Is Math Useful? Of Course It Is; Here’s the Easy Way to Know!

Do you keep asking yourself the question “Is math useful?”

Do you want to know why?

If so, then keep reading this post because I will show you why in a way that will blow your mind.

If not, then keep reading because I will convince you otherwise.

But first, let me tell you a story of a clown whose deficiency in math caused a big mess that could’ve gotten worse.

The Story of a Math Clown

 

If you grew up watching kids shows in the 1990s and the early 2000s, you probably know of a show called “The Big Comfy Couch.”

You probably recognize the main character of the show named Loonette the Clown.

Whether you know about the show and the character or not, you probably relate to Loonette in many ways that you haven’t even dreamed of as a result of not being sold on math’s usefulness.

Let me explain.

On every show that aired, Loonette wanted to show the little kid audience a big lesson of the day that they could use right after each episode.

It’s a lot like you with whatever plan that you might have whether it’s to get out of debt, go into a certain career, etc.

She had a goal and you have a goal of doing something.

However, without even realizing it, while she did achieve the goal after every episode, she would leave a few items on the floor that were not meant to be on the floor.

If you’ve seen the show, you know what happens.

But if you haven’t, get ready for a big surprise and a huge revelation.

With you, you might be like Loonette and say “Oh, I’ll pay it off later” or you overspend by just a little bit by accident in a way like it’s not a big deal or you hold off learning something until the last minute because you don’t want to do it.

Now here comes the good part.

Throughout each episode, Loonette would continue to throw stuff onto the floor without realizing and without disciplining herself to check the floor for a small, but quickly growing, mess.

Meanwhile, her doll Molly is like “Who the hell is this woman doing this crazy stuff?”

As you would probably imagine, Loonette is getting herself into a world of trouble.

Definitely not good.

And this keeps going on and on and on for the rest of the episode.

Now with you, you might be someone trying to understand your finances.

You might be saying to yourself “Oh geez, this stuff is complicated; I don’t want to go over the numbers. Let’s just do whatever and go to the movies or go out to a steak dinner with the MasterCard tonight. My salary will make up the difference.”

And then you go onto your steak dinner and you get a bill that doesn’t seem like a big deal at first.

“One small mess” you say; “we’ll fix it later. I’m making $80k at the job! We’re fine!”

And then, you go to the movies.

Another small mess, not a big problem.

It’s cool.

It’s chill.

But deep down there’s a Molly inside of you saying “Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

Now let’s go get a nice new dress/suit!

Another relatively small bill compared to my salary; not a problem. I’m getting my paycheck tomorrow!

Oh, and let’s get the house!

Boom, the salary will take care of the mortgage tool; learning about finances is not necessary.

We’re ballin’ with the American dream baby!

You might be someone who has to know math in order to land a certain career.

But, you despise it so much that you are like “Ah, I know everything else, plus I can copy my friend’s homework. Let’s learn it later and play some World of Warcraft!”

And one day goes by, and you are still like “Let’s play World of Warcraft. I’ll copy off of my buddy.”

And another day goes by and you do the same thing.

Molly is tapping on your shoulder and saying “Study honey. You’re falling for a trap.”

This mess is starting to grow itself like Loonette’s mess.

Careful.

And then 3 days before the test, you know NOTHING about the math being covered.

And you scramble.

And you hustle.

And you pull all-nighters trying to learn everything in one shot.

Or maybe you invest in something and you don’t know how to do the math because it’s so “time consuming” and you just want to invest, get rich, and be done with it.

And you don’t want to do the required research to make sure that the investment is a sound one.

So there you go betting on one stock.

It tanked; didn’t break the bank, plus I’ve got a great salary!

And then you invest in another stock or another investment and you even go to the racetrack and bet on a few horses.

You win one or two races, so you stay there and bet more.

And you bet more.

And you bet more.

And while you are at it, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

But there is a Molly inside of you saying “What the hell are you doing? STOP!”

So all in all, you are having a great time.

Or you might be examining an investment and think that borrowing money for that investment is a good idea based off of the math.

You’ve done the math and you “think” that you have a great deal.

You are like “There’s no more math required; it’s a great deal and I have a 20% cash on cash return. LET’S DO THIS BABY!”

However, what you didn’t factor in was a new law or a recession that affected the revenue of your investment and the value of your investment itself.

And there to was a Molly inside of you saying “Don’t do that.”

And if any is your case, you are probably going to sympathize with Loonette at the end of the episode.

At the end of every episode, Loonette talks about the lesson of the day and how her day went before she goes on top of the couch and sees the floor and says:

 

That’s right.

YOU MADE THE MESS YOU CLOWN!

That’s what happens when you refused to learn math!

You get that big fat credit card bill, you spend more than you make, you go over budget without realizing it, you get a big fat F on your transcript and it ruins your career ambitions, and your now owe more on the investment than what it’s worth AND now your expenses exceed your revenue!

Like Loonette, because you didn’t keep track of what you are doing AND you didn’t know the math behind it, you put yourself in the BIG FAT hole.

No wonder you are stressed out you clown!

Hence, the importance of mathematics in our everyday life and the importance of mathematics in society.

No wonder the government is always a mess and in debt!

They’re clowns; don’t be like them.

Now do you find math useful?

Now the next thing that you are asking is “How the hell are we going to clean this up?”

You are going to have to pull off a Loonette and do the 10 Second Tidy, which will be covered next!

Ready, set, go!

The 10 Second Tidy

Here’s the deal.

When you want to achieve a particular goal, you need to have a sexual desire to achieve it.

In other words, a complete and utter obsession like no one has ever seen EVER!

To start that, read this article here.

You really need to become crazy and a madman.

Seriously.

And if you need even more evidence to back this up, read this article here.

