Michael G, angry about money

Transcript

Hello, this is John-Paul, and I’d like to introduce you to Michael Gilmore, who works in finance in Singapore. He’s written for the Idler and published books about money, and he joined my Whizzy Group back when he was about to launch the MAIAs, which has since become a very successful international award scheme for people who teach money awareness.

Michael’s one of the first people I thought of when I came up with the idea of interviews by WhatsApp. And I sent him my questions using WhatsApp, but then I lost half of my half of the conversation. So what you’ll hear from me is me, now, saying what I asked him then.

Hello. I’m really not used to using these, so I apologise for the awkward beginning that I’m probably doing.

I’ll give you a little bit of atmosphere too. I’m on the deck on the first floor of my office building. It’s not a big office building, it’s a smaller office building. It’s one of these things they’ve done in Singapore where they knock out the inside of an old sort of historical building and leave the facade still in place.

And for some reason or other they decided in this one to put a little bit of a deck on the first floor, which is nice because it catches a bit of wind – which in this town is a draught, rather – which is, yeah, quite nice.

I think my first question to Michael was something like, what are you working on that excites you?

I think I’m going to talk about two projects at the same time, if that’s okay. And unfortunately, I’m going to do the terrible thing of answering the question by not answering the question.

I wish I was more focused on a particular issue about one of the projects. But I think, as you know, I do them in my spare time, so I tend to end up jumping around on them. I feel sometimes as though I’m doing the equivalent of doom scrolling.

In some ways, the book project is perfect for that, because I’m jumping from era to era to era. So it sort of fits my low boredom threshold, and I love doing it. So I can never actually get bored or bogged down in one thing.

But I suppose the thing that worries me about the other project, about the MAIAs, and I do focus on, is finding a sponsor or a partner or someone that will help us make it sustainable for the longer term. I think that’s really the thing that I think about most.

Then, I think, I asked Michael how he ended up doing what he does.

How do I do what I do? How did I come to do what I do now? I think if we refer to the fact that what I do today is work in finance, the very short answer is that that happened by accident.

I was a writer and was going to set up a magazine. And the magazine, as the old joke goes, folded. And rather than work at Dow Jones or Bloomberg, I ended up with a job as an analyst.

But that’s actually what leads to what I do now, talking about both the awards and the book. Because I started doing it by accident, I had to learn finance very, very quickly. And I realised that it was both more important and easier than I thought it would be. And that made me so angry that I’ve carried on working on trying to help other people learn about money ever since.

As a sort of corollary on that – because yesterday I spoke to you about the two things I’m doing, which is the awards and the book – how did I get to do the awards? Well, through talking to you and other people, and had this idea of realising that the nature of learning about money is so naturally fragmented. We all need to hear something different about money from someone different for us to really, truly understand it. And so there needs to be an aggregator for this. And I thought awards are a great way of building that aggregator.

The book, though, is a different thing. Again, it’s about helping other people understand money. But it’s really about this question of what the system is. Are we living in a broken system, or is it working exactly as it’s supposed to work? And how did we get here, to this world where we have almost trillionaires and the rest of us with very little? How did that happen? That’s the idea for the book. And that’s how I’m doing that.

My last question – I can’t remember the exact words – was whether Michael ever stops to think about how much good he has done.

And I remember thinking, as soon as I sent the message, that’s going to sound really weird, and it might put him off completely. And indeed, there was quiet from Michael for maybe a couple of days. But then he got back in touch, and he sent me a message which included a little bit that wasn’t great audio. So I’m just going to summarise.

He said he was in a car park by a palace – a museum, I beg your pardon – the Peranakan Museum on Armenian Street. And he sent me a photo of it as well.

And he said it’s a kind of very early example of fusion, when the Chinese came to this part of Southeast Asia and mixed with the locals. And I think Michael said – but the audio was difficult – it sort of means the child of… the child of locals and Chinese. And he definitely said, “and it’s a beautiful building”. And then he sent me the picture.

Peranakan Museum. Photo: Michael Gilmore.

And then his message continued like this.

So I’ll start with the actual answer to the question now, now I’ve done the atmosphere.

Well, the temptation’s always to argue the question, you know – is that right? You have to be falsely modest and say, well, I don’t really do that much. Whether it’s false or not, who can judge?

I suppose I feel two ways about it. I do naturally feel I don’t do enough. Otherwise I wouldn’t keep doing what I do. But equally, I know that if someone asks me to do more, I often tell them I don’t have time or money or energy. So obviously, clearly, I’m doing as much as I can.

But I think actually maybe a more accurate version of that is, I’m doing as much as I want to do. Because I do all the things I want to do. I don’t do an enormous amount of good that I don’t particularly want to do. I support causes in ways that I think I can support them sustainably, because I want to support them in those ways, which is probably the best answer.

But I suppose then, why do I do the things I do? I think you know the answer to this. We talked about it before. I’m angry.

One of the things that makes me angry the most is just general hypocrisy. People saying one thing, and lying to us about a thing, and then doing totally the opposite. And yeah, that’s happened really for learning about money, and people knowing about money, forever. As long as there’s been money, we haven’t talked about it. And as a result, some people get really left behind. And that could be avoided.

And that’s partly what motivates me to do this – to reduce that, and at the same time to reduce my anger about it in society.

But equally, I think if I didn’t do it, I would feel hypocritical myself, because I’d be one of those people down the pub being angry about things and not doing anything about it, or shouting at the telly. And I don’t want to be that. I think I’d feel hypocritical myself. I still do, I guess, when I’m not doing enough or don’t feel I’m doing enough. And so that’s another part of the motivation.

I think it makes me feel at least as though I’m doing something about the things that make me angry. And as you all know, activity reduces anxiety, reduces all those negative feelings.

The last time I interviewed Michael.

jp at this domain name.