Some are funnier than others, but here are a few photos that my sister-in-law sent me in an e-mail. Enjoy!
|
||||||
|
What’s the best use of passive income? After writing my most recent post, I continued to think about this specific question. Too many people have multiple sources of consumer debt: car loans, several credit cards with balances, student loans, home equity lines of credit, etc. Paying off debt by making only the minimum monthly payments will take an inordinate amount of time because interest absorbs the majority of each payment. Personal finance pundits talk incessantly about the idea of a “debt snowball.” The basic concept this:
To complete the thought, there are at least two schools of thought regarding the order of attack: some advocate paying off the debts starting with the highest interest rate and working down (in order to minimize the total interest paid) while others recommend paying off the debt with the lowest amount owed and working up (in order to quickly free up “extra” money for paying off the other debts and maximize the perception of progress). If the “snowball” works so well for eliminating debt, why not apply the approach to passive income? Instead of consuming at an increased rate after establishing a stream of passive income, roll that new income in other passive income ventures. Once each new venture becomes self-sustaining, it will contribute to a snowball that can be reinvested in the next opportunity. The available money will increase with each iteration, and so consequently will the new possibilities. Eventually you may reach a point where you do actually achieve freedom that allows you to quit your full time job (if you have one). The nice part about this method of reinvestment is that even smaller streams of passive income — when combined — can produce an appreciable monthly revenue. If it truly is passive income, once the system is in place, it requires no additional time and will facilitate (not prevent) the pursuit of more passive income. Robert Kiyosaki advocates investing in assets, which by his definition are things that make (not cost) you money each month. A car and primary residence are not assets per Kiyosaki, whereas a vending machine or investment property would be. Many people complain that it takes money to make money which is sometimes — but not always — true. Often potential entrepreneurs get hung up on thinking they can’t afford something when they would do well to ask themselves Kiyosaki’s question, “How can I afford it?” What streams of passive income can I establish to allow me to build up to (and ultimately finance) the other opportunities that I really want to pursue? After establishing your first stream, a fun challenge presents itself: in what order will you attack potential future sources of passive income? There are as many “right” ways as there are entrepreneurs seeking them. One person may want to start small so she can dabble in her spare time and continue her employment. After getting a couple of smaller ventures under her belt, she will build up to larger, more complex opportunities. Someone else might be in between jobs and decide to swing for the fences and avoid going back to working for “the man.” He’ll have one main source of income and later round it out with a complement of other smaller ventures. Not all the money from passive income has to be dedicated to future investments. If you’re on the right track financially, what good is your money if you don’t use it to enjoy a little of what life has to offer? Question(s) of the day: Do you have the self control to reinvest your passive income? How would you decide which form of passive income to pursue first? I’m with you. Enough already about how great passive income is and how we should all be earning more of it! Because I’m constantly mulling things over, today I dedicated some thought to how passive income provides freedom. Most of the time people talk about how that freedom is the ability to quit working for an employer and start enjoying life more. Since I haven’t been able to set up enough streams of passive income to pull that off, I’m thinking a little more along the lines of how passive income would permit me to pursue forms of investment that might be too risky for me presently given the shortage of “extra” money. One great tactic for growing rich is to maintain conservative consumption habits, even in the face of large increases in income. A guy making $50,000 per year has a standard of living that he has grown accustomed to. Even if he is consuming at a very high rate relative to his salary, once he receives a raise, he can increase his savings without affecting his lifestyle if he will simply maintain his previous level of consumption. Most people are unable to do that for some reason, so no raise is ever big enough to appreciably increase their savings because they’re too busy increasing their standard of living. Passive income can give you “extra” money each month for investing in opportunities that were previously too risky or required more capital than you had available. I’m not suggesting that passive income shouldn’t be carefully saved or invested, but it does open up new avenues of opportunity. My wife and I are interested in investing in real estate. We consider one of the biggest risks to be vacancy which would result in our having to pay the mortgage (instead of the renters). Since we’re pretty early in our careers, we haven’t accumulated nearly as much as we’d like to, so an unrented property could pretty quickly sink our financial ship. But if we created a stream of passive income generating $1,000 per month and didn’t increase our consumption, we could purchase an investment property with monthly costs of $1,000 and know that the mortgage would always be paid. During the months where we had a renter, we could put the passive income into a savings account for unexpected repairs or a down payment on another property. Unfortunately I still haven’t found any great sources of passive income, or rather, I haven’t effectively created any streams of passive income . . . yet. That is a goal of mine, so I’ll continue researching and trying available options until I succeed. If you’re fortunate enough to have so much passive income that you can retire early or just tell your employer to shove off, great! The rest of us will probably earn smaller amounts of passive income, and the best way