Life insurance agents come at you with solutions for every objection you can think of.
This might be a reason why we avoid getting engaged by them. We are afraid we might get sucked in and duped into buying something we will regret later.
“You’re not a vampire. You will die someday. It’s a fact of life you cannot escape.”
Life insurance dealers leverage that fact to sell you insurance. They will chase you, hoping to beat Death and give you the financial protection your family needs.
But sometimes, the whole chasing thing, the constant nag to get life insurance can be very annoying. This is probably why we avoid having a conversation with them altogether.
Money is a problem. But how big of a problem?
You’ve heard the cliché’ before, “Less is more”.
The less you worry about, the happier you will be. But what is one of the most common things people worry about? Money.
You need money to allow you to acquire your basic needs. But what is “basic”?
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, those that belong in the “basic” category are for survival needs such as food, water and shelter. Makes sense. Everyone needs that.
Now in terms of using money to acquire those needs, it shouldn’t cost you that much.
But there’s more to Maslow’s Hierarchy. You also have psychological…
The more you know, the more money you can make.
“Books are boring”, says the person who prefers other ways to entertain or educate themselves.
That was the line that stuck with me for a long time. I associated books with boredom. When I read, I fall asleep. What changed me?
When I finally accepted that I don’t know everything.
The more I read, the more I realize how much I don’t know lol.
And because of books, I became less dumb.
I’d love to share a story about how it all came about. But you only have a few moments to spare. …
I’ve been looking into upgrading my personal finance for years now.
Like most people, it wasn’t really something I prioritized. Partly because I was blinded by the “traditional timeline” everyone unconsciously follows:
- Finish school
- Get a job.
- Get married.
- Buy a house.
- Start a family.
Nothing in that list talks about the importance of personal finance or retirement. My guess is that it wasn’t really an issue back then. But we’re now in the 21st century— things have changed!
I’m sure you’ve heard of compounding interest.
It’s the powerful money concept wealthy people use to grow their money without really doing anything. It’s another form of passive income that is accessible by everyone. Best of all, this concept is not a secret. There are hundreds of articles that have already been written about this.
If that’s the case, then how come there are people out there who are still unaware of it?
Financial literacy isn’t something that is taught in school. You’re lucky if you had parents who can teach you about how to handle your finances. I didn’t.
I don’t say that as a disrespect to my parents because they weren’t taught about managing their finance either. But they knew the basic of the basics: save money for tomorrow.
That lesson was ingrained in me since. However, that tactic alone is not enough to help me reach financial freedom. Its effectiveness is limited. That probably explains why I was stuck with these two most common approaches to improve my finances:
- Work…
“Here in Canada, it’s normal to have debts — you’ll always have it.”, that’s what our neighbour told my dad when they talked about re-mortgaging the house to use the money for renovations.
So you finally reached that point in your life when you realized you need to take control of your finances. Good job. That’s the first step.
The next step is to imagine what kind of life you want yourself to live when you retire. You know, that stage in our life where we can finally reap the benefits from all the hard work we put in during our younger years.
Do you imagine yourself relaxing on the beach?
Reading stories to your grandchildren?
Or perhaps, you are travelling somewhere?
Continuously expand on your current skillset
At some point in your career, you wonder if your paycheck matches all the hard work you provide for your employer.
One way to fix that concern is to negotiate a raise during your annual review. But what if you have poor negotiation skills? What do you do?
When I started my career, I had very limited technical experience. I had nothing to negotiate with. But that inability to negotiate forced me to look into another form of communicating my value: hard work.
However, “hard work” is not enough to give me that salary increase I desired. …
RJ Reyes
An office employee who talks about how to stand out at work. Other times — on personal finance. Sometimes — on creating another source of income.
