Money stories

It seems that money is not frequently discussed. I don't mean here. Ever. Some people find it distasteful to talk about money, other are just plain embarrassed (I know I have been!). Yet money is a huge part of our lives, and many of us, at one point or another, find ourselves stuck in a job that brings us no joy, but pays the bills. Others have it far far worse.

I'm currently in a point in my life where I've put myself in a bad financial position, some of it influenced by circumstance, but mostly it's been due to bad habits. I have huge credit card debt and a mortgage to pay, and though I am thankful I am still liquid enough to meet my payments and have a job, my bad habits (basically overspending) have left me locked in to my current job, which I stopped enjoying at least two years ago and is time-consuming because I often work nights, weekends, and holidays.

This thread is not about complaining, though. I've simply admitted to myself that I am not happy where I am, that it's my own fault for getting myself there, and that it's up to me to change if I want to see change in my life. I've already begun making small but meaningful changes that add up towards reducing expenses and eventually be able to pay off debt. I eventually want to be able to quit my job and run my own business, which I'm also taking tiny steps towards, but the slow pace is infuriating at times.

Have any of you experienced anything like this before? How did you rise above it all?

Money is one of those persona,l way to close things we don't like to speak of cuz we mostly have eyes and can see mostly we are not all cut out to be in charge of it and it bothers us. Old ego you know. In life once we grow from the lost in the sauce adoleccent to the "adult" we need to be things seem strange. its getting past that that seems to be the most difficult. I could give you advice, fortune 500 advice for anything u like, that still wont help you in your every day life. In my time I have studied and learned and in doing so I offer this my man Manu,
Money does one thing and one thing only, ever!

Money amplifies

The old farmers used to and still do say that "money makes a bad man worse or a good man better"
Knowing and passing this friend, what is yours amplifying? Truly that's why we don't like money, truly in it our use we see the priorities and reasons we truly are. The idea is to amplify what you choose. Find a characteristic of yours you like and add money to it. Change your world one cent at a time lol my box is always open my man! Be well and keep seeking!!! You WILL find what your looking for, guaranteed! (I did)

carlos.martinez3 wrote: Money amplifies

So true.

carlos.martinez3 wrote: You WILL find what your looking for, guaranteed! (I did)

How did you? Care to share?

It seems that money is not frequently discussed. I don't mean here. Ever.

I was raised not to discuss money in polite company, just the way it was (is?)


I am...relatively well off, in terms of finance. Perhaps not in terms that a lot of people would agree with, but that leads into your question to some extent -

What are you willing to consider "comfortable"? My standards are (to others) quite low, which means my expenses are too.

- You've identified something unsustainable in yourself - bad habits, overspending.

The straight forward advise is "Stop".

I don't know what your particulars are, and I'm sure we could all offer "top tips" (or you could buy magazines, pay a financial advisor - Everyone's got opinions) - but, without getting into it - It sounds like you know what the issue is, so cut it out



As for unsatisfying jobs.

Okay, we've all got expenses that need to be met, and changing paths can upset the cash flow - It's a big deal.
You can't just quit, so you've got two sort of things you can do -

Start Planning your Exit Strategy, get ready to make the move to something else as smooth as possible.

Rearrange your head so that you don't hate your job. Work is always work, and it often blows - but if you can't get passed thinking it is just for the paycheck, then yeah, you're going to hate every damn day.

This is a Jedi temple, I don't think I should have to say that a lot of what we do here involves playing mind games with yourself about your experience in the world - So, do what you gotta do that makes doing your current job internally acceptable to you (whilst keeping in mind the first step of planning and taking steps for a smooth progression to your future....)

Have any of you experienced anything like this before? How did you rise above it all?

By redefining what was necessary, and starting from the bottom.

Twice so far - If we're being honest, I really would not like to do it a third time. I'm getting arrogant enough to feel like I "deserve" a little comfort for my efforts in this world, but I guess if it happens it happens.

Manu wrote: It seems that money is not frequently discussed. I don't mean here. Ever. Some people find it distasteful to talk about money, other are just plain embarrassed (I know I have been!). Yet money is a huge part of our lives, and many of us, at one point or another, find ourselves stuck in a job that brings us no joy, but pays the bills. Others have it far far worse.

I'm currently in a point in my life where I've put myself in a bad financial position, some of it influenced by circumstance, but mostly it's been due to bad habits. I have huge credit card debt and a mortgage to pay, and though I am thankful I am still liquid enough to meet my payments and have a job, my bad habits (basically overspending) have left me locked in to my current job, which I stopped enjoying at least two years ago and is time-consuming because I often work nights, weekends, and holidays.

This thread is not about complaining, though. I've simply admitted to myself that I am not happy where I am, that it's my own fault for getting myself there, and that it's up to me to change if I want to see change in my life. I've already begun making small but meaningful changes that add up towards reducing expenses and eventually be able to pay off debt. I eventually want to be able to quit my job and run my own business, which I'm also taking tiny steps towards, but the slow pace is infuriating at times.

Have any of you experienced anything like this before? How did you rise above it all?

See a financial counselor, and a psychologist. You may have a mental health condition that causes poor impulse control.

Sent from my E6782 using Tapatalk

Manu wrote:

carlos.martinez3 wrote: Money amplifies

So true.

carlos.martinez3 wrote: You WILL find what your looking for, guaranteed! (I did)

How did you? Care to share?

