Fyre Festival Takeaways

For those of you who have not seen the trending Fyre Festival documentaries, here is a one sentence synopsis of what happened:

A young entrepreneur named Billy McFarland went great and illegal lengths to put on an expensive musical festival in the Bahamas that catered to "elite millenials."

While watching the documentaries, I could not help but think of ways the whole scam could have been avoided. Here are my takeaways:

Research your investments

Billy McFarland had a history of doing “bad business” before the Fyre Festival. The Hulu documentary interviewed several references that could have warned Ja Rule and other collaborators not to do business with him. While there are times when bad investments are inevitable, more often than not, a phone call to a few references can help prevent a poor investment.

The “elite millennial life” is not that great

The carefree and posh millennial life is over-exaggerated by perfectly filtered images on social media. It is a lifestyle that has influenced an entire generation to crave glamour and material things.

We must always keep in mind that social media inflates happiness and overlooks the struggle.

As we saw in the documentary, social media influencers were paid to hype up an event that was poorly organized and incredibly mismanaged.

Live your life.

Remember what makes you personally happy and do not let social media interfere with that.

An “experience” is not a financial asset

In the Hulu documentary, we learned that some of the Fyre Festival attendees quit their jobs to attend this event. This means they cut off their income stream to purchase a liability that would not return any type of financial gain. Now, I really don’t care if you are trust fund kid or a self-sufficient young professional - that is not wise financial management.

This is not to say that we should not enjoy luxurious vacations, enjoy quality entertainment, or quit our jobs if we find something better. The point is, we need to make wise financial decisions. We should set budgets and build financial assets that will allow those “living my best life” moments to be rewards rather than impulsive mistakes.

I have so many other takeaways, but I will leave it at these three for now. To be honest, any of us could have become “Fyre Festival victims”. If marketed to us correctly, there is an experience out there that each of us would be willing to pay a high price for. Make sure you have financial limits (budgets) and goals (long term investments) that will help you say “no” to what may come. And, don’t live your life for “social media,” it is literally not worth it.