Category Archives for Make Money
The Ticket to Career Advancement: Work on Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Kevin Mercadante, who is professional personal finance blogger, and the owner of his own personal finance blog, OutOfYourRut.com. He has backgrounds in both accounting and the mortgage industry.
Do you want to make more money? Work on your strengths!
That’s often the exact opposite of what most of us do. We instead try to improve on our weaknesses, hoping to find career salvation in that. That’s also a natural response – the fewer flaws we have, the more approval we get from others. In truth, it’s unlikely that an absence of weaknesses will move you forward in your career, if it’s even possible to achieve that goal.
Every one of us has a certain market value in our careers. That market value is mostly defined by our strengths, and not by an absence of weaknesses. Our strengths represent what it is were good at – what others are most likely to see in evaluating us. If you’re not moving as quickly as you hope in your career, it may be the you’re spending too much time working on your weaknesses rather than on your strengths.
Step One: identify your strengths
Usually, we’re our own worst critics. We can become so focused on our weaknesses that we’re hardly aware that we have any strengths. It’s easy to see how this comes about. While we don’t always get credit for what we do well, were often quickly criticized for what we do wrong. That tends to raise the importance of our weaknesses in our minds.
A critical step is identifying your strengths, and we all have them. Think about what it is that you do well – what it is that you’re primarily responsible to do in your job – and you’ll find one or more strengths. Get input from others, from your superiors, from your coworkers, and even for people outside of work. Other people will be able to quickly identify what your strengths are, because it is what they have come to rely on you for.
Once you identify those strengths, make a commitment to improve them and to do so constantly. If your strength is sales, work on increasing your production. If your strength is management, concentrate on being a better manager and improving department performance. By improving on your strengths, you’re making them more visible, and that will help you stand out in a crowd.
Think about it – if you needed to hire a master carpenter or a top salesman, how concerned would you be if you found out that they were weak in organizational skills? Probably not much. You’d be hiring them because of their primary strength.
“Do what you do best and let others do the rest”
A good friend of mine – a successful salesman who later opened his own business – always said, “Do what you do best, and let others do the rest.” He was really good at sales, but pretty weak in a lot of other areas. He chose to concentrate his efforts on improving his sales, then relegating other tasks to the support staff.
The people who worked with him were not always happy about his weak administrative skills, but it was his sales ability that not only determined his income, but also kept a few of his coworkers in a job. Whatever other weaknesses he had, management was willing to overlook. He was there to sell, not to fill out forms or make phone calls. He delegated that work to others.
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I think most people today do the opposite. We’re so concerned with multitasking, with getting all the work within 50 feet of our desks done, that we rarely work in the functions we are primarily hired to handle. Eventually, we wonder why we aren’t making more money or being promoted.
Determine what it is you’re best at, then do your best to delegate the areas where you are weak to others. My sales friend’s weaknesses may have displeased some of his coworkers, but at the same time none of them would (or could) take on his sales work either. He was doing what he was strong at, and relying on them to do what they were best at.
Concede on your weaknesses – nobody’s perfect
None of us are – or ever will be – perfect. Accept it and move on. You can waste a lot of time and effort trying to be perfect, and despite your best efforts, you won’t achieve it. It will be better to work on improving what it is you are good at, since that is usually where your greatest income earning capabilities are.
Unfortunately, it will not be easy to ignore your weaknesses. It often seems as if businesses these days insist that we’re nothing less than perfect. That can be tough to stand against. But stand you must, because your career and your future rely on what it is you are good at.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore your weaknesses completely, but rather that you must concentrate most of your improvement efforts on your strengths instead.
Playing your own game
In order to be good at anything, you have to have high levels of comfort and confidence in what you are doing. That often flows naturally where your strengths are concerned. Your weak spots, however, can cause conflict and take you off your game.
