Monday, March 26, 2018
Life is Too Expensive: What Can I Do?
Every day we see the cost of living rise. From your local watering hole raising the cost of a beer a quarter to hydro bills reaching insane levels. It is getting harder and harder all the time to make ends meat. While I do understand the pinch being felt by everyday people, I also realize that this hasn’t been the hardest time we have faced. You don’t have to go that far back to see people who had it harder than we do in this part of the world. Massive recessions, droughts, floods, wars have all shook our stability in the past. We have the means to battle back and win in the end. Today I am going to describe what we all can do to make our financial lives a little easier. Life may be very expensive, but we can do little things to make it better.
Act your wage
I love old movies and one of my favorites is the Godfather. Early 1900’s New York City was ripe with poverty. Robert De Niro’s character “Vito Corleone” struggled to get by and raise a family during this time. One scene stuck out to me in particular. After getting laid off at the produce shop where he worked, Vito came home not knowing where his next dollar would come from. When he got home he put a pear on the table before his wife walked in. She chimed, “What a nice pear,” then they ate dinner. Seems a little odd to get excited over a pear or an apple or an orange but that is what they had. The joys of their life were small things like a nice piece of fruit because the larger things were not obtainable. The mentality of acting your wage will dictate your life. The only difference between back then and now is that people who live in relative poverty expect more out of life than in previous generations. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe everyone should be able to have the necessities of life including food, shelter, health, and education. Nowhere in there did I mention steak dinners, vacations or expensive cars. Poor people don’t go on vacations or at least they shouldn’t. Before the days of the credit card, it wasn’t even possible. There is a point where you just cannot afford to live the way you do, and for people in lower income brackets, it comes a lot sooner. This is why I preach having a written budget. Having it all on paper shows you clear as day that what you are doing is unaffordable. Even people with 6 figure incomes have fallen victim to not acting their wage.
The Vice Tax
It sure costs a lot to have fun, well sort of. It really depends on what you consider fun. Do you like long walks in the park, reading a book by the beach or drinking beers and smoking cigarettes at your local pub? There is a reason why the government heavily taxes things we do that are bad for us like drinking and smoking. It is because they know we will buy these products no matter how much they cost. I have steadily seen the price of a beer increase dramatically since I became legal age and that is only 14 years ago. I feel for those people who used to buy a pint for 25 cents back in the day and now have to shell out ten dollars. Let me put this more simply: Unless you are rich, you cannot afford to partake in vices every day. I’ve helped create budgets for young single people and large families and the one thing that sticks out to me is that the ones that have more fun are more broke. Simple math shows you that spending $50 twice a week is $400 a month. That is over $5000 annually. If you feel you cannot save money or paying bills is a struggle and you spend that much on a product that will eventually end up in the toilet, then you need to give your head a shake.
Why Vice Taxes Continue to Persist – Reason Foundation
Reduce consumption
A common complaint I hear is that hydro bills are out of control or gasoline costs way too much. Yes, they have gone up quite dramatically. The question remains: What have we done about it? Have we reduced our hydro and gas usage? Some of us, yes but for the most part, no we haven’t. I never, ever, ever complain about what my hydro bill costs. It is not because I don’t think it is too high, it is because I have done nothing to reduce my electricity usage. Sure, I turn lights off when I am not around, but beyond that, I am not that on top of things. In my mind, I really have no reason to complain because I have not taken the steps to reduce my bill. When it comes to gasoline, have we, as a society, taken steps to reduce gas consumption? It appears that we have not other than having more fuel-efficient cars. My point is this: Unless we are living a bare-bones lifestyle, what right do we have to complain about rising costs? Do we wish to go on wasting things like we always have? That comes at a cost now and it is probably with good reason. Live modestly or pay the price, those are 2 fairly simple choices.
Want to cut energy costs? Cut your energy use – Choice
Side hustle
One thing I absolutely love about the millennial entrepreneur is that they have the hustle gene in them. I see some young people with money coming in from 3-4 sources and that is just amazing. We have all heard the stories about the single mother having to work 3 jobs just to keep the lights on and food on the table. Just a heads up, that is not a myth, it actually happens. People do work 2-3 jobs in order to get by and get ahead. It has been the case since the dawn of paid work. If you find you are having a hard time getting by with working 40 hours a week, maybe you should work more. If you know you make good money and you are still having a hard time getting by, look to the 2 paragraphs above. There has never been a time in history where working a minimum wage job has been enough to live on comfortably. While I do believe everyone deserves a living wage, I also believe the powers that be don’t give a shit. We have to take it upon ourselves to get what we want and that might mean working beyond 40 hours a week. I get asked often why I work so much. The answer is simple, I don’t want to be poor. Ever.
11 Money-Making Opportunities You Should Not Waste – Budget Boss
Take responsibility
This post is a real downer, isn’t it? Sorry to start off the week with this one but it felt necessary. It appears to me that assessing blame has become more important than solving problems. My life got infinitely better when I realized how much of an idiot I was. Let me rephrase that. My life got a lot better when I took responsibility for the mistakes I was making, and I still make a ton of them. I used to get upset at the world and think everyone was out to get me. The truth was, no one was out to get more or you for that matter. No one really cares at all. You must care. In order to care you have to take responsibility for the things in your life that you do not like. Don’t have enough money, make more money or spend less money. Hate your career, work your butt off to find a new one. Hate being in debt, do whatever it takes to get out of it. We must take control of our surroundings so that we can make our lives better. No one will do it for us. We all love rags to riches stories. I have never heard one start by someone saying, “I skipped work that day because I wasn’t feeling up to it.”
The people I meet on a weekly basis that have become successful in life all have a few things in common. They have an excellent work ethic. They enjoy things in life that cost them little to no money. They are responsible for themselves and those around them. While life may be getting more expensive all the time, we still have the ability to outwork and outsmart our problems. Everything else that happens around us is irrelevant.
“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.” – Jim Rohn
Email – joe@budgetboss.ca
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