Archive for the ‘money’ tag
The Fourth Day of Christmas – Who’s In Control?
Did you sit there as a kid watching Dan Aykroyd & Bill Murray catch ghosts and wonder how much their annual salary was, what their 401k (superannuation) fund was like or how many hours per day they worked? Me neither. I wanted to be a ghost buster because it looked like fun, plain and simple.
Where did it all go wrong? At what point did you go from wanting to be a fireman, a life guard, a deep sea diver or a pro surfer into giving in to being a corporate mule?
Focus
I recently read a great article by Ash at The Middle Finger Project that touched on the subject of working at McDonalds in your teens. Working at the Big M isn’t a bad thing, you’re focused and work equals money. You don’t work there because you have a passion for the Big Mac Secret Sauce* or that you really admire the hamburglar. Our first jobs are often the most care free, you go to work to make money to enjoy your spare time, seems quite simple but as we’ve moved on we’ve forgotten what money is ACTUALLY for. Now it’s for paying off our new plasma television, the new car we didn’t need or our credit cards.
Life moves on from being completely carefree and slowly but surely you acquire responsibility. With this responsibility of supporting yourself brings the need for an income, with the income comes the overtime and spending on life’s little luxuries. Before you know it, you and everyone other man and his dog are running along in the same never ending race.
Who’s in Control?
What would happen if we all quit work tomorrow? I love a good ‘conspiracy’ at any time of day, and one of my favourites that I’m always involved in is the whole ‘working, paying taxes and being in the governments ‘rat race’.
It goes like this: you go to school and you’re told to get a well paying job, you then head to university to get a qualification for said well paying job, you start work, pay tax, get a house, suffer the wrath of interest rate fluctuations, watch TV and soak up the media and are easily influenced and under control. Is there a way to step outside of the rat race? To run your own race? Maybe to not even run in the race at all?
What if you didn’t have to pay tax? Or if you could minimise your tax and build some wealth & assets? Maybe start up a few alternate income streams? Or you knew how money worked, how to acquire it and make it work for you? That’d be brilliant!
If only we were taught things like this? Say for example, in a…. school? Who benefits from our tax dollars, controls the school syllabus and has the final say on what we’re taught? It shouldn’t be too hard for you to figure out! 
So luckily we know all there is to know about plate tectonics, we learnt an obscure language that we’ll never need and we can calculate the circumference of the world. But we don’t know anything about how to handle our money, reduce our tax or stand on our own two feet?
Let’s forget money & control and reminisce about a simpler time: playing basketball all day, poking your tongue out, shaving your head bald, wishing you were black and insisting your were going to be Michael Jordan when you grew up.
P.S. *Big Mac Not-So-Secret Sauce = Mircale whip, sweet relish, french dressing, sugar, pepper & powdered onion (in case you were wondering)
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Is Your Boss a Used Car Salesman?
Is your boss a used car salesman? At least if you go to the caryard, you can spot them from a mile away; cheap suit, slick hair, usually a big stupid grin. They ask you how your day is going, lovely weather outside, anything you’re interested in? “Oh no don’t worry, I just want to chat mate”… Yeah right.
At least you KNOW their motive, they are trying to sell you something. Their sole purpose from 9 – 5 is to get you to buy something. The test drive, have a sit inside, see how it feels, the new car smell, it’s all aimed at getting you to buy their car. They have a motive; it’s out there for everyone to see.
Your boss and everyone above you in the corporate world have a motive, but it’s not always clear to you and me. You think they are really interested in how your weekend was, your family and your interests outside of work?
The ideal employee wouldn’t have family, interests or any free thought! Or checking out websites during the day might I add!
The motives of the corporate are many and are more often than not sold to you as ‘career opportunities’.
- Working overtime & extra hours, you’ve just become a lot less of an expense! Your employer is getting way more out of you than they’re paying for.
- Their promotion & moving up the ranks, you make them look good.
- Share holder profits, executives have one main driver, profits for the shareholders.