If you look at anyone who is good at anything, they have the uncanny ability to focus on what is most important and to block out everything else. If you spend too much time trying to improve on your weaknesses, you’ll be giving in to distractions that will keep you from doing what is you do best. It’s also likely that you’ll never become particularly good in your areas of weakness. And, your best efforts will probably not improve either your performance or your income. Only becoming better at your strengths can do that.
Admittedly, this is going to be difficult to do in today’s job market. Nearly everything seems to be pointing in the opposite direction, that we need to be generalists or at least competent in everything. It’s a trend we have to resist. Being a generalist makes you just like everyone else. But by being a specialist in something you’re good at is where you stand out from the crowd.
That’s where money and promotions come from.
How about you all? Have you identified your strengths and do you work to improve them? Do you get resistance to that effort on the job?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/5268559005/sizes/n/in/photostream/
Balancing Your Work With Your Life
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Greg Johnson. Greg is a proud husband, father, and debt crusader who is in the process of becoming debt free. Along with his wife, Greg co-founded the personal finance blog, Club Thrifty, where they encourage readers to “Stop Spending. Start Living.”
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the delicate balancing act that goes on between the demands of one’s work schedule and his life.
I suppose my thoughts originated in part because I’ve recently been pulling a lot of “all-nighters” recently. I’ve been questioning my own work schedule, wondering how I can find the optimum balance in my life. Where does the pursuit of money infringe on the pursuit of happiness, and vice versa?
Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in a world in which we need money to live. We need money to meet our needs for shelter and food. We need it for our comfort. We even need it for many of the things we find entertaining – like travel or sports. We need money…and we need to work – in some form or another – in order to get it. Whether or not one believes in the consumer driven system that our labor sustains is moot. The fact is that we live in this system, and we have no way around it.
So, what is the right balance? Obviously, we need to have a high enough income to take care of our needs first. Furthermore, many of us want to save for the future so that we are not stuck working 8-hour days in our older age. Still, many people trade working 60-80 hours a week today so that they don’t have to work as hard later. They forget to live their life now while they toil and dream of a life that may never come later. Unfortunately, many people become too old or sick by the time that they get there. That time that they spent working is time that they will never get back.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with planning ahead. In fact, I encourage it. Yet, often times, I feel that we trade so much of our time away to in order make money – gambling that we will have time to spend it in the future. We forget that the only certainty that we have is now. We forget the reasons that we want to make money in the first place. What is really worth more to us? Is it the time or the money?
In my own life, I am struggling with the balance between my work and my life. My day job is very demanding, and I’m not sure how much longer it is going to be worth it. I make a good amount of money, but is the trade-off worth it? Is being on-call worth and working straight through the night worth it? Am I making enough to justify working weekends and holidays, especially since I don’t control my own salary? I’m not sure. I’m beginning to get the sense that my work/life balance is out of whack.
I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to spend more time with my children and my wife. I don’t want to be in the middle of dinner, only to be interrupted by my work – causing me to be an absent father and husband for the rest of the night. I still enjoy the financial benefits that the job provides, but I’m questioning whether I’ve reached the point where the financial benefits are outweighed by the sacrifices that our family has to make in order to achieve them.
A friend and fellow blogger of mine shared a quote in the comments of one of my articles a few weeks ago. He said, “When given a choice between time and money, always choose time.” Why, you ask? “You can use your time to make more money, but you can’t use money to make more time.” How true that is.
One way to use your time to earn more money is by pursuing a new degree to further your career. A Graduate Tax degree, for example, puts you in a great situation moving forward because you can work in a variety of different industries as a tax professional. This degree, which you can earn online while continuing to work at your current job, allows you to take positions as a tax associate, financial analyst, staff attorney, or international tax manager, which opens up your earning potential to an entirely new set of possibilities.
I have yet to find a distinct rule on what somebody’s work/life balance should be. It varies depending on each individual and their own goals. I have found it is best to try to remember to put money in its proper perspective. For me, earning money alone can not be the primary goal. It is only a tool to help me achieve the things that I really want out of life. Once I decide that the pursuit of money is conflicting too much with my life goals, it will probably be time for a change.
