Compared to a lot of online or at-home jobs we’ve covered, these don’t involve starting your own company or your own website. I’m focusing here on jobs that are already set up by an organized company that require no experience and you can start within a week.
I always say there are two resources when it comes to investing for your retirement: time and money. Money, most of us don’t have when we’re young, right? So you don’t have a lot to invest, but you do have a lot of time, and you should take advantage of that, because the more time that your money is in the market, is invested, then the more it’s gonna grow.
So you don’t want to necessarily give up on those years of investing—at the same time, you have this debt to contend with and it seems kind of silly to… start investing when you’re still paying off debt, right? I think that’s kinda the psychology that most people have.
I was about to walk into my boss’ office and ask for my first pay raise. Somehow, I managed to negotiate my rate from $7.25 an hour to $7.75! *cha-ching*
And it clicked with me at that moment, I knew that we had given our life away, given our freedom away. We had given control over our life to someone else—our employer—for a little bit of health insurance, a little bit of job security. And this person thought because they paid my paycheck and bought me that insurance, that they could tell me what was more important than my child.
It turns out that for the most part, we all like shopping – even when we are buying things we don’t actually need. When we are feeling depressed going to the mall on a spending spree can give you a feeling of relief. Although just temporary, it feels good – so much better than having to deal with our problems all of the time.
I was making about $14,000 a year when I became pregnant with my daughter… I was nowhere near my family, I didn’t even have a car or a driver’s license, and within a few months later, I didn’t have a fiancé either. So how did I go from that point to being a lawyer earning a six-figure salary? Well…
Allison Baggerly and her husband partnered together to pay off $111,000 of debt in 4 ½ years. They completed this difficult feat on two teacher’s salaries with two little kids at home.
Today, we’re going to be talking about something that is, for some reason, extremely taboo. So, I made sure to get my Taboo Tea here! *sips* Because, we’re going to be talking about debt. And, for some reason, bills and money and debt is something that is just not talked about.
A good mental model can help you determine what’s essential and what’s not essential. This is critical as we’re flooded with information regularly. Think about the amount of data that’s thrown at us even just related to investing. It’s a lot.
This can actually be a very controversial topic. And we’ve talked to people who firmly believe that you should get to paying off your mortgage and living mortgage-free as soon as possible, and we’ve also talked to people who firmly believe the exact opposite!
A lot of young people always ask me, ‘How do I buy my own home?’ And my first question is like, ‘Why do you want to do that?’ And generally, I think they think #1, it’s cool to own your own home, you can do whatever you want to it! You’re the boss, you don’t have a landlord! But #2, they always say ‘Well, it’s always an investment, right? It’s a good investment.’ And that’s not necessarily true.
My trip to South America had a new name! It wasn’t a holiday, it was a Mini Retirement! And I was thrilled by the idea of making them a regular part of my life, so I set about redesigning my lifestyle and my work. I promptly quit my job. And in 5 years I took 5 mini-retirements, totaling 22 months off. In between those periods of mini-retirement, I would do consulting gigs in the mining industry, and I would also tinker with my start-up, which later became my business.
Now the question that might be rising in your minds right now—and it’s a logical one!—is, how does someone in their late 20s afford to take more than a third of their time off work? How do they afford a roof to sleep under? Or a car to drive? How do they afford to eat? It’s a really important question.
I don’t know why or how you got into your current financial situation, but it sucks. It sucks that some people assume you can just fix it by getting a better paying job. As if you wouldn’t already have that if it was an option. As if you haven’t already tried.
Having limited income will help you get more creative, and the more creative you can become, that’s where all, all, all, all good ideas come from. When you don’t have very much money—but a lot of time and creativity—use that to your complete advantage.
Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize last year for showing that not only do humans make financial mistakes, they make predictable mistakes. He joked about calling his research ‘Dumb Stuff People Do.’ But today, it’s called ‘Behavior Economics,’ and it has changed public policy across the world.
