weeks ago, I’ve experienced something that has taken me somewhat by surprise: abundance.

Folks from all corners of my network have reached out to me to offer introductions and referrals to potential clients. Even other agencies and freelancers (that is, would-be competitors) have reached out to form partnerships where we can offer each other referrals, advice, and guidance. (By the way, if you want to learn more about the importance and value of your network, check out Heidi Isern’s three reasons to be a social butterfly).

There are two ways of thinking that influence how you react to the world: abundance thinking and scarcity thinking. One leads to success, happiness, fulfillment, joy, and peace; the other leads to failure, discontent, fear, suspicion, and bitterness.

Behold: a visual guide to scarcity thinking vs. abundance thinking!

Many people live in a world of scarcity. And it’s no wonder: we’re taught from an early age to be competitive instead of collaborative. We compete with classmates for the grades; with applicants for the job position; with coworkers for the promotion; with other companies for the customer. The ironic thing is that we’ve been taught that in order to be successful we must compete for scarce opportunities and the truth is that people who think in terms of scarcity can’t be successful.

And many people, unfortunately, are unhappy and unfulfilled.

Why? Because when we believe that opportunities and options are limited, we become limited. When we choose to be competitive with others, we lose out on the opportunity to collaborate and differentiate. When we act out of fear, we stifle our ability to grow. But when we embrace the crazy notion that, in fact, opportunities are abundant and that our abilities are unlimited, our possibility for happiness becomes unlimited.

I know it sounds cheesy, but the idea of abundance applies to business strategy, too. In fact, I highly recommend the book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. The premise is simple: rather than enter into an existing marketplace and compete head-to-head with other vendors, entrepreneurs should strive to create new demand in an uncontested market space.

So as I go about building my business I’m presented with a choice: I can compete with every tech PR/marketing agency and freelancer I meet—or I can embrace the idea that there’s more than enough business for everyone, choose to learn and grow as much as I can, differentiate myself based on my interests and strengths, do excellent work, foster meaningful partnerships and share the wealth. The choice is pretty clear.

And while most people probably oscillate between thinking in terms of scarcity and abundance, I think we can all agree that a vast, abundant blue ocean of opportunity is a thing worth working toward.

Marketing. Communications. Strategy.

What do they mean? Separately, they’re broad fields open to limitless interpretation. But when united harmoniously together, they form a specific and crucial function: to understand, define, elaborate, and defend the very essence of what a company strives to be.

Since I began working in Silicon Valley, my greatest pleasure has been helping founders of innovative tech startups understand and communicate their vision. I’ve helped turn ideas on whiteboards into products that I can hold—and that customers can buy. It’s an incredibly thrilling journey.

And I just can’t get enough of it. In fact…

I’m excited to announce that I am beginning down a new path: devoting myself full-time to developing marketing communications strategy for innovative tech startups in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. That’s right, I’m going solo.

Introducing: Aaron Endré, freelance strategist.

Over the coming months, you’ll be accompanying me on this journey. As I build my portfolio of clients, learn useful information, discover new things, face challenges (and make mistakes), I’ll be sharing them here, with you—and I’m eager to get your feedback and thoughts.

Oh, and if you or anyone you know has a vision for a startup but needs some help communicating it, you know where to find me.

Up, up and away!

Last night at midnight I got a phone call. Normally, even before I’d completely abandoned REM bliss, my heart would be pumping. Before I’d open my eyes and whip my head around to see who it was, I’d be running through all the possible scenarios: someone got into a fiery car crash; my roommate got locked out of the apartment and is being chased around San Francisco by a gang of homeless marauders; oh God, Grandma Margaret died. Every late night call shaves countless months off my life. Fortunately, it was nothing; just a friend calling to confirm plans for this weekend.

Given that there are so many other ways to reach me without waking me up from my slumber (e.g., text, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) this person choose to call me. At midnight. On a Wednesday. Why?

More broadly, why do we use telephones at all in 2013? Counting out the elderly and the disabled among us, for whom other forms of communication might prove exceedingly difficult, it’s because we’re selfish and we’d rather inconvenience the person on the other line to meet our own needs than wait until it’s convenient for both of us to talk.