So, what are your thoughts? How do you know when to draw the line between working hard and over-working?
Have you ever struggled with balancing the demands of your work with your life? How did you come to make your decision?
Please share your stories in the comments below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/kansasphoto/5302790893/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Is Mystery Shopping Right For You? – Lessons From Personal Experience
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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If you’re like me, you probably have heard the term, “mystery shopping,” for quite some time. You probably were also pretty skeptical about what exactly it entailed and if it was a scam or not. At least, those are the assumptions I was operating off of.
However, I am here to tell you that mystery shopping is in fact a legitimate thing, as I have recently partaken in a mystery shop and successfully received payment for it. But, by the same token, I am also here to tell you that it is NOT “easy-money,” as from what I’ve experienced so far, the Dollar/hour payout is quite low given the time it takes to complete a mystery shop. More detail on this later in the post.
What is Mystery Shopping & How I Got My Renewed Interested in It
My renewed interest in mystery shopping was sparked after reading a very interesting article over at ThePennyHoarder.com about how Kyle (site owner) makes $500 per month conducting liquor audit mystery shops.
Essentially, what happens is that companies hire him through the mystery shopping intermediaries to purchase alcohol at local stores and then report back on whether or not he was asked for age verification/ID. In a nutshell, this is what mystery shopping entails. Big companies need to collect non-biased customer viewpoint data on their local stores so they can make tactical decisions on their business. So, they contract the mystery shopping companies as the middle men to find the independent auditors (shoppers), collect the data, and issue payment to the individuals.
Regarding Kyle’s specific article about liquor audits, he states that he gets paid around $18 per alcohol purchase (in addition to getting reimbursed for buying beer), that the shops only take 5 minutes to do, and that he can string together 10 of them in one trip around town to make a nice chunk of change.
After reading this post, I said, “That sounds awesome! I’d like to get a piece of that action!” And, knowing the good reputation of the site owner, I figured that it was likely a very legitimate opportunity/thing. So, I proceeded to look in to it.
Finding and Signing Up as a Mystery Shopper with Legitimate Mystery Shopping Companies
As I found out in my research on mystery shopping, a golden rule to remember is that NO LEGITIMATE MYSTERY SHOPPING COMPANY will require you to pay money upfront for any reason. Those that ask for money up front are a scam – simple as that.
Luckily, in my case, in his post mentioned above, Kyle recommended the names of 3 mystery shopping companies he uses, so I proceeded to sign up for those. I figured that I would sign up in the systems of 3-4 mystery shopping companies to start with and see if I enjoyed the experience and it was indeed worthwhile.
Listed below are the mystery shopping companies I have signed up for:
- Corporate Research
- TrendSource
- Sinclair Customer Metrics
And, listed below are several additional legitimate mystery shopping companies that I figured I would enroll with if I found the whole process worthwhile with the first 3 I tried:
- Second to None
- Best Mark
- Hauser Track
- Sassie Shop
- Intelli-Shop
- Cirrus Marketing
- Ritter Associates
- ICCDS
- Confero
- Insular Research
- In Touch Shoppers
Upon signing up to these programs, some of them require you to take a short quiz. However, it is really not that hard nor time consuming, and likely is just designed to test your procedural reading skills.
What Type of Opportunities Do These Mystery Shopping Companies Offer?
- Sinclair Customer Metrics –
- For the 1 month period I have been enrolled in Sinclair’s system, I think I have only seen one mystery shopping opportunity listed. It was a purchase at a local shop at the mall.
- It sounded like a pretty good opportunity, but the payout was only about $4-5, so I really wasn’t that interested because I wasn’t planning to go to the mall anytime soon.
- Corporate Research –
- There is a pretty consistent stream of mystery shopping opportunities through this outfit in my area, mainly for a local sit-down pizza restaurant and gas stations.