for us to use it is to apply it to other investments: retirement, starting our own business, or better yet, creating other (bigger) forms of passive income. Question(s) of the day: How would you use passive income if you had more of it? What have been your best sources of dependable passive income? The last thing you need is an HR person (or worse yet – an automated system) pre-disqualifying you for a position because of details in a job description they don’t really understand. Some hiring managers include an alphabet soup of certifications and list optional qualifications when submitting the request to HR.Because of the high volume of resumes that companies receive, they’re increasingly turning to searchable electronic databases of resumes. People completely unfamiliar with the real job requirements may be those tasked with providing qualified candidates. Is there any hope of making the cut? There may be, depending on how you feel about the approach I’m about to describe. It requires tremendous care in its implementation because a misstep could ruin the chances that your resume would ever be considered again by that company for any position. When reading a job description that quite closely fits your experience, education, and professional aspirations, you’ll probably come across a few qualifications that you don’t have. Sometimes companies get over-confident and much more demanding than they have reason to be. Frankly, I get a little angry sometimes when I see a laundry list of candidate requirements that very few people could possibly meet. Very often those impossible demands are matched with a dismal salary range that indicates that the company thinks that just working there is reward enough. (You’re probably better off steering clear of those folks anyway.) Here’s the trick: if there are only a few requirements that you’re missing, list them in a section toward the bottom of your resume under one of the following headings:
This is not a way of securing a job for which you’re completely unqualified. The primary goal of the trick is simply to get past someone in HR who is unfamiliar with what is really required for an open position. You still have to “earn” the job, i.e., convince the hiring manager that you’re the best candidate for the position. This trick gets you one step closer to making your case. At that point it comes down to a couple of things:
Use this trick with discretion and make sure you’re up front with the hiring manager regarding your level of familiarity (or experience) with things you’ve listed on your resume. To do otherwise would be a disservice to everyone involved. Question(s) of the day: Have you ever used this trick? What has helped you get past a useless first round of applicant screening? Some people have a talent for minimalism. They buy what they need, use what they buy, and dispose of what they don’t use. Unfortunately, we’re not “some” people. Don’t get me wrong — we’re not packrats. We shop only sales and look for items at yard and garage sales, but we’ve finally passed a point where we comfortably fit in our modest two-bedroom abode. For that reason we’re looking around at what’s on the market. In fact, we were out with our wonderful (I mean that!) realtor just this morning and had a chance to view four different properties. Even though we didn’t find anything that knocked our socks off, we still discussed what steps we should take to prepare our place for showing to potential buyers. I expected our realtor to walk around and point out dings in the paint and other small details, but her only advice was this: de-clutter. This is a great idea because not only will the space seem bigger with less “stuff,” but the space will also seem more adequate. By that I mean that we want prospective buyers to see things in their proper places and say to themselves, “This family has a reasonable amount of stuff, and there’s more than enough room for it all.” Frankly, I’m pretty excited that our realtor told us to do something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. If we were able to move every six months, we’d really pare down the amount of stuff we have to just the basic things that we really like and use. Once we complete this de-cluttering exercise, our place will be much nicer for us to live in (not to mention show to buyers). We’ve already put away some of our children’s toys because they all get pulled out everyday, and I’m tired of picking them up over and over. On the one hand I don’t want to deprive them of learning opportunities that might arise from playing with some of their toys, but the clutter is driving me crazy! It’s not just kids’ toys though; among other things we’ve also got some magazines lying around from past months. Some people swear they’ll go to the gym — we swear that someday we really will read that magazine from last year, so it would be a shame to throw it out . . . Until (or unless) we have another child, we could last for several more years where we currently are. The most immediate problem is that we’ve very effectively filled every nook and cranny. Occasionally we think about getting a storage unit (and we’ll probably have to if we decide to sell) but do we really want to pay an extra $70-100 per month because we just have too much stuff? I’ve begun bringing home boxes from work and we’ll soon set about reducing the amount of our belongings that are stored in our place. We have many more children’s books than are used on any given day and plenty of off-season clothing. That’s a good thing, too, because somehow we’ve got to make the backs of the closets visible. As we prepare boxes for storage, we’ll be taking a very critical look at each item and deciding whether or not it’s really worth keeping. My feeling is that we have quite a bit of “dead wood” that can be donated to a local thrift store and reduce the amount of stuff that ends up in storage. Reducing my claustrophobia and stress will be a nice fringe benefit of getting our place ready to sell. Who knows — maybe we’ll de-clutter and realize we’ve got more room than we really need! Question(s) of the day: Do you find that clutter at home really bothers you, or is it a comfortable use of space? |
Investing OpportunitiesMisc. Finance RelatedMoney/Finance Blogs
Online CalculatorsSaving Money |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2024 ThoughtfulConsideration.com - All Rights Reserved |
||||||