I’ll never forget being told, “You’re never going to be able to have more of an effect on the share price than at this company son!” Big deal, I don’t own any shares!
The Working World of Old
There are a number of common themes that used to be applicable to the working world; loyalty, years served at a company, punctuality, friendly service. These days the working world is all about conversions; how many sales have you made? When will you be finished your current task to start the next? Can you work Saturday to meet the deadline? Push push push.
Too many workplaces are focusing on a big corporate image without having any substance or core business. Sure they’ve got a flash website and glossy brochures, but what are they actually trying to sell you?
Work = Money
This concept hasn’t been explored enough, that not only are customers being sold bullshit, but employees are too! The world needs a good slap around the ear, you’re working for your pay, not to build a company image, not so that your executives will look good in front of a board of directors, not to do work Saturday mornings for free. Plain and simple, work = money. Work is that 8 hour inconvenience in your day that allows to you enjoy your time off & your family.
Next time you’re at work have a good look around, are you being sold a lemon? If you want to tell the world about your used car salesman, leave a comment.
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Is this it?
Did you wake up this morning, alarm set as the same time as yesterday, and the day before, and tomorrow? You might drive a different way to work, or wear an obscene tie that doesn’t match, just to mix things up. Ever wake-up to the alarm on a Saturday? And on auto-pilot find yourself in the shower way too early, only to laugh annoyingly at the fact that you have a day off but still got up for the Monday – Friday routine?
I want to tell you that ‘this’ isn’t it… There’s more out there for you, you can have and do whatever you want, but unless you scratch the miracle lotto ticket or a long lost relative leaves you a heap of cash, you’re going to have to make the changes yourself.
So what are you doing? Shuffling papers, working towards next Tuesday’s deadline, sucking up to your boss, hiding in your cubicle or trying to figure out which way you can sit at your desk and not get caught having a snooze? Just for a minute take some time to think about how your life would be if you were enjoying yourself all day, every day?
What do you do?
I want a world where you strike up a conversation with a stranger, when they ask you what it is that you do for a living, you don’t answer with what you get paid for, you answer what you love doing. Unfortunately we spend too much time of the week earning a crust that we adopt our mindless job as ‘what we do’. It’d be nice to meet someone and automatically answer with – I’m a; Photographer, Surfer, Musician… anything that YOU love doing. I want to know what YOU DO, not what you get paid for.
You’re saving your money, putting some aside for the glory years, maybe a holiday once every now and then and some investments here and there for retirement. If money buys you time (retirement), then when do you declare there’s enough money to spend it on time? Is a lengthy retirement really the goal? Why can’t you have your freedom now or a little bit here and there? If you do have a prosperous retirement then you’ve probably worked too hard to get there and won’t know what to do with yourself.
The Epiphany
My realisation came at work, having a conversation with an older co-worker, he was telling me how he’d recently sold a fishing trawler for well over a couple of million bucks cash, $2m cash! After I slapped him around and beat some sense into him* I clicked that for a lot of people, work isn’t the thing that people do for money, it’s just a thing they do, it’s the norm, it’s their life. Friends, the routine, the auto-pilot; something has gone terribly wrong here?
So What?
I want you to take some time out to REALLY think about what you’re doing at work and why you’re doing it. Can you remove the safety blanket of the weekly paycheck and take a chance on yourself?
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The Water Cycle – Automated Banking
You’ve either stumbled across this article from the archives or been directed from [Your Name Here] Inc. In this article we’re going to touch on budgeting and setting up an automated banking system. This is one of my less cynical rants and is more of a ‘helpful guide’, who would have thought?!
Ever since as early as late high school, you got a job and earned some money, passed your driving exam and finally had the freedom you’ve craved! Freedom enough to go out and try and get the newest hottest car you’d be allowed a personal loan for.
So there you have it, you were free from the time you passed your driving exam to the time you ‘bought’ your first car (with a hefty personal loan). If you didn’t follow the crowd, and bought rust buckets to drive around for your first couple of years of driving (or had a silver spoon from your parents) then you managed to avoid the trap.