- The commissions for these opportunities are quite low, ranging from $4 to $10 maximum.
- In order to even view what is required for the gas station inspections/shops, you have to take a HIGHLY detailed test. I would rate this test as very hard and extremely specific/annoying. Essentially, you have to remember every little detail about the specific areas of a gas station.
- Moreover, from these qualification tests, I discovered that the gas station inspection that allows you to get the $10 payout is so detailed that it would likely take me an hour to do, and it also involves talking to the station manager after identifying yourself as an inspector. This sounds too much like real work to me. No thanks!
- TrendSource –
- TrendSource also has a nice, steady stream of mystery shopping opportunities in my area, mostly involving the evaluation of a local pizza take-out / delivery joint ($5 payout plus reimbursement for the pizza) or talking at length with employees at a local national chain technology store about products ($10 payout).
- Since the tech store gig sounded like it would also be a little more involved than I would be looking for in a little fun side project like mystery shopping, I decided to give the pizza delivery mystery shop a try first.
- After taking the 20 minute qualification test, I signed up for a pizza delivery shop with high hopes. I figured, hey, they bring the pizza right to my house, I get paid $5, they pay for the pizza, sounds easy-breezy, right?
- Well, I soon found out that you pay a price, especially the first time that you do one of these pizza mystery shops.
- First, they give you a 3 page set of instructions on EXACTLY how they want 3 pictures to be taken of the pizza. Truth be told, there are so many little minute details that it felt more like a job than some fun side project.
- Second, they give you a 6-ish page set of instructions for other details they want to collect about the mystery shop, such as evaluating whether or not the delivery person smiles, reads back your total, or that the person on the phone that takes your order tries to up-sell you. Again, this sort of took the fun out of the pizza.
- Third, once the pizza arrived, I kept making small mistakes in the pictures (such as taking the top shot at an 85 degree angle instead of a 90 degree angle, which they called me out on..ridiculous). Because of the mistakes and retakes, the pizza was cold when we actually started to eat it. Sigh…haha
- Granted, if I were to do another pizza delivery mystery shop with this same company, I could probably take these pictures in 1/3 the original time because of the learning curve.
Uploading the Receipts/Reports and Getting Paid
Conclusions – Is Mystery Shopping Right For You?
So, having gone through all of this, it brings us back to the question we started with in the post title – is mystery shopping something that would be a good fit for you?
Assuming that everyone reading this has sufficient mental capacity to handle the requirements for mystery shopping, I would say that it basically comes down to having/wanting to commit a good chunk of time to trying to make some extra money. In addition, you have to be willing to commit the time to do mystery shops repeatedly in order to take advantage of the initial learning curve involved with executing them.
As I described above, even though mystery shopping is quite legitimate, I was very surprised at the level of detail and time required to complete these mystery shops. It is not “easy money” as some advertisements would suggest. Quite the contrary, I would say mystery shopping is actually a hard way to earn your money (perhaps I just live in the wrong area and don’t have the right types of mystery shops).
So, to conclude, I would say that mystery shopping is a good thing for people that have a good bit of time on their hands (maybe retirees), but not for people that work a full time day job and already have a side business to keep them busy.
Personally, I haven’t seen any mystery shops that would be worth doing again, so I’m going to hold off for now. But, I will keep looking through the systems from time to time to see if some good deals pop up in the future.
How about you all? Have you ever tried mystery shopping? If so, what type of job did you do and what was the payout like?
Do you think that overall, the pay was worth the time/effort required?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
Should You Should Ditch Your Job to Become an Entrepreneur?
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Business versus Job
The Trouble Faced
Starting it Up
Now is the Right Time
How about you all? At what point in the growth of a side business do you think it is safe and/or appropriate to quit your “day job?”
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1086/4610892276_47739ca349_z.jpg
Making a Career Change…Gracefully
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $51.95 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2013.
The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Kevin Mercadante, who is professional personal finance blogger, and the owner of his own personal finance blog, OutOfYourRut.com. He has backgrounds in both accounting and the mortgage industry.