Now that you find math useful to preventing many of your problems from happening or ever happening again, the key to understanding math behind your finances or learning certain math for school is to learn from those that have mastered it themselves.

If you are only looking for school math help, you can proceed to the next section of my recommendations, but you might find the finance section useful.

So read on.

I’ve come up with 3 of my personal favorite finance experts that I feel can point you in the correct direction.

Note that one of my recommendations when you research him recommends using debt as leverage in real estate investing and yes he is the wealthiest of my recommendations, but for the reasons that I’ve mentioned above, I don’t recommend that.

In fact, know this:

Debt = Slavery

Understand that.

Here are the 3:

1)      Dave Ramsey

You’ve probably heard of him.

And not only that, you actually paid for it with your own money.

That’s going to make you very proud.

I highly recommend that you browse his YouTube channel for all of his opinions about money, but if you want a quick video summary about what he believes and what you need to do, then watch this video here. It’s brilliantly done.

2)      Grant Cardone

If you want to blow up in life, this is your guy.

He’ll teach you everything that you need to know about sales, closing, having a big fat mindset that’ll make you think that you can take over the world.

The guy is truly an extremely powerful positive source of energy that anyone who has listened to him will testify that he radiates that so much in whatever he promotes and does.

He really does want to help you and that’s why he is on this list.

NOTE: He advocates leverage in real estate, which if you are a real estate investor and you clicked on this blog post or you are thinking about investing in real estate, I am going to give you extreme caution with that since if it is used recklessly, it can ruin your life.

To start with his content, watch this video here.

But note, money is NOT trash.

It is a powerful weapon that must be used with extreme thought and care.

Don’t even THINK that it’s trash like it’s wasteful or otherwise, you will be broke fast.

That is NOT what he means by money is “trash.”

If you treat money like trash, you will be EXACTLY like Loonette looking at the mess that you’ve made and doing a 10 second tidy.

Don’t do that.

But he is right in that you eventually have to get rid of it.

Just use it right, not like a clown.

And now for number 3.

3)      Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the go to person for anything related to side hustles and budgeting.

She runs a blog called Making Sense of Cents where she talks about all of this stuff in ways that will get you results.

She has around 1500 blog posts and counting on Personal Finance and it is growing almost every day, adding more value on this topic.

If you are interested in learning how to make more money on the side or you want to learn how to budget or save money, she is an excellent start to that.

You can start with this blog post here that’ll make you more like Molly instead of Loonette with the big fat mess.

Now if you need math help for school or university, there’s only 1 YouTube channel that I recommend.

It’s Professor Leonard.

This guy is truly a blessing.

He changed the way that I see math in that I understand it’s significance in the world instead of just memorizing and going along with my day.

Additionally, when you listen to him, he makes you crave more of the subject instead of despising it, which is really rare amongst professors.

And he teaches the subject in a way that when you walk to the test, you are literally going to breeze through every question instead of second guessing what you are doing like most professors and textbooks will make you do.

Sure they’ll give you a foundation of knowledge to help you pass, but to get over the top, they won’t do that.

Professor Leonard will make sure that you are over the top.

Guaranteed.

You can access his videos here.

Now, if he doesn’t have videos on your specific subject, then I recommend reading the book.

I don’t think that any other YouTube channel out there will give you everything that you need to know for the subject like Professor Leonard would.

Sure, maybe Khan Academy for something like Algebra, but I don’t know enough about it to give you an honest recommendation about those videos.

But what I can say is that the book is the next available option from what I see.

After all, that is what the tests will be based off of.

So read the book if Leonard is not available.

And that will definitely solve your math problem in school.

No excuses now.

Additional Recommendations to Pick Up the Mess

Now there’s more to the mess that math problem of yours.

You need to know the principles of success and you need to know how to deal with people.

So there are 2 books that I highly recommend that you purchase right now in order to make sure that you are set in this world.

In fact, most of the successful people in the world recommend these 2 books out of all others.

Book 1: “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill

This one is known as the success bible.

In this book, you will learn the mindset necessary to achieve what you want and what you need to do in order to accomplish any goal that you set out for.

One of my favorite chapters is the one with a mastermind group in which you select certain people that you want to surround yourself with and you talk to them in your mind about what you want to do and they recommend what they suggest that you do as a result.

There are many other secret treasures in there that you can only find out in depth when you read the book, so definitely grab yourself a copy right here on Amazon.

Note: This link and the link for the next book that I will recommend are affiliate links and I receive a commission off of your purchase if you buy through them, but that will not affect how much you pay for them.

Book 2: “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

This one is a must if you need to learn how to deal with people.

Nearly everyone who is successful in their profession largely attributes their success to this book.

Why?

Because it is the only time-tested book that teaches you what you need to know to win with any person in any situation.

In fact, I encourage you to read this review right here to see how it can affect your life in more ways than not.

That was mind blowing wasn’t it?!

You can purchase the book here on Amazon.

You Finished the 10 Second Tidy

Whew. You went through a lot in a short period of time.

Can you pinky promise yourself that you will use math when it’s necessary to avoid a big mess that can potentially ruin your future?

I’m glad that you said yes to that.

Now for you, it’s time to clean up the mess.

But when you are done, you can rest all you want on your big comfy couch (or your big comfy bed) at home without a worry in the world.

And you will avoid the chaos that the world brings to everyone every day while you enjoy life.

I hope that you found this post useful and got a lot out of it.

If you got a lot out of this post, please feel free to subscribe with your email at the box below to Join the Island where more extremely useful posts about your productivity and achieving your full potential will be sent straight to your inbox right when a new post is published.

And comment below with what you got out of this post and how you’ll use math to solve your daily problems in life. I’d love to hear from you!

Have a great day my friend!

Until next time,

This is Chief Islander Evan signing off.