Money Lessons From Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Day will be celebrated this coming Monday in America.  It’s a federal government holiday, so I’ll be off.  As a semi-retired and semi-quasi-professional blogger and graphic artist, I wasn’t planning on working anyway.

Sadly, many companies in the private sector do not recognize this holiday.  So many out there will be working away, fighting to pay off the loans on their ill-advised auto purchases. 

Speaking of which, in a speech two months prior to his assassination, King had this to say:

Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. (Make it plain) But it feeds a repressed ego…

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn’t cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That’s just good economics….But so often, haven’t you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. That’s a fact….

This was a different time for sure, and Cadillacs aren’t exactly perceived as the king of cars these days.  Although the Cadillac Escalade is a bloated monstrosity that does still have “repressed ego appeal” for so many out there.

This person is on cloud 10, because cloud nine wasn’t big enough to fit this polluting debt-chariot

And the “half your annual income” thing for a car is bad advice if you, say make $120,000 a year.  Heck, it’s bad advice if you make the median household income in America which is now $60,000 a year. 

You don’t need to spend $30,000 to get a decent functioning vehicle.  But again, it was a different time so this is not King’s fault. 

His point about people driving vehicles that cost the same as their annual salary is still valid, and still happens all the time.  I have a school teacher friend in Baltimore who’s very proud of her SUV that costs almost what she makes per year.

He Warned Of Lifestyle Inflation

In 2018 Dodge infamously used some parts of that King speech to hawk their expensive pickup trucks in a Superbowl ad.  That didn’t go over well. 

Because in the very same speech, King warned of the dangers of advertising and lifestyle inflation in general.  Dodge of course felt the need to conveniently ignore that part.

He said:

Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers.  You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying.

In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car.  In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff. That’s the way the advertisers do it.

I’ve never been so proud to not be a man of distinction.  Because I’m definitely not.

King was smarter than all of us and I’m convinced if he were alive today he’d look very favorably upon us in the financial independence movement. 

We seek to use money as a tool, not as a status symbol to fix a repressed ego.  We seek more life, with less stuff.  We seek financial freedom.  And maybe he would have too. 

In another speech, King said:

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.

A powerful message that needs more than an annual reminder in January.  While I’m fully aware the freedom King was referring to was in the context of equality for African Americans, the message has value far beyond that.  Freedom is worth losing a job for. 

I think I know some people who did that….