Many people would like nothing better than to quit their current job – and leave their career entirely – in favor of one that they’re sure they would like better. If you are unemployed, or certain that you will be in the coming weeks, that might be a winning strategy. But if you’re career is fairly stable, and your main reason for wanting to go into a new one is because you are not happy doing what you’re doing, then your best bet is to make the change gradually and gracefully.
Taking a career plunge comes with enormous risks, especially if you have a family to support. By making the move gradually, you can reduce or even remove those risks entirely. It will take some patience, but will be worth the effort.
If you want to make a career change with less risk, try some of the following…
Taking full advantage of your “highest and best use”
This is actually a term used in real estate appraising. An appraiser is assigned the task of providing a value for a property based on its “highest and best use”. People are just like property – we have multiple abilities, or “uses” – but there is usually one that represents our highest and best. That is the career in which you have the highest earning capability.
Chances are, your highest and best use as a career is the one you have right now. This is because your current career is almost certainly where you have the greatest earning potential. That’s why you’re still in that field. But rather than run away from this, you should plan to use it to your advantage.
If you’re earning a comfortable income, you can use that to bridge your self into the new career, and there several ways that you can and should do this.
Get your finances ready
We don’t often think about personal finances in connection with a career change, but it’s actually more important than it seems at first glance. More often than not, a career change involves a reduction in income. You’ll need to be prepared for this every bit as much as you will need to master the skills of your new career.
Making your career change gracefully will give you a huge advantage here. It will give you the time that you need to payoff any lingering debts, and to build up your savings. The elimination of debts will enable you to live on less money, while additional savings will provide a cushion that will help you to survive on the new, lower income.
If you decide to make a career change, one of your first steps should be moving as much money as you can into both debt reduction and savings. Success on both fronts will not only make the financial transition easier, but it will also give you confidence that your finances can withstand the move.
Make constructive use of your spare time
The best way to make a career change is to start right from where you’re at right now. That will mean making constructive use of your spare time.
It’s not uncommon to sense being out of control when it comes to time, and this is particularly true if you have a fairly demanding career. But, perhaps the first step toward making a career change will be precisely to get control of your time.
There are certain steps you will have to take in order to make a career change, and you will have to make sure that you have the time to take those steps. Take a close look at your schedule and see where you can free up as much time as possible to do what you need to do to make a career change. You’ll be surprised what you can accomplish in just two or three hours a day, or just 10 to 15 hours per week.
What do you need to spare time for?
Get any training you can before making the jump
If you are changing careers, you’ll probably need to get additional training that will at least get you up to the minimum qualifications required for the field. Use your spare time – while you’re still in your current career – to both investigate and to pursue any training and/or qualification requirements that you will need for the new field.
This may mean taking courses, doing home study, or even working out some sort of apprenticeship. Whatever it is that you will need, take advantage of the time you have now – as well as your current employer’s paycheck – to acquire it. As a rule, it will be easier and less expensive to obtain training and qualifications before entering the new field than it will be once you’re in.
Online courses are a great way to achieve this additional training because they allow you to complete a university degree in your spare time. For example, if you feel trapped within your current career and want to begin applying for management positions, an advanced degree like the Master of Public Administration and Policy, might be a great option. This particular degree provides you with skills in administration, economics, budgeting, organizational analysis, managing assets, project management, and leadership. If you are looking to break into management, a program like this might be the best way to go.
Take advantage of the time that you have right now.
Get to know people in your new career ahead of time
In order to enter any new career field it will be essential that you have viable contacts within the new field. That’s another task that you can accomplish before leaving your current job.
The Internet makes that easier than ever. Surf the web and look for networks centered around the new career field. Get to know as many people as you can, as they can not only be potential leads for jobs, but they might also point you in the right direction as far as your career development is concerned. The more people you know in the field you’re going into the easier the transition will be.
