THIS IS MY 132ND BLOG ON UNDERSTANDING MONEY
TOOLS,
June, 2018
It has been 2 months since I have posted a blog. It’s not because I couldn’t think of
topics to write about it, had more to do with my life and plans. I had to have a hip replacement which occurred
a week ago (about 2 million miles on the joints, and just like a car I needed
new brake pads and struts). I took
topics currently on my mind, and gathered supportive facts and stats to back up
any statements that I would make.
As you can imagine, I have a ton of time on my hands the next 8 weeks in
my recovery and therapy.
We will call this blog “life”, and how it will relate to you
and most everyone. It is a very
important ingredient in “understanding money tools” and planning life. Many younger people think that they can
skirt life’s inevitability, but I have news for you, you won’t be able to. To some degree I am placing you on a
bell curve, you might end up on one end or the other hopefully the better
end. Let’s be a realist, you were
born, you will produce something (perhaps a family, company, service, etc.),
mature, old age-if lucky; and then pass on to whatever you believe in.
About a month ago a 21 year old woman working for a large
corporation asked me how she could be more successful. Let’s use her question as an example
and go run with it. First, I would
say working for any of the large corporations today is a dead end. You are competing therein with
thousands of other employees.
Making it to top management or top income level is close to
impossible. Corporations have done
away with respect for people staying with them forever. There is little loyalty on either the
employee level or the employer level.
Pensions and profit sharing are harder and harder to find. Yes, you may have a 401 Plan to defer
income taxation, but no freebees. If you do have a profit sharing plan it may
be doubtful management will permit you to fully “vest” and will find a reason
to let you go. Human resources keeps
very good files on employees and they can come up with various reasons to
remove any individual. The other thing I don’t respect about corporations today
in general is that they are totally driven by Wall Street, Board of Directors
and big stockholders to make more money for them, not you.
Next in the broad picture of success is that I never have
differentiated much between training to become a good athlete and training to
become successful in business; both are hard to attain and one must be the best
they can physically and mentally be
to endure and end up on top.
Examples here would be the obvious of regularity at a gym, alcohol and
healthy food in moderation (easy on the fast food/junk food), no smoking,
enough sleep, maintaining hygiene and your best “look”….and that includes
healthy psychological attitude toward yourself.
It will be hard to do, but keep certain “good friends” and
let others go. You need to
surround yourself with the tops in your field and retain a few
mentors/coaches. If you surround
yourself with mediocrity you will end up mediocre. As an example in tennis, which I taught some summers
as a teaching pro, a few of us would not train or hit with people equal or less
than our ability so that we were always being pulled upward from our current
game. If you teach too long your
physical and mental game will go down….same goes for business. In a way become a bit egocentric
without reflecting that bigger ego to the outside world. There is always
someone better than you, and if not now, there will be shortly. Become more
worldly and have a working understanding of the world. Start by keeping up with US news
and then put world news apps on your phone such as BBC, Russia and Asia and
view them daily. Don’t be a
dummy!
Let’s pause for a moment from the focus of this blog for an
“unpaid” life commercial. The
reason for this is that I believe the content, although you have heard it all
before, is all-important to you and your life. “Attitude” is all-important! As life passes by, and it does more quickly with age, “see
the glass half full, not empty”, be happy, be more understanding of others and
yourself. play with life…. you have little to lose, see your goals accomplished
ahead of time. I have blogged
about the book Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, written in 1960. Get the book, read it. . (Google Play
has it for sale for $14.99.) It’s
about visualization being so important and “you” visualizing how “you” will
accomplish something (perhaps in a sport or business) and seeing it through to
the end. You most likely have heard
that many of the WWII prisoners who lived through to the end of the war and
were released from the horrendous Nazi/German death camps kept a positive
attitude, tried to remain happy seeing the good side of life, even in these
circumstances, and helped their fellow prisoners.
Like it or not you are going to have a life work cycle. When you are young you have your
health, feel ambitious, good energy, flowing hormones and feel like conquering
Goliath. As you age in this cycle
your perspectives change, energy levels change, hormones change both with women
and men alike. “Hope for the best,
plan for the worst”. (A line used
by Lee Child in his Jack Reacher series.)
As I have written on this topic before, decide what success is for you,
how much money you need to reach your goals and retirement. As you get older it is tougher to make
money, and it is always tough to keep what you have made as it is the goal of
every financial planner, money manager, venture capitalist, banker, etc. to
strip you of control of your money.
Okay, so to make money you have to have a great product or
service. You don’t have to be the
best. As I have always said from a
healthy point of view, if 500 people run a 10K race over the weekend I look at
it as there were 500 winners, not just one winner and everyone else who showed
up a loser. Healthy attitude! Although you don’t need to be the best you need
to get recognized and in today’s tech world it is getting tougher and tougher,
and you need to do this without human contact but through technology. This is one of the hot topics in
colleges right now…..how to get found by the right people through the right
sources.
Next, no matter what age you are I recommend you try to
leverage yourself. In technology,
use highly recommended individuals who will assist you for a fraction the
hourly rate you get or desire.
These people will normally come from Asia or India. Large corporations having been doing
this for years, and also through our H-1B worker visas. In some of my management positions we
expected at least a 3 to 1 return off employees hired. Today, the leverage is even higher.
Your life’s planning for goals need to include set-backs,
this may be in terms of health and
physical/mental capabilities or significant financial downturns in the
US and world economies. As I view
the financial world in perspective to years ago it is crazy, and a crash will
come. If you read my blogs you know I rest upon historical events, history is not repeating on a timely
basis as predicted. Today’s
millennials think the stock market and investing is like “la, la land”. They were in college at 20, not in
business when our banks failed in 2008 and the Dow went down to about 6,800. Today, the Dow runs at an insane 26,000
and 30 year old millennials think this is a norm. I just read a report this past week that stated that 50% of
millennials believe they can easily retire at age 56 being millionaires. I hate to deflate believer’s balloons!
Moving forward with our thoughts. By the time you reach mid-life, let’s say 45, you will or
have gone through a few tough times; these could be helping your children with
issues such as drugs or good things like education and college but financially
this will take it’s toll. Men’s
testosterone starts declining and thus less drive to get up and run the same
business game. Because of this men
make better stay at home parents, and have less wanderlust. Women on the other hand, start becoming
stronger/tougher businesswomen taking on male characteristics especially after
menopause rather than the soft, nurturing woman we once knew. This
transformation between spouses leads to a ton of divorces in the 45 to 52 age
bracket, and there goes a bunch of money.
Then, in later years of life you are going to have more challenges,
over 65 health is one of the major ones, and the leading reason for
bankruptcies in this age group.
Our medical/drug/health insurance is abominable. The great countries of the world,
mainly socialist countries as in Scandinavia or Switzerland, cover all health
care costs and won’t permit a medical group or hospital to take close to 100%
of your assets including your home to pay their exceedingly high billings.
There you have it.
Plan as well as you can, but you know the blueprint will need to be
amended.
Oh….what’s a
blueprint?
Forgot? The
younger generation never had this in their vocabulary. It is a reproduction of a technical
drawing by an architect or engineer for use by the construction
contractor. It commonly used
ammonia in the process and smelled of it.
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