Human Action

How to find inspiration in these tough times?

Here’s the honest truth. I’ve been finding it really hard.

I’m working from home now and have been for the past 10 days, and in a sense the impact on me has been minimal as I still do my normal work and just get to spend more time with my wife and daughter (who we took out of school at the start of last week).

But I’ve been finding it really difficult to write. How do I write about personal development and improving finances when everything is falling apart for so many people, and I’m thankfully not affected at all by this.

But the truth is, if ever there was a time to talk about personal development, that time is now.

Everything is falling apart for so many people around us. So those of us who know how a time like this can be taken to learn a new skill and start making money using it, must help those who feel the world is caving in on them.

If we know how to help people get out of whatever terrible situation they find themselves in, and we don’t, it’s almost like seeing a person drowning in a lake and not helping them.

So this is how I find inspiration. I know that the world is falling apart around me, and I know that I can help.

If you need help, this is a great way to start learning how to get out of this mess.

Hope that helps

Jon

Thoughts about COVID 19

The last week has been pretty crazy.

Obviously, everyone knows about the Coronavirus, and over the past few days it really hit home over here in the UK, what a big deal this is. The streets are mostly empty, and the mood seems nervous and low.

Feels weird, at a time like this when so many people are dying and suffering from the virus, to write about personal development and finance.

Especially when one of the members of our household is in a risk group, it’s frightening to think what may lie ahead.

In times like this there’s a slippery slope that leads into some very dark places, as a reaction to the understandable anxiety and fear of what the future holds.

I have to work on myself every day, on my mindset and where I’m at mentally, to make sure that I remember all of the things that I can and should be grateful for. All of the things that I’ve done, all of the obstacles I had to overcome. And that this is not the apocalypse. Some tough times might be coming, but we’ll survive and thrive.

What does tomorrow hold? No one knows. All we can do at a time like this is try to stay safe and appreciate our loved ones.

Keep safe everyone, speak to you soon.

Hope that helps.

Jon

What is the best way to get financially educated? I want to learn how to budget and grow money to buy a house in the next 3-5 years?

The first thing you need to do is go over your monthly expenses and find “easy wins” – large expenses that you can reduce substantially without too much of an impact on your lifestyle (utilities and tv/broadband are a good place to start).

Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the other side of this – how to increase your income.

There are many ways you can make money online and as long as you’re willing to work hard, you can earn enough to save for a nice deposit.

Over 3–5 years? You can even pay for a decent house, depending on where you live and how much work you’re willing to put in.

The key point for me is don’t forget the income side. People tend to focus too much on expenses and end up failing because it impacts their quality of life too much.

Don’t go on a diet, get yourself another stomach.

Hope that helps.

Jon

Why do most broke people stay broke no matter what happens to them?

My Mentor always says, being broke is a situation, being poor is a mindset.

People can have a great mindset, believe that they can and will make it in the end and work hard to get there, but in the current moment they’re broke. They haven’t got much money, but the money they do have they use to develop their skills and explore ways to get out of their situation, while living on a strict budget.

Then you get people who are poor in their mindset. They’re not just broke in a current moment. They’re broke, and they don’t believe they can pull themselves out of that situation. Their mindset is getting in their way, thinking that there’s someone or something getting in the way of their succeeding.

They think they will never do it, and will never look to change themselves in order to get out of the situation they are in.

Now, the thing is, that broke or not – most people are poor in their mindset. It’s not because most people aren’t any good, it’s because we’re trained into that mindset from a very young age. You have to work hard to understand it’s wrong and that you own your successes and failures.

So just like everyone else, most broke people have a poor mindset, so most of them stay broke. But you can find people who were broke their entire lives, but they had a positive mindset and broke out of their broke situation.

You can do it too.

hope that helps

Jon

How I Could Have Done More With My 20s (Part One)

I used to look back at my 20s and think of all of the opportunities that lay there to create a better future for myself, but that I just wasn’t aware of them, and now there gone.

That was the “old me”. That version of me that looked out to the world and blame everything and everyone for all of the opportunities that I missed, that were no longer there. In a future post I might explain the transition that I went through, but for now enough to say that this isn’t me anymore.

So why write this post, in which I lament all of those opportunities that lay there waiting for me? Well, so that kids in their 20s now might realise where they can do better and build a strong foundation for their lives.

I turned 20 in 2004. At that point I was doing the mandatory military service I was required to do in my country of origin. My base was close to where I lived, so I got to go home every evening, so it was more like an office job than anything else. But we didn’t have internet access at home.

So online income was not a possibility at that point. I couldn’t work because you’re not allowed to work as a soldier, even though they only give you the equivalent of about £70 ($90) per month. However, getting home at about 7pm every night, what could I have done?

Well, I could start asking around about small accounting/ law practices that needed help with some administration/ office work or even cleaning the offices. I couldn’t set up a business for that, but where I come from there’s a strong culture of people paying less than market rates by paying in cash without receiving an invoice. Technically, I would be breaking the law, but the worst penalty I would have received was spending a couple of weeks at the base without leave to go home. It would have been worth it.

But I didn’t have the vision required to do that, and no-one pointed me in that direction, despite both of my (divorced) parents being in dire financial straits.

Moving on. I got out of the army shortly after my 21st birthday, and at that point my mum had recently bought an old computer and got connected to the internet. Hooray! We were in the 21st century.

Well, I was so out of what was going on, that I had no idea what you can do with an internet connection. I worked at a gas station for the three months between my leaving the army and starting school. That meant I got up at 5am every day, but by 2pm I was home after an 8 hour shift. At some point I started a night job as a security guard in the city where my uni was – about two hours by bus.