What does a phone call say? It says: I have a need. And this need must be fulfilled right now, from you. It doesn’t take the other person into consideration at all. Unless they’re planned, phone calls are designed to be convenient for the caller, not the recipient. As a result, calling someone is, necessarily, a selfish way to communicate. And we know that this is true; think about telemarketing, phone surveys, etc. An unexpected phone call doesn’t preface by saying, “Are you busy?” (or in my case, “Are you sleeping?”) It just rings and rings and rings, like an incessant, annoying child.

Basically, all unexpected phone calls are like THIS. Thankfully, you can still use your telephone without being a nuisance.

When to call someone in 2013:

1. It’s an emergency!!!! For example, someone the recipient knows has died or has been involved in a fiery car accident. Or, the zombie apocalypse has begun. The recipient will thank you for this information, no matter the time of day or what they were doing when you called.
2. I have an immediate need that cannot wait. Sometimes, things are urgent. There are deadlines that simply cannot be met without the recipient’s help. But there’s urgent and there’s things that can be communicated via text, email, Facebook, Twitter or any number of other services that are less disruptive and less intrusive. Use good judgment or risk being “the boy who called.” (see what I did there?)
3. We have previously planned to have this conversation on the phone. Fantastic! This is ideal. You have buy-in from the recipient to be called, so you know that you’re not calling them unexpectedly. As a best practice in work situations, schedule calls with Outlook or Google Calendar (or whatever you use) and be sure to indicate who will call whom, at what time, how long they should expect the call to last and what the call will be about. Not only does this completely eliminate discourteous calling, it helps ensure that the call goes smoothly and everyone is prepared to participate.
4. I just called because…I have something to tell you or sell you. Unless you know for certain that the person on the other end is bored and has nothing else to do but talk to you, this is NOT a reason to call. For these things, consider whether it’s more appropriate to send a text, instant message, email, Facebook message, tweet or something else. Considering the recipient of your message goes a long way to ensuring a relationship with mutual respect for time and information.

Here’s to a more call-courteous 2013! Let me know your thoughts about phone calls, calling etiquette and modern communications in general.

A few weeks ago a friend tipped me off to an NPR article by Barbara J. King titled, “Is There A Right Way To Be Gay?” and as I read the headline, I recalled that it was eight years ago that very week, during my freshman year of college, when I came out to myself and to everyone around me. And I remember asking myself that very question: is there a right way to be gay?

In high school I was a staunch conservative—even campaigning for George W. Bush’s reelection that year (shhh, don’t tell anyone)—and knew nothing of gay culture other than what I had been told or what I’d seen on TV.

So I might have found it comforting to know that David M. Halperin, a mustachioed 60-year old English teacher at the University of Michigan, believes that there is a right way to be gay. He wrote the book on how to be gay, literally, and his controversial college course of the same name featured a one-line summation: “Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn’t mean that you don’t have to learn how to become one.” (Note: my copy is in the mail and I look forward to digging through all 549 pages…)

According to Halperin in a NYT review of ‘How to Be Gay’ and his essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“…it is not enough for a man to be homosexual in order to be gay. Same-sex desire alone does not equal gayness. ‘Gay’ refers not just to something you are, but also to something you do. Which means that you don’t have to be homosexual in order to do it. Gayness is not a state or condition. It’s a mode of perception, an attitude, an ethos: In short, it is a practice.

And if gayness is a practice, it is something you can do well or badly. In order to do it well, you may need to be shown how to do it by someone (gay or straight) who is already good at it and who can initiate you into it—by demonstrating to you, through example, how to practice it and by training you to do it right.”

And as far as Halperin sees it, the gays today are fucking it up. Gayness is dying: “[as] the result of three large-scale developments: the recapitalization of the inner city and the resulting gentrification of urban neighborhoods; the epidemic of AIDS; and the invention of the Internet…In short, the emergence of a dispersed, virtual community and the disappearance of a queer public sphere, along with the loss of a couple of generations of gay men to AIDS, has removed many of the conditions necessary for the maintenance and advancement of gay liberation—for consciousness-raising, cultural and political ferment, and the cross-generational transmission of queer values. The lack of a critical mass of gay people physically present in a single location makes it difficult for the pace of gay cultural sophistication to accelerate. It stymies the diffusion of gay culture.”