What trap? You knew what you were getting yourself into. You learned when you were about 8 years old and your science teacher taught you about the water cycle; Evaporation, Condensation, Precipitation, Collection, repeat. A basic example of a repetitive cycle.
And so it begins…
What does any of this have to do with budgeting, money and getting caught in the rat race? I found that nearly everyone I knew had a hefty personal loan on a car, to drive themselves to work, to get their pay check to pay their loan on the car, which they needed to drive themselves to work, they needed to go to work to pay their loan, for the car, for work…. that was annoying. See what I’m getting at here? This mentality and way of thinking is why the world is screwed into obscene amounts of debt. It’s ok to NOT keep up with the Jones’s, your TV is fine as it is, and you don’t need a new flat screen. Imagine if everyone lived within their means, focused on what was really important and enjoyed the simpler things in life?
The Budget
Before you cringe at the term ‘budget’, it’s your money, no one is making you do this, but you’ll be surprised what you spend. Once you write down what you ‘think’ you spend your money on, you’ll wonder where the rest goes? Start by listing your expenses you’re aware of, such as;
- Mortgage Repayments
- Household Bills (Gas, electricity, water, Telephone, Council Rates etc.)
- Insurance (Car, Home, Boat, Life etc.)
- Grocery Bills
- Gas/Petrol Bills
- School Fees/Tuition
- Birthdays & Christmas Presents
As you can see from the above list, you can include whatever you like; you can go to the extremes of haircuts, toiletries, clothing etc. However much detail you include, it will give us a place to start.
In your weekly budget calculate all of your expenses in the same frequency as when you get paid.
Example: Car Insurance = $500 per year, if you get paid weekly, $500 / 52 weeks/year = $9.60
In the example above you have to reserve $9.60 per week for your car insurance. We’ll apply this theory to the entire budget.
In my personal weekly budget I have the following categories; Credits (Gross Income), Bills (Automated direct debits), Expenses (Fuel, transport, Food), Spends (My weekly income), Savings, Trust (I put aside a few dollar a week for my younger nieces).
Now the key to all of this to make it work is to align your banking system with your budget. This isn’t hard and anyone can do it, it will however cause some people a bit of temporary pain to have to actually visit their bank! (Check the place out, chat to the tellers and steal some pens; it’s what you pay fees for.)
The Joys of Automated Banking
All banks these days allow you to set up multiple ‘sub-accounts’ within your bank account. You can choose where your ‘gross income’ goes into, and you can set up sub-accounts for your bills, spending, expenses etc. Most banks will even let you rename your accounts, so instead of having account no. 228374 you’ll be able to have your ‘bills’ account. Below is an example of how I have my accounts structured;
Automated Banking Structure
My gross income goes into my ‘credits’ account on a Wednesday afternoon from my employer (hopefully not for much longer!), on a Thursday morning I get to witness the glory of automation, and the money is distributed (you can set up automatic transfers) to my sub-accounts, giving me my weekly pocket money to spend, knowing that I’ve already put all my money aside for bills, expenses and savings. Going even further, to complete the ‘system’, a debit card is linked to the ‘spends account’ so your ATM card is linked to your pocket money account. You know that you have $150 (you define the amount) to spend for that week and once you’ve spent it, you’re done. If you ‘borrow’ from your savings account or bills accounts, you’re going to come up short at some point. This system is 100% better than seeing your ‘gross income’ in your account, going out with your mates on a Friday night, getting drunk and withdrawing $1000 to put on a bar tab and go to the casino!
Once you have your automated system up and running, after a while you’ll see your savings balance swell, be able to pay your bills comfortably and enjoy yourself spending your weekly pocket money. But hopefully at some point you’ll think to yourself, is this it? You’re saving $100 per week, that’s $5,000 per year, which if you work for the next 40 years is $200,000. Congratulations! That’s no mean feat, not many people would have the discipline. But surely this will make you realise that after 40 years you’ll only have saved enough money to by a modest home in the suburbs?
Is working hard and saving your pennies the answer?
