No One Ever Told Us That: Money and Life Lessons for Young Adults

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

SOCIAL OR COUNTRY CLUBS

All of you have social lives, both virtual and real. We are still an aspirational society. Most of us want to do well, to climb up various ladders, both in business and with our peers, that group, or groups, of friends who also aspire to certain things. These are benchmarks of adult life.

My two partners and I have 2,000 clients all over the world. Many are hardly what you would call rich. But they all teach me interesting things that enrich me every day, far more than in a monetary sense. They have been and are plumbers and carpenters, artists and musicians, union members and chief executive officers, heads of foundations, writers, teachers, venture capitalists, old and young, gay and straight, and men and women.

All of them belong to various associations or clubs. Some of those clubs are not open to the general public. And Americans have always been keen on being in with the in crowd, wherever that in crowd resides, regardless of party or religious affiliation. Life is unfair, of course. But sometimes it's unfair in your favor. Most of us want to belong to something, whether it's Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Kiwanis, or a golf course where you have to get letters of recommendation from members.

I know people who have desperately wanted to join certain clubs in various cities and have been refused membership, or told not to apply. Others have been outright blackballed. The term comes from the English, the originators of private, upper-class ...