Let's Talk About Money #2

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Never, ever, EVER rely on simply a paycheck to pay your way through life. If you do this, you will surely wind up at the end of the road broke. It's not a matter of IF. It is a matter of when. The problem is that most people do not realize that while most of the time you can always get another job, there may come a time in life when you cannot work. Be it health issues, age, or some other reason, you simply may not have the option to have a job at all. And without a job there is of course no paycheck, assistance has limitations and so does social security and disability... So you HAVE to live your working life as though there will never be a job ever available again. That is, you must live frugally, you must save your money, and more importantly—instead of spending loads of time trying to figure out how to break the next level on the latest video game, how to find that one next piece for that puzzle you are working on, or trying to keep up with the Jones', you should be spending your time trying to figure out how to create money and create wealth from things OTHER than your paycheck. Such as learning the art of investing and earning dividends, selling cash secured puts and covered calls in the stock market and collecting premiums. Even doing things like MyLot can be helpful and important additional income streams that can pay off for years to come if you spend your earnings on things that grow instead of things that do not. If you can accumulate money not only will the present be better, paying less for interest on larger purchases or being able to take more frequent vacations without having to resort to credit cards or loans, but the future will be better too. At a minimum you should have an emergency fund set aside that can cover any unexpected major expense like a car repair or a furnace going out. Then you should have at minimum about six months worth of equivalent salary in a savings account so you can weather a sudden job loss and have time to either find a new one, or figure out how you deal with whatever your current situation is that has affected your work life. Then you should have the rest of the money at the very least tucked away in strong companies that pay dividends in the stock market. If you do these things it will not guarantee you will never be broke. Major catastrophes can still happen, like getting cancer or something like that which can be financially devastating. But you will have much more a fighting chance if at the end of the work road you have worked as hard on your finances as you did on the job, protecting yourself, buying some time, and making your life much more financially manageable in the end. Money is not everything. But story after story has been told of those who did nothing to keep their financial ship afloat, who struggled to either tread water without the boat, or had to spend untold amounts of time simply plugging holes in what boat they had left that there was no time to actually FIX the boat right, or get a better boat.