There is one caveat here however. You have to find a way to network outside your career field without making it obvious to your current employer. Any indication that you may be looking to jump ship could cause you lose your job ahead of schedule. For this reason, you may want to start the networking venture until you are closer to the time you actually want to make the change.
Start with a part-time arrangement
Still another potential spare time application will be getting into a part-time arrangement in the new career field. This is not possible in all jobs, or in all career fields, but where it is possible to arrange, it will prove the be a huge advantage.
In many career fields, having at least some experience will open doors that will otherwise be closed. A part-time arrangement will not only give you hands-on experience, but it will also teach you the “language” of the new field (every field has one), as well as giving you some valuable contacts within the industry. If a part-time option is open take full advantage of it.
Making the leap of faith
If you’ve done at least most of the steps above, when the time comes to make a break from your current career, you should be able do so with a lot more confidence. You’ll have the training and qualifications that you need, your finances will be prepared, you’ll have networking contacts and hopefully, at least some light experience.
All of that will come about because you will have taken advantage of the time while you’re still in your current career. Does that sound like a plan?
How about you all? Have you had to make a career change in the past? If so, how did you make the transition so that you didn’t upset anyone?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/usfsregion5/5931918596/
The Importance of Marketing a New Business
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
Know Your Target Market
Identify What Type of Marketing Works Best for You
Once you have decided on your budget, you need to decide the forms of marketing you are going to spend it on and start to gauge how effective it is. Websites offer a great range of print solutions for your marketing needs at competitive rates. Posters, flyers, and business cards can all be a great asset to your business. They serve well to keep your brand in people’s minds.
How about you all? If you have your own business, how much do you spend on marketing? Do you feel it is a sufficient amount, or should you be spending more or less?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3241/3021283568_fae10cc8de_z.jpg?zz=1
Are $300,000 Worth Of Medical School Student Loans Worth It?
The following is a guest post by fellow personal finance blogger, Catherine Alford, of Budget Blonde. You can also follow her on twitter @BudgetBlonde. Enjoy!
Many of you might read that title, and think, “Absolutely not! That’s what’s wrong with our country!” And, you would be right. The student loan debt in our country is a massive problem, one that’s surpassed a trillion dollars in recent years.
Why didn’t we just pick a public medical school? Wouldn’t it be cheaper?
Won’t it be easy to pay it back once he starts working as a physician?
How are you going to do that?
There are many different programs that physicians can take part in to have their loan amounts lowered. Listed below are some of these options:
- They can work in a rural area for a specified amount of time.
- They can become officers in the military.
- They can do what’s called a Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and work for 10 years in a public service position.
We’re not exactly sure how we personally are going to tackle this, but as of right now, we’re going to enroll in income-based repayment during residency. Essentially, when my husband graduates from medical school in 3 years, his loans will start being due 6 months from that. The problem is that he’s not done with his education yet, and will be in residency for another 3-7 years depending on the program. Residency is not considered being “in school” because you get a salary, so the loans are not deferred. However, the salary of a resident on average is $50,000, and if you do the math, it’s hard to pay back $300,000 when you only make $50,000. So, we’re going to enroll in income-based repayment to start paying it off slowly while he’s in residency. We’re choosing that over hardships or forbearance, because I know that just paying it a little over time will help us in the end.
How about you all? What techniques have you used in the past to pay off your student loans? Did you take advantage of any loan forgiveness or relief/deferral programs?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/edenpictures/4133664894/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Is Self-Employment More Secure than a Job?
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $51.95 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2013.
The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Kevin Mercadante, who is professional personal finance blogger, and the owner of his own personal finance blog, OutOfYourRut.com. He has backgrounds in both accounting and the mortgage industry.
It may seem counter intuitive that self-employment is more secure than a job, but with the deterioration in the job market in recent years, that may in fact be the case. It’s not so much that self-employment has become more secure, but rather that traditional jobs have become less so.
