[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Hi Dweezil,
Budgeting is definitely crucial, and although I think it may seem self-explanatory, it still needs to be mentioned. If you don’t allocate every cent of the money that you earn, then it will be very difficult to ever really get control of your money, which is definitely something that you want to learn to do.[/quote]
Budgeting is also a long topic which I didn’t really want to put into my already long post. Allocation of income is dependent on each person, and much like my talk about an employer sponsored retirement plan, has too many variables to mention without dragging things on forever.
[quote]As far as credit cards go, yeah, if you were super diligent and really knew what you were doing, maybe you might be able to get away with a method of continually transferring your credit card balances to other cards with 0% APR. But, you are really playing with fire by doing so. The credit card companies are multi billion dollar industries that spend billions of dollars every year trying to figure out how you can make them money. So, most likely you are just going to end up getting yourself in trouble by trying to outsmart the credit card companies. Instead, I think it’s better to just not play their game.
That is one reason why I really don’t advocate credit cards. Another is because if you don’t have the actual cash to buy something, then quite frankly you probably shouldn’t be buying it (with the exception of a house/condo). Just save up the money for it and pay cash for it.[/quote]
Yes, you do have to know what you’re doing, and diligence is important. I considered doing it when I was first starting to build my credit, but I was living with my mother and I knew she’d have a heart attack if I told her I was purposely putting myself in debt. Now I’m almost at the million dollar mark as far as debt goes, but because it’s real estate she has no problem with it.
[quote]Also, cash will allow you to bargain much more effectively than a credit card will. Cash has an emotional component that credit cards don’t. Why do you think they have you use poker chips in casinos? Because even though those chips represent certain amounts of cash, they don’t have the same emotional connection that cash does. So, people can bet them without feeling the same emotional attachment to them like they would feel if they were gambling with actual cash.
Show someone a handful (or better yet briefcase full) of hundred dollar bills, and it’s going to be much more difficult for them to turn down your offer than if you just showed them a Visa card, even though the visa card might actually represent a larger sum of money.[/quote]
Cash will allow you to bargain more effectively, but there really aren’t as many places as people think to bargain anymore. You can’t really bargain online, unless it’s a small company and you’re buying something expensive. You can generally bargain in large electronic stores, but not nearly as effectively as certain television financial advisors would have you believe. Bargaining, unfortunately, is a mostly dead method of procuring and selling goods.
[quote]In regards to your comments about careers. I understand where you are coming from and I agree that you must earn enough money to support yourself and your family (if applicable).
However, I’d have to disagree with you that doing what you enjoy and doing something that makes you money are exclusive. Nor do I agree that the more you do something you enjoy the less you will enjoy doing it. If that’s the case then you might not have enjoyed doing it that much in the first place. And of course, I also realize that there is such a thing as doing anything too much, but that is a different discussion.
I think that if you asked professional athletes if playing the game they loved has made them grow to dislike it, they’d look at you as if you were crazy. The same goes of musicians, artists, and basically any other group of people who get paid to do what they love to do. These people get paid (albeit some more than others) to do what they love to do.
Personally, the more I do what I enjoy doing, the more I enjoy doing it because I get better and better at it, which makes it more and more enjoyable. So, if I can do something that I love and continually grow to love, and get paid for it, then I’d say that is a pretty sweet deal. And from what little experience I have had so far with getting paid for my vocation, it certainly hasn’t gotten any less enjoyable or satisfying as time has gone by.
Good training,
Sentoguy[/quote]
There is truth to this, but there are also things you’re missing.
Let’s say you’re a woodworker. You like working with your hands, your father taught you how to build basic stuff when you were a kid. A couple of years ago you spend ages building an awesome deck with stylized awnings and you even created the furniture by hand. People keep telling you you should do it professionally.
You start doing it professionally, and you take a few orders. People generally want the same things. A desk, a table. Maybe you’ll start getting into bigger projects if you do it full time. What happens when you get backed up, and you have to make 5 tables that are exactly alike? Are you going to love it then?
There is no better way to start loathing something than to have to do it when you don’t want to.
I think if you asked most professional athletes or large musical acts how they feel about their industry, they’d respond with an atypical response about loving the game and still being a fan, but you’d see in their eyes that they’ve started to see it as a business. The baseball player who signs autographs all year long to keep a steady income. The basketball player who was pushed from childhood to practice, practice, practice, to play in AAU leagues and to do whatever it took to get noticed by scouts. The band pushing out another album that’s over produced and sounds exactly the same as all their other music.
Martial arts may be great to teach, but if you’re in over your head on a lease and you’re not teaching what people want to learn it’s going to become very stressful for you. Stress + Something you enjoy = disaster. The belief that you can always do something you enjoy and make money off of it is inherently flawed, in my humble opinion. The second stress and demands play a role in something you used to do for the sake of leisure, it changes. It might be subtle at first, but it’ll build, and it stops being something you only enjoy and starts being another job that you happen to like some aspects of.