5 money lessons from “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

I do love finding personal finance lessons in popular culture. Today I’ll take out after “Jurassic World: Dominion.”

Was it a good movie? Hard to say. Asking this is like asking, “Was your McDonald’s meal a good dining experience?” Answer: It filled me up okay but it was neither memorable nor remember-able. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is the same sort of cinematic non-feast: I remember enjoying certain parts of it, but on the whole it was just…long. If I’d been wearing a watch, I’d have been checking it after about the 90-minute mark – and the film lasts for 147 minutes.

The first film in the series, “Jurassic Park,” was a wildly entertaining film with plenty of action and terrific (for the time) special effects. But it also asked the hard questions. You know, stuff about humankind’s ongoing attempts to control Nature and our inability to look at something wondrous without wondering how much money it could bring us.

Speaking of money: I came up with five personal finance lessons from “Jurassic World: Dominion.” You’re welcome.

1. De-bug your system

It isn’t enough that dinos have become as invasive as kudzu. We also get a plague of giant locusts! They’re rapidly destroying crops, which will lead to famine and economic devastation – unless you happen to plant seeds from a certain major company. What a coincidence.

What’s eating away at your bottom line? Go through your finances with a fine-tooth comb – and the capacity to call yourself out on your BS – to find out why you aren’t meeting your money goals. It could be overspending, or a ripple effect from that pandemic layoff, or inflation, or something else. Or maybe all of the above.

It could also be under-earning. If you’ve got champagne tastes on a beer budget, or even just beer tastes on an unsustainably low salary, then it’s time to look at ways to change things. For example, rents aren’t going down any time soon so maybe it’s time to search for a roommate, or a cheaper place, or both. (Yes, I know that isn’t always possible. But you won’t know until you start looking.)

Since so many places are hiring, consider taking on a temporary second job, especially if your main gig offers fewer than 40 hours a week. It’s not easy to have more than one job at a time (ask me how I know), but being in debt and/or not meeting basic money goals isn’t easy, either.

You could approach it with an attitude of, “I’ll work up to 50 hours a week total for a set amount of time, and make sure the ‘extra’ funds go toward my debt/emergency fund/whatever.” Some people take on a retail gig every year during the winter holiday season, either to make their own holidays merrier and brighter or to shore up their finances in other ways. It might work for you, too.

2. Experience matters

The BioSyn* company has assembled the best and the brightest, and those scientists suffer from “smartest guy in the room” syndrome. That is, they’re so convinced they’re right that it never occurs to them to get a second opinion.

The company’s crown prince, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, channeling Steve Jobs hard) protests that it’s not about the money. It’s about making the world a better place! He and his acolytes believe their own press about how the return of the dinosaurs benefiting humans. Except for Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), another holdout from the original, they don’t really know what they’re talking about – and again, they don’t seem interested in thinking long-term, or at least past their next stock options.

I’m not revealing trade secrets here, as it’s obvious from the previews that the experiment doesn’t end well. Fortunately, the old band gets back together: Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). Although Malcolm initially seems to have drunk the corporate Kool-Aid, he ultimately works with the others to deal with the horrors of nature run amok. They can do this because they’ve seen it happen before.

Money experience matters, too. So when something good happens (e.g., your new job comes with a retirement plan) or when something bad happens (your spouse blindsides you with divorce papers), don’t try to go it alone. Either find a money expert to help you or seek money knowledge yourself.

Or both. Educate yourself by reading personal finance sites like NerdWallet, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling or the XY Planning Network. And if at all possible, get yourself some help via a certified financial planner; the fee will more than pay for itself if it sets you on a sustainable path toward a better future.

Note: Some CFPs do pro bono work. If you’re part of an at-risk or underserved community, including being a cancer survivor or “wounded warrior,” you may be able to get free counseling from members of the Financial Planning Association or the Foundation for Financial Planning.

3. You need a team

The old poops from the first film are a good team. So are Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a cynical pilot for hire, and Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), a former Dodgson disciple who’s gotten a glimpse at the man behind the curtain. If not for their ability to think on their feet and their determination to do the right thing, the human race will be in serious trouble. Except for the rich, of course; they’ll just get richer.

No one can really go it alone in this world. So if you haven’t already assembled a Team You, get on it. That can be friends, relatives, co-workers, people you’ll never meet but with whom you chat on personal finance boards – anyone who can inspire you, encourage, create goals with you, share your successes or support you (literally or figuratively) when the going gets rough.

4. Use your head for something besides a hat rack

Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who managed Jurassic World (but not all that well), is now part of a guerrilla group that breaks into illegal dinosaur breeding facilities. On the spur of the moment, Dearing decides to rescue a baby dino that looks sick. If she’d listened to her friends (or her own good sense), she would have known that was a bad idea. The video evidence would have been enough to get authorities to close the place down.

But Claire lets her heart overrule her head, and nearly gets herself and her compatriots (and the baby dino!) killed in the process. Sure, it felt right. But would she have been able to live with herself if one of her colleagues (or the doggone dino) had died?

Don’t take unnecessary risks, with your money or your honor. Quasi-legal behavior to build a stake/advance your career, lending money to an unreliable borrower, investing in a friend’s project without a clear idea of when (or whether) you’ll see any returns – these and other behaviors can leave you financially and/or spiritually bankrupt.

(That “something besides a hat rack” thing was something my fourth-grade teacher used to say when she wanted us to wise up. She was full of pithy aphorisms like that.)

5. Know the “why” before you act

Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a character from “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” is now being sheltered by Dearing and her partner, dinosaur whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt). In the previous film we learned the young girl is a human clone, created to replace a rich man’s daughter who’d died in a car accident.

A few surprising details are added in this film, but the question remains: Should she have been created at all? To paraphrase chaos theoretician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Because if it all goes kerflooey, who’s gonna fix problems we’ve never experienced as humans?

 

Same goes for your money. Maybe your friends or co-workers are all babbling about cryptocurrency. But do you actually understand it, and can you tell whether or not it’s the right fit for your financial situation? Are you ready to ride the ups and downs, and to gamble your hard-earned money on what some experts describe as a Ponzi scheme just waiting to crumble?

Or suppose a guy you know boasts that he chose the smallest possible down payment on a home, then invested the rest of the money he could have put down. That might work for some people, yet the tactic carries its own set of what-ifs; for example, doing so might affect the interest rate you’ll be able to get, and it will mean a larger monthly payment.

Don’t make big decisions about your finances just because you can. A whole lot of Enron employees decided to invest most of their 401(k) plans in company stock. We all know what happened after that.

*Not too heavy-handed a name, huh?

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