Indeed, I’ve heard many stories from gay men who survived the AIDS crisis and wax nostalgic about the pre-AIDS days as the golden years of gay culture: gay men moved from everywhere and anywhere to crowded gay ghettos like San Francisco’s Castro or New York’s Chelsea in order to embrace sex and escape heteronormativity. Sex, the engine of gay culture, was free, fun, and a decisive act of political defiance. It’s this period, the post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS heyday that Halperin seems most comfortable.

That’s when we have to say: that was then, this is now.

At the dawn of the 20th century, homosexuality was considered a mental illness, a criminal act when practiced and came with severe social repercussions, if not death. By the mid-20th century, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution created the framework for the LGBT rights movement that continued growing until the AIDS crisis hit. Fast forward to today and same-sex marriage is legal in several states (though Halperin doesn’t seem to think this is a win, at least on the face of it) and lesbian and gay individuals have more rights, recognition and visibility than ever before. Tomorrow, who knows.

So it would make sense that the shared experience of gay men who were my age during the AIDS crisis would be quite different than the experience I have today. And their experience was different from the gay generation of Liberace, or the gay generation of Cole Porter or of Oscar Wilde, and so on—and all of these will be different from the gay generation just coming to age today. Each of these generations and the individuals who comprise them will necessarily have a different understanding of exactly what it means to be gay, how to express themselves, what politics to follow, what to fight for or against and how to fit—or not fit—into society. Just as you’d expect.

Halperin’s greatest fear seems to be the loss of gay culture by way of assimilation. Who would gay people be if they weren’t distinctly and purposefully other than straight? Other than the majority? If gay people are “mainstream” or live in small towns in rural areas and seek access to military service, church membership or marriage, they might commit something more sinister: “in their determination to integrate themselves into the larger society, and to demonstrate their essential normality, [gay people] are rushing to embrace heterosexual forms of life, including heterosexual norms. In so doing, they are accepting the terms in which heterosexual dominance is articulated, and they are positively promoting them.” So, by being like straight people, gay people manifest a sort of societal Stockholm Syndrome wherein we enable our oppressors to continue to oppress us. So, there’s that.

To my 18 year old self who had just come out—and even to me now—there is something even more distressing than the idea that to be properly gay I might need to piece my identity together from post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS crisis yesteryear (populated by gay men who held “shockingly militant, uncompromising, anti-homophobic, anti-heterosexist, anti-mainstream political views”), it’s the idea that gay culture, whatever that means, is deteriorating before my very eyes and I’m completely oblivious to it happening.

If I had spoken to Halperin when I was coming out I might have become worried that I was beginning on a journey that wasn’t even authentically my own and that the shoes of my gay forefathers would be too big for me to walk in. That I might let my community down by being too ordinary, too boring or worse, not alienated enough. That I might fail at just being true to myself. Thankfully, I did not do my research.

All I knew then and all I know now is that I’m a collection of a million different qualities, interests, faults, insecurities, beliefs and behaviors. One of them is that I’m gay. Not just homosexual, but my very own version of gay. Just as with the rest of my identity, like everyone else in the world, I have to figure out what my sexuality means to me and how I apply it to my world—and my version of gay joins a wide spectrum of identities that create the fabric of the gay experience that is happening right-this-moment, all around us.

Just as it’s supposed to be.

And San Francisco taxes pay for discrimination

Last week my boyfriend and I went to a fantastic tech networking party and afterward, around 11pm, we flagged down a Yellow Cab (#605) on the corner of Kearney and Market in downtown San Francisco. We got in and gave the driver our destination. We soberly chit-chatted and laughed about the party from the comfort of the back seat and then—without thinking—pecked on the lips. And that’s when the driver immediately pulled over and demanded that we get out of the cab.

Rewind.

When my boyfriend and I went to visit some family in Michigan in August, we were reminded of homophobia by the slurs that were tossed our way by folks when they saw us holding hands as we walked by. Growing up in Michigan and having experienced it before, I probably should have expected it. But I’ve been living in San Francisco for the past few years.

Indeed, San Francisco is a bubble of extreme liberalism: it’s legal to be naked, we’re host to the world’s largest sex fetish fair and you’re more likely to get a ticket for jaywalking than smoking a joint. It also happens to be home to a very vibrant gay population, in fact, according to estimates published in 2006 by the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law, San Francisco boasts one of the nation’s largest LGBT population per capita at more than 15%. And more than 1.2 million people—almost double San Francisco’s entire population—attend San Francisco Pride each year.