Why jobs are less secure than they used to be
As the economy has slowly climbed out of the recession, employment has been lagging. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the loss of jobs during the recession had at least as much to do with structural changes in employment as it did with the bad economy.
Technology is one factor. Computers are increasingly eliminating jobs. Cheap overseas labor is another drag. Employers are learning that it’s less expensive to hire foreign-based workers at $5 an hour than to pay a domestic employee $25.
In addition, employers are increasingly making use of contract, part-time and virtual workers during heavy work cycles. As a result, many employers are maintaining minimal permanent staff and relying on a flexible workforce to make up the difference.
All of these changes make traditional jobs far less secure than they were just a few years ago.
Holding a job can cost money
In addition to the lack of job security, jobs are becoming steadily more expensive to maintain. Consider the following:
- Commuting. Now that gasoline is close to $4 a gallon, commuting is much more expensive than it was when the price was hovering around $1 dollar a gallon. And if you live in an area with tolls, they’ve gone way up too.
- Relocation. Companies still hire people for out of town assignments, but they’re becoming much more reluctant to foot the bill. If you relocate, there’s a greater chance you’ll do so out of your own pocket.
- Employee benefit contributions. Many employers have been cutting back on the company contribution for the cost of benefits. This is especially true with health insurance. A few years ago employers routinely covered 80% of the cost, but many are now paying 50% or less. The employee contribution is growing larger.
- Extended working hours. Some employers expect their workers put in extra hours without additional compensation. This has always been true at the management level, but it’s now increasingly common among the rank-and-file.
It could be said that employees today are bearing expenses that are not at all unlike those of the self-employed.
Self-employment can give you more control over your occupation
When you work for someone else, you’re typically hired to do a specific job. If that job is suddenly subject to elimination, you lose your job unless you can relocate to another job somewhere within the company. When you’re self-employed, you’re largely free to gravitate toward successful income sources. If one source is beginning to decline, you can begin shifting to another. In addition, as a self-employed person you can generally adjust to change much more quickly than an entire organization. That means you have more control over your occupation.
If you’re self-employed you can take on additional income earning ventures
Even if you’re self-employed, you will have certain commitments of time and effort that you’ll have to honor. However, you will also have a great amount of control as to when those tasks need to be completed; That means you have the kind of time flexibility that can allow you to take on additional income sources. This can be an additional revenue stream within the same business, or a venture – such as a part-time job – that is completely unrelated. When you hold a full-time job your time is much more limited, and so are your additional income earning options. Most jobs today have shifted away from “9 – 5” to something more like a nine hour workday. It could be 8 – 5, or 9 – 6, as employers are now insisting on a full eight hour workday plus an hour for lunch. If you add commuting time, 8 – 5 can easily turn into 7 – 6. That’s 11 hours a day! That doesn’t leave much room for much else, and will be even more complicated if your employer requires additional hours.
For people over 50, self-employment can be the only option
If you’re over 50, replacing a lost job is more difficult than ever. Middle-age workers face all of the obstacles that every other worker faces, but adds age to the mix. For many middle-age workers, self-employment will be the only option the event of a job loss.
Self-employment can flow more neatly into retirement
Millions of people are not adequately prepared to retire by age 65. For most of them, they’ll have to continue working into the traditional retirement years. As jobs become even more difficult to find as you get older, self-employment can be the safest bet for a continuing income. If you hold a job up until retirement, there’s a better-than-even chance that you will lose your job as a result of some sort of mandatory retirement provision.
But, if you are self-employed, you can continue working for as long as you like. In addition, if you’re self-employed, you’ll have a better chance of earning a living wage. Many of the jobs open to people in their 60s and 70s are low-wage positions that often require standing for long periods of time or performing functions that can be physically challenging to an older person. Self-employment can also provide greater control over your work schedule than a job will allow. This can be very important to person in the traditional retirement years. If you’re worried about the security of your job, you may want to take a long, hard look at self-employment options.
