Finances of the Undead

This blog post on ”finances of the undead” compares vampires with zombies to make a point about good personal financial habits. Obviously we approve of zombies, vampires and financial prudence.  Indeed, one of my chapters talks about what vampires can teach us about investing strategies. But in some ways I think the author is a little unfair to the zombies when she claims vampires as the better financial managers. After all, vampires start with several advantages including a functioning brain and the ability to speak. They’re also better looking, which economists have found to matter for income.

Of course, the undead differ on more than just their financial acumen. In chapter 10, Lorna Piatti-Farnell considers how vampires and zombies represent different aspects of consumerism, vampires as representatives of status-conscious behavior while zombies are more mindless consumers. They return to the mall in Dawn of the Dead because that’s what they know. But do we really want to consider this mindlessness? They know what they want, they try to get it and they don’t care what others think. If you leave aside eating people, there’s something likably simple about zombies.

In fact, zombies are now seen as being so reasonable that AT&T uses them to pitch their cable system. Maybe zombies are financially responsible after all.