LGBT couples are visible almost everywhere in San Francisco, in every neighborhood (not just Castro anymore!) buying groceries, walking dogs, taking kids to school, holding hands, laughing, kissing—you know, being normal couples.

In fact, I’m so used to seeing gay couples that I don’t even notice it—somehow seeing straight couples holding hands warrants a double-take. Well, not really. But anyway, there are lots of us. And the gay bubble of San Francisco can be alarmingly comforting.

But guess what: homophobia is still here—right here in wear-flowers-in-your-hair San Francisco. 

Just this year we were warned about serial gay-bashers “on the loose” and a local liquor store on Geary cheering on a gay-bashing. And when you see blatant homophobia—or in my case, experience it—it’s jolting. It’s like someone throws a bucket of ice water on you while you’re sleeping. This is the place gay people from all over the country world come to to escape the tyranny they face in their close-minded hometowns and even in San Francisco, LGBT people aren’t safe from homophobia.

So, back to my story.

“Why, what do you mean?” we ask Yellow Cab driver #605.

“You disrespect me,” the driver replies. He says nothing else.

Until this point, we’ve said nothing to the driver except our destination. I ask for a legit reason or to explain how we’ve disrespected him, but no reason is given. So I call Yellow Cab to make a report and the operator tells me that, essentially, cab drivers in San Francisco are independent contractors and they can do whatever they want. So I call the police and they assure me a police unit is on its way.

Meanwhile, the cab driver calls several of his friends. He spoke Arabic on the phone, so we didn’t understand the conversations—but within minutes another Yellow Cab pulls up and the driver pauses to harass us from inside of the car before pulling over and getting out. The second driver reiterates that we have disrespected our driver and tells us that we’re stupid. Then an unmarked towncar pulls up, the driver yells at us from inside then pulls over and he, too, gets out to harass us. So there are three very angry cab drivers yelling at me and my BF. I call the police again (it’s been about 20-30 mins)  and tell them that they need to get here ASAP because the situation has escalated.

While we wait I snap some pictures of the cab and everyone involved. They didn’t like this. They got into my face and told me I was being very stupid, that I didn’t have the right to take any pictures. Then they got out their phones and started taking pictures of us!

San Franciscans pay for homphobic discrimination

San Francisco is a city that, at least on paper, welcomes people from every religion, every country, every creed and ideology, every sexual orientation and gender identification. People who are born here know it and people who come here ought to know it: in this city, you accept everyone. You may not agree with it, but you have to coexist peacefully. And, certainly, you take cab fares from everyone. That’s what makes metropolitan cities like San Francisco so amazing and awe-inspiring: so many different cultures, different ideologies and perspectives living together peacefully.

But Yellow Cab, it turns out, as well as 28 other cab companies, are governed by San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the same public authority that governs buses, trolleys, streetcars and intercity trains. Indeed, according to section 8A.101(b) of the San Francisco Charter, “In order to fully integrate taxi-related functions into the Agency should such a transfer occur, the Agency shall have the same exclusive authority over taxi-related functions and taxi-related fares, fees, charges, budgets, and personnel that it has over the Municipal Railway and parking and traffic fares, fees, charges, budgets, and personnel.”

As a result, there’s a good set of rules and regulations for what cab drivers can and can’t do. Here are the sections that relate to this specific scenario:

San Francisco Transportation Code, Article 1100: Regulation of Motor Vehicles for Hire

SEC 1108(e) “Driver Duties During Shift”:

• (1) A Driver shall not refuse, or direct or permit the refusal, of prospective passengers in any place within the City for transportation to any other place in the City, or to or from the San Francisco International Airport, or to the Oakland International Airport, or paratransit passengers within the Paratransit Program service area, at rates authorized by law, if the prospective passengers present themselves for transportation in a clean, coherent, safe and orderly manner and for a lawful purpose and the Driver has sufficient time before the end of his or her shift.
• (29) No Driver shall threaten, harass, or abuse another person, nor may a Driver speak in an obscene, threatening or abusive manner.