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/86530412@N02/8224527333/sizes/l/in/photostream/
How to Get a Grip on Your Gambling
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The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
While gambling is seen by many as a bit of fun or a way to spice up the dullest of sporting affairs, it can (if abused) also be a quick route to bankruptcy. As such, people need to be aware of its dangers.
Done well and with a good deal of prior knowledge, betting can be a potential way to get a few extra Dollars/quid in your back pocket. But if it is done badly (which is often what happens), or simply for the sake of it, then it can be a real drain on finances.
There are many different sorts of betting and now, in the modern age of apps, smart phones and in-play gambling, you can do so pretty much anywhere. While this may be a victory for convenience, it also has the effect of making a bet just a few clicks away and this, in turn, can lead to addiction and major financial problems further down the line. What’s more, the problem for many people seems to get worse when big sporting events are on the horizon, and there are definitely a fair few of them coming up in the next months.
Big events
The Super Bowl play-offs are due to take place at Wembley, which will have many people hurriedly laying down their hard-earned cash, while in football, many of the domestic European leagues are coming to a conclusion, and the Champions League will also approach its end.
It all adds up to a feast of sport, but it’s important to keep calm when betting and not get carried away.
Part of the reason that gambling is so dangerous is that remains addictive whether you are winning or losing. If you’ve just lost a hat-ful of cash, then you want to win that back, while if you are on a ‘lucky streak,’ then you want to keep that going. This adds up to a constant desire for gambling, and it’s something that should be kept well under control.
Simply enjoy sport for what it is and, while it’s OK to have the odd flutter, if you find yourself gambling on every single game or several markets within a game, then it may be time to move away from the in-play app.
Betting shrewdly
Of course, responsible betting is fine, and it shouldn’t necessarily be looked upon as a bad thing. If you do choose to put a small amount of money (which you can afford to lose, assuming the worst case scenario) on a game of football, then it’s wise to be clever about it. Ensure you look into the stats and figures before placing your stake and don’t feel as though you need to bet in any way.
If you feel a compulsion to put money on something when, in actual fact, you’re not too sure, then you could be suffering from addiction. If this is the case, then it’s wise to seek professional advice.
Know when you have a problem
This is one of the tell-tale signs of gambling addiction, and the important thing to remember is that burying your head in the sand won’t achieve anything. In fact, it will simply see you plunge into further debt, risking your financial security in the process. And, services such as Gamblers Anonymous are on hand to offer assistance and advice against using gambling as a debt solution.
Indeed, the issue of gambling is a hot topic at the present, with recent Guardian analysis finding the extent to which it is sucking money out of the UK’s poorest communities. The newspaper found that a total of £5 billion was gambled on high-speed, high-stakes gambling machines in cities across the north of England and London boroughs with high unemployment last year.
Around £90 million of this was gambled in the constituency of Lucy Powell, Labour MP for Manchester Central, and she said it came down to a question of morals. “There are mind-numbing numbers of betting shops in places like Moston in my constituency. I think it is a moral question to ask whether it is a good thing that betting companies are targeting the poor and whether government lets them,” she told the newspaper. “According to these figures, there’s more being spent on gambling than by the council in my constituency on services.”
Figures such as these showcase just how big a market the gambling sector is and demonstrates how important it is that people get a grip on their betting habits.
How about you all? Have you ever participated in any gambling? If so, did you lose or win money? Have you or anyone you know ever suffered from a gambling addiction?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/whappen/3159335780/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Don’t Stop Believin’ When You’re Bored: The World Is Full of New Ideas
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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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2012 was an amazing year for me in terms of getting things done. I started a new job, moved to a new place to save money, and put in place plans to begin some consulting in the new year that could eventually exceed my salary in my day job. I finally pre-qualified for a mortgage, and I have started looking at properties with the possibility to make a real offer, and real estate ownership is one of my biggest financial goals. So, what happens now? As soon as it feels like everything is on track, I find myself completely bored.