I take a lot of pride in my work ethic, and at that time it stood the test. There were days that I would work the night shift (leaving home at 8pm), finish at 7am, get the bus home, take a 2-hour nap and go to work at the gas station until 10pm. I worked myself off – but it was for minimum wage.

Looking back, it would have done me so much better to learn how to make money online. Sure, it was much harder at that point, with many of the websites that exist nowadays for teaching not being around back then, but if I had looked, I could have found people making money and ask them to teach me how.

I also could have taken the payout every soldier got at the end of their service, about £1,000 ($1,300), and learn how to invest it in the stock market.

It might sound to you like, I needed to know that these things existed in order to look for them and learn them. But I had tonnes of free time. Most days, I’d come home from the gas station, have lunch with an episode of The Sopranos, then go to bed for 2 hours, wake up and basically just sit around doing nothing, or going out.

I had so much to invest in myself, but I didn’t have the vision or the self esteem to do it. All the money I made working hard at the gas station, I wasted away playing pool and drinking almost every night, eating loads of junk food out and not even investing in proper clothes – I bought my clothes at the supermarket.

So when I think of it, even before I started school there was so much opportunity that lay before me, I just had to reach out and take it. You just need to have some vision, maybe a guiding hand, someone to tell you that anyone can do it and that includes you.

I hope that I can do that for someone.

Join me for the second part of this journey, my years at uni.

Hope that helps.

Jon

What kind of streams of income from your laptop are you making, and how can I do so too? I’m 21 and want to start early.

Jees I wish I had the forethought to start that early.

I guess it really depends how big do you want to go. If you’re just looking for some pocket money, you can do online surveys, or if you want a more substantial income you can learn a skill that’s in demand or develop skills that you already possess, and find the niches where those skills are in high demand – although really you should be doing it the other way around, ie find out what skills are in high demand, then learn those skills.

What I can definitely tell you is to forget about all those promises of easy money. Making money online can be more fun, flexible, fulfilling and less time consuming than your office job.

But it definitely is not easy. You have to be willing to work, hard, and keep at it while you’re not yet seeing results. And the most important skill of all that you absolutely must have to earn money online is how to sell yourself.

Hope that helps

Jon

Time Is Running Out

Since the 2008 crash and the way governments worldwide reacted to it, contrarians have been saying that the post-2008 boom is an artificial one and a day of reckoning is coming.

You see, politicians decided that the best way for them to deal with the crisis was to kick the can down the road by putting unprecedented amounts of money into the stock market, rather than dealing with the underlying problem.

Markets have been inflating and inflating over the past decade and a bit, with no real reason why. Just ask your average Joe if they think their lives have improved as dramatically as the numbers suggested.

We’re living deep inside the next bubble, and it finally seems like it’s coming to an end.

The coronavirus seems to have finally put a pin to the stock market’s balloon, and while you focus on how to keep your family healthy, which is obviously the top priority, you should also keep your eyes on what’s going on in markets worldwide.

Because the crisis doesn’t come gradually. When it hits, it hits like a tidal wave. And if you don’t prepare yourself, you might find yourself to be on the wrong side of the wave.

Time is running out to start controlling your income. Budgeting is great and really important, but if you just got fired and your income has gone down to $0, there’s no way to budget around that.

You need to start thinking about getting that side hustle started, before it’s too late.

You need to be one of the winners here. It’s as crucial as protecting your family from coronavirus.

You can start learning to control your income here. I usually don’t promote quick and easy, and this definitely isn’t easy, but it is quick(er).

Keep safe out there, and keep winning.

Hope that helps.

Jon

Why does it feel like we’ve been brainwashed to follow a certain lifestyle or have a particular job?

Well, because we have.

There could be many reasons why and people have their own ideas about this, personally I think it’s to do with the fact that the vast majority of us are a product of a state-run education system.

For the state it is much easier to have an economy of employees- with taxes deducted automatically and people keeping their head down just trying to keep their job and scrape by.

But the truth is it doesn’t really matter why it is.

What matters is that we get taught from day one to be an employee (just think of classroom dynamics v workplace dynamics) and never get taught the first thing about running your own business or controlling your life. It’s made to be this scary, risky thing that only rich people can afford to do.

It really isn’t.

Realising that we are being brainwashed to follow a certain path, is the first step to straying off that path and seeing what the forest has to offer. Come in, the forest is beautiful.

Hope that helps.

Jon

How can I grow my money while living paycheck to paycheck?

The easy way to do that would be getting some relatively easy wins that most people can have.

These are certain bills or expenses that you overpay for and can easily cut down on without suffering any reduction in quality of life. For example, in the UK it’s recommended to switch energy providers every 1-2 years to enjoy the introductory prices but leave before the higher costs come into effect.

Doing that exercise can save an average family up to £150–200 a month, which is great but not always enough.

The two harder ways that reap greater benefits are either cutting down on unnecessary expenses – which is harder because these will impact your quality of life.

Or you can choose increase your income so that it covers your expenses. This is harder because it does involve giving up much of your free time and persevering while things undoubtedly don’t go well right from the get go, but it’s more rewarding because, well, you get to keep your unnecessary expenses.

It’s also easier than ever to do it nowadays. I’ll discuss that in future posts.

Hope that helps

Jon

Do you do it for the love of money or the love of work?

I guess I’d say it’s neither.

I don’t love money, I just recognise that money is what allows me to live the lifestyle that I want, and provide my family with the life that they want and that I feel they deserve.

So really, it’s not for the love of money or work that I do this. I do this for the love of my family, and there’s nothing that motivates me more to work evenings and weekends than my family.

There’s nothing that empowers me against the fear of failing, as much as the thought of my wife and daughter.

There’s nothing in this world that makes me more proud, that makes me feel as significant, as when I know that I am providing for them.

Hope that helps

Jon