So it’s clear that Yellow Cab driver #605 and his friends violated both of these rules. And they got away with it.

In the end, more than an hour and a half after it began, the BF and I were safe (but shaken) at home. The SFPD did eventually come to take our reports, but with no tickets issued (no crimes were committed), everyone went their separate ways. We’re reminded that even in our “LGBT safe” city, we’re not always safe from hate. The cab driver lost more than an hour’s worth of fares, which was a nice win for us but as the cab driver #605 self-righteously reminded us, “money isn’t everything.”

That’s one thing we can agree on: money isn’t everything. Equality is everything.

Want to make your voice heard? Comment below, share this article and contact SFMTA to tell them that it is NOT OK to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

[For a friend]

He used to walk

to the edge

of town, feet dusty,

raw

and then back again

Love, if he thinks about it hard

enough

becomes something close

to tangible.

Sometimes his voice

still bounces

around aimlessly

blindly

in his head

like a canary in a coal mine.

He said: We are fast approaching

the day of ultimate

Destruction.

Who cares? A cold hand

wakes him from his sleep

He thought

to himself (to everyone, all the time)

where’d all the good

people go? Or

did they ever

exist to begin with?

He barely remembers

a time when he loved

himself (anyone, ever)

and someone once said:

the seventh key will open

all the doors

but…

he only had

six.

Night will again

fall

and again

he will be alone

with his thoughts

trying desperately

frantically,

frenetically (fantastically?)

to transform matter

into antimatter

and back into matter again

He seriously considered

careening into

oncoming traffic

the music

of horns and screeching

smoking

tires.

Then Eric Clapton sang

I shot

the sheriff

but no one gave a shit

about

the deputy.

He used to write

lyrics, poetry

dreams-turned

pocket-sized

romance novels

or cheap

dime store comic books

or sitcom scripts

but burned them

for the warmth.

Some days

he takes a cold

shower

to remind him

he’s alive

not dead.

Not stinking.

            Vibrant.

Recently we’ve been able to witness a couple of amazing, truly awe-inspring things: going to the edge of what is physically possible in order to smash world sports records and landing the Mars Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars to further our understanding of the universe.

And here’s something else rather amazing: for about the cost of two weeks of the Olympic Games we could have sent over another five rovers to Mars. In fact, the amount of money needed to fund the Olympic Games could fund NASA for nearly an entire year.

Similarly tiny by comparison, the US government spends a mere $17.7 billion on NASA and spends more than 36 times that on defense—$647 billion, with nearly $20 billion alone in 2011 spent on air conditioning tents. Since NASA’s Cold War glory days, the budget has gone from 4.41% of the total budget in 1966, to less than 0.45% today, its lowest ever. NASA helped to usher in a promising new future in the 1960s and it was rewarded with a rapidly-eroding budget.

INFOGRAPHIC: NASA Budget Timeline

It’s not an oversight; it was bound to happen in the absence of wealthy, politically-connected space science advocates to twist politicians’ arms. And in spite of the tiny fraction of money spent on NASA’s program, there are still many people who say that NASA is a waste of money. Chris Berg, a research fellow with Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs said recently that in the face of a rising national debt, ”parachuting cars onto distant planets is the ultimate discretionary spend.”

Sure, I suppose that would be true, except for the fact that scientists aren’t actually parachuting cars onto distant planets so much as pushing the limits of human knowledge and conducting insanely valuable research that will make our lives unimaginably better in untold ways. Meanwhile, Americans are forking over $25 billion or more per year to chase down the kid who smokes weed in his mom’s basement. Hooray for priorities on that “discretionary spending.”

VIDEO: NASA’s 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy?

If anything, America needs to spend more on NASA. The US needs to invest in science and technology if we hope to remain competitive in the world. Here’s why:

• Technology development — The technology developed in space laboratories lead to innovation and growth in both the public and private sector in industries across the board from aviation to zoology. Spinoff, a NASA publication, features products whose development can be linked to NASA. I’m sure there’s nothing we really need as much as tent A/C among the following:
  • Medical ultrasounds, enriched baby food and artificial limbs
  • LED lights and temper(-pedic) foam
  • Aircraft anti-icing systems and improved radial tires
  • Freeze drying, water purification and solar energy
• Training scientists — Now, more than ever, America is losing its competitive edge in science and technology to other countries. NASA is the preeminent organization for encouraging discovery and fostering intellectual curiosity. Funding NASA and creating opportunities for scientists allows us to innovate more quickly and lead the world by creating opportunities for Americans in cutting-edge fields. And if we know anything, it’s that NASA scientists are sexy.
• Defense  — It may not be the Cold War, but it is important to understand space as a frontier for defense. As more countries develop space programs and equip themselves with larger weapons, it will become increasingly important that America innovates in its use of space for defense, from communications to aeronautics. Also, if an asteroid ever gets a little close for comfort, we probably ought to have a plan or this could happen. Or this. OR THIS.
• Resources discovery — If there’s anything that Americans are good at it’s 1849-style prospecting: find resources and exploit them. Also, since we’re irresponsible gluttons, we’re rapidly running out of the stuff we need here on Earth to survive. Fortunately, the universe is a vast treasure trove of valuables and we just need to find them. Remember ALF’s home planet, Melmac, coveted lint, gravel and foam, but had gold and platinum toilets? And hey, at least we’re not destroying Earth if we’re plundering other planets, right?
• The “big questions” — Are we alone or is there other intelligent life in the universe? Is there a God? What is the meaning of life? Who shot JR? We’ll never know until we go forth into the dark, vast, final frontier we know as space.

Perhaps Bill Nye said it best:

“When you cut NASA’s budget in this way, you’re losing sight of why we explore space in the first place…There is no other country or agency that can do what NASA does — fly extraordinary flagship missions in deep space and land spacecraft on Mars. If [NASA budget cuts are] allowed to stand, the United States will walk away from decades of greatness in space science and exploration. But it will lose more than that. The U.S. will lose expertise, capability, and talent. The nation will lose the ability to compete in one of the few areas in which it is still the undisputed number one.”

NEWS FLASH: Romney is doing a better job of getting his supporters to write big checks lately. $106 million in June, compared with Obama’s measly $71 million. (A record-setting month in fundraising, BTW.)

But, um, who cares?

Romney’s success shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Obama’s riding on the Robin Hood platform — take from the rich to give to the poor in every possible way, from health care reform to deficit spending to immigration. So it makes sense that wealthy conservatives who don’t buy into the Warren Buffet rule will fork over a small amount of cash to Romney in the hope that it safeguards their wealth. Oh, and it’ll help keep rings off gay folks’ fingers.

I’m no fundraising expert, but why does this whole funding race matter? So Romney out-raised Obama for two consecutive months…but Obama is still WAY ahead of Romney. According to Reuters today:

The former Massachusetts governor and the RNC have raised at least $389 million to date, less than the $512 million Obama has collected for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee, according to federal disclosures and Monday’s announcements.

But does money buy votes? And more importantly, is it possible to win an election in this country even if you’re out-raised?

I’m reminded of California’s current governor, democrat Jerry Brown, whose campaign strategy in 2010 was fairly low-key: highlight his success as a governor in the 1970s and let conservative rival, Meg Whitman, burn through her own cash.

Whitman ended up outspending Jerry Brown 6-to-1. She spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $160 million, more than $100 million of which went into getting her face onto every Californian’s TV. That level of fundraising and spending didn’t guarantee her victory; even with 6x the money, Whitman lost.

And while California isn’t a miniature of the whole US, at least it can be done.

And to put Whitman’s spending in perspective—just for fun—if the election was held today, Romney would have had to raise about $3.1 BILLION to out-raise Obama in the way that Whitman out-raised Brown. Romney is currently at about 13% of that target. That’s assuming, of course, Obama ceases all fundraising right now.

Ultimately most Americans, myself included, already know who they’re voting for in November and the latest poll shows Obama ahead. So while it’s a great attempt at playing to fears that Romney’s ability to milk his friends for cash will land him in the Oval Office, I will not give Obama pity money. That is, unless I get a t-shirt or something.

Oh, and then there’s THIS…just for fun.

Now, I’ve talked before about Gen X vs. Gen Y in the workplace and how it relates to decision making and innovation…and I’ve talked about how growing up in the “lost decade” has actually helped Millennials/Gen Y.

But maybe this new infographic from the MBA program at UNC Kenan-Flagler says it all…

We’ve heard of the young and the restless, but the young and the…retired?

