Recently I’ve been rocking out to a new song by the band Paramore. If you haven’t heard of them, well they’d probably say that ignorance is your new best friend. In fact, I’ve been rocking to them so much lately that lead singer Hayley Williams has replaced Taylor Swift in the category of Inappropriately Young Female Singer that Lazy Man is Crushing On. Getting back to the subject, the song that really got my attention is Brick by Boring Brick. If they given a vote I’d say it is the best song in at least 3 years, maybe 5. To my surprise, when I looked into the lyrics a little deeper a hidden financial lesson came to the surface.
Did you catch it? Some of the lyrics are little hard to catch. Here are a few that I popped out when I first heard the song:
“She lives in the fairy tale somewhere too far for us to find”
“Keep your feet on the ground when your head’s in the clouds”
“Her prince finally came to save her and the rest you can figure out but it was a trick and the clock struck 12”
“Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick or the wolf’s gonna blow it down”
“Ba da ba ba da da ba da…”
What kind of financial lessons can we take away from this? As Hayley Williams says:
“‘Stop living in a fake fairytale… like, WAKE UP!’ When thinking how I could really get that across in the song I decided I’d use a house. Someone’s safe place, even in a fairy tale – you can’t forge a refuge out of magic & fairy dust. You gotta build it just as real and as solid as a stupid old brick.”
So financially speaking, give up the lottery tickets and pour some money into your 401k. Don’t pay for real estate seminars or get rich quick schemes and max out that Roth IRA. Don’t buy MonaVie or sell MonaVie and build up that emergency fund. When the wolf comes to blow your financial house down, you’ll be glad you built it brick by boring, stupid old brick.
Do you know someone who has their financial head too far in the clouds? If you do (sing along with me):
Go get your shovel
And we’ll dig a deep hole
To bury the castle, bury the castle
I’ve got the full lyrics for you after the jump…