When you live in San Francisco and you work in tech, you’re constantly surrounded by twenty- or thirty-somethings flush with money from their recently-acquired/IPOed startups. If they’re smart with their money, they’ll be set for life. And in the meantime, they’ll be able to enjoy their wealth.

Recently I came across the term, pretirement, which is a relatively new term that loosely describes a period of life after you’ve begun your career but before retirement age. But that’s a lot of gray area—roungly 3 to 4 decades to be exact.

So I got to thinking, what can young people do to maximize their future wealth without compromising their current lifestyle? And it involved doing the unthinkable: throwing the 401k plan under the bus.

In theory, retirement plans like 401k are a great idea and it can work well for many with limited lifetime upward mobility (e.g., blue-collar or public sector jobs) for whom there may be less ability for outside savings or investment. Many companies offer 401k plans such that you contribute right from your paycheck and you never even noticed it. If the company matches the donation, even better, because then you’re basically getting free money.

And there’s an incentive for companies to offer a 401k, too: by contributing to a 401k, employers avoid several taxes that they would otherwise have had to pay if they directly gave you the money while still including the full amount in your benefits package.

But I’m just going to say it: for many young people, 401ks are a bad idea. Here’s why:

1. Opportunity cost for 30-40 years. Essentially this refers to what else you could be doing with the money you’re putting away. If you saved tens of thousands of dollars in a savings account versus a 401k, you might have enough money for a down payment on a house, or to start your own business, for example.
2. Inflation. The dollar loses its value. During recessions, like the one in the 1970s, the dollar lost a majority of its value. The dollar you put away now won’t have the same value as the one you receive later.
3. Taxes. Death and taxes are unavoidable. And while your 401k contributions are nice because they’re not taxed now, they are likely to be higher when you go to withdraw your money.
4. Fees. If you come across hard times and you want to withdraw your money, you’ll get hit with gigantic fees—just to get at your own money. There’s a flat 10% fee, plus additional taxes.
5. Loss of control. The dirty little secret with 401k plans is that you don’t actually get to control where your money goes. You put your money into a plan that is provided to you, with little actual control over the individual stocks or bonds you’re buying. What you’re purchasing is a fund, which is a bank-chosen set of stocks with an estimated return. Once you put money into a fund, your money is given to a faceless trader somewhere in the world to play with your money.
6. Risk. Last but not least, there’s risk. Between 2008 and now, millions of Americans have seen their portfolios shrink by half. If you’re young, it generally won’t matter too much in the long-term because there’s decades to make it up. But if you’re old, you’re screwed. The instability of our financial systems and the almost certain promise of a broken Social Security system raises the question of whether we should be handing the reins of our financial future to other people.
7. Debt. If you’re young and just graduated from college, you probably have student loans or other debt. Often times, student loan debt is 5% or greater and credit card debt or private loans are 10-15% or even higher. Your best bet is to pay off your debt before you do any type of saving. There is not a single savings account out there that will give you a return of greater than 5%, so if you have any type of debt, you’re better off paying off your high-interest debt BEFORE saving for retirement. That said, it’s always good to have a small amount of money in your savings in case of emergency or unexpected financial hardship like a job loss. As you begin to pay off your debt remember to pay off high-interest revolving credit FIRST (i.e., credit cards, charge cards, etc.) before paying off lower-interest loans (i.e., student loans, car loans, mortgage, etc.)
8. One life to live. This is a personal, irresponsible mantra of mine. As Alanis Morissette said in Ironic, “An old man, turned 98; He won the lottery, and died the next day…” Life is unpredictable. You could live to be 120 or you could die tomorrow. Money that sits in your bank account or in a retirement plan won’t do you much good when you’re dead, but it could do a lot of good right now.

If you’re a smart, educated, driven member of the workforce, it’s likely that you’ll make enough money over the course of your lifetime to invest your own money, rather than depending on the government or large banks to do it for you. Let’s put it this way: if you believe strongly that there is NO guarantee that you’ll ever see your Social Security or 401k money and you make other provisions (like an IRA), you’ll be fine. If, by a miracle, those of us born in the 1980s start receiving our Social Security and 401k checks (sometime in the 2060s), it’s just a cherry on top of the cake.