For you Manu I would gladly share,

For me moneys been easy. I add. The sooner you learn your times tables the sooner your ahead of the game, for ever it seems like. Once the basics is mastered (as in life) then everything else is easy because you have the basics. Money is an amplifier I notice and accepted it. I personally did some meditations and found that with out blaming where they came from I had obvious tendencies when I did have certain amounts of money. A bit of mindfulness and accountability, that old elementary word that still cuts to this day, and give it time. No one goes cold turkey in anything, at least we a ll know its not recommended, you can but I don't like to recommend things like that with out serious planning. The ability one has to eventually turn actions to character is a key point in that persons life. The point where the rubber meets the road so to speak is one part of our path I don't thing we speak of to often, the during time lol
for me eventually I figured I might as well use what little I have properly and with some...sort of thought in to it and then and only then did things change for me. Cant say it works like tat for everyone, cant say its worked for any one else but me but it did and you asked and I shared! Eventually I became what I had been practicing. The best part of life is as you grow and learn if you find it....what ever your seeking you find it, I searched and searched for ways to figure out how to help me understand money and the two things that did , three if you count the desire to build character, the basic, your multiplication tables, remember those, yea those who mastered them early in life, understood math way better. Take the time to memorize them , your teacher was right , YOU WILL BE USING THEM ALL YOUR LIFE! lol hahaha and second is good old fashon accountability. Dude, once you've figured those two out your money problems should simmer a bit and you can see thru all the steam and chaos.
May you continue to find the Force where your at friend, Being Jedi is a great thing somedays! Glad I got people and hearts like yours, for real bro! Im glad we share this place and our brief time together, im better for it! Thank you Manu!

I am not comfortable with where I'm at financially. I knew kids were expensive but holy shit!

We didn't make the best plans with vehicles. And I had problems with credit cards....Then I got them down and didn't have much of an emergency fund built when some things came up...then work had me moving half way across the country...

I took a look this morning at how much I owe.

$14,480 in credit cards. And we have three vehicles too. Only $200 in my emergency fund (where I want $3k ultimately...) If I lose my job... there's no way I could find something quickly that pays what I make now. Talk about added stress. And I'm worried about anything else popping up too.

In the last several years I've really cracked down on what my husband and I spend. I seriously give him (and I) an allowance and he needs to ask me for anything more in special circumstances lol. I track all of our expenses on a spreadsheet. Everything we spend as a family. Bills, food, toys/diapers for my daughter, subscriptions, gas, basically everything that I can forecast. I spent nearly a year tracking every time we spent money on food, gas, and my daughter's needs so I can estimate the average of what we spend every month.

Between my husband and I we have six bank accounts. Two joint accounts, the bills account all of our money goes into, and a joint savings account for an emergency fund. Then we each have personal checking and saving accounts. Those are for our "fun" money. Our "allowance" gets put in those and we can easily track how much we have to spend on whatever we want. I run the joint accounts, tracking what we've spent.

The goal is to rebuild the emergency fund to $1k, then start dumping some of the spare money into debt while getting the emergency fund up to $3k, doing a debt snowball until it's all gone. We've thought about selling or downsizing the vehicles but the only one we're not badly upside-down on is the one we need for the family. Husband will have a new job by the end of the year (if all goes well) essentially doubling his contribution. I'm really looking forward to that...

We also have a garage full of stuff to put up for a garage sale and when we know we're going to be short, I do my best to make crafts to try to boost what we're making (although that's not reliable because there's no telling when things will sell)

A good goal is to create passive income, which is money coming to you without having to work for it - basically to create an engine of wealth. This gives a person freedom of time without removing the capacity to use money wherever they might want to spend it. The 'how' to build the engine is the question! It helps if 'you' build it because you then will know it better then anyone and learn the most from it to make it grow better and better.

The first thing I guess is living below ones means, spending less then you earn.... and before even that being able to get reliable income. Not spending too much is where some of the ascetic ideals can come in, as its pretty cheap to live a bit like a monk... while not very fun perhaps it probably depends where one puts their priorities. If you can save some money, then you can look at using that to make more money down the track. Remembering it seems like its much easier to lose it then make it, so...

.... one important lesson I learned is 'money makes money' and it does so because it affords a capacity to exert timing in the use of that money! While that might not seem important if one uses money just to spend - it is important if one uses money to make more money... and so it is at least representative that the hard yards at the start of a journey into wealth creation are not representative of the difficulty that lay ahead, necessarily. Money makes money means when you get more you'll be able to use it to get more faster potentially, in my experience.

But how! There is no single answer, there are many. There are a few types of markets, and the thing about markets is they move up and down. So interacting with a market is probably about knowing the market enough to get in and get out in such a way to get the most out of that interaction - timing. Having some historical understanding and being aware of the things driving the course of a markets movement underpin the potential for timing to be used to good effect. It's not necessarily easy to succeed at the start, and in fact its good to fail a few times early to learn how to be more careful.

So what should develop as your engagement increases is your awareness and respect of the risk, and exposure to uncertainty - but 'count the cents and the dollars take care of themselves' is vital from the outset - ie knowing where your money is... and where its going. They are both imperative, as its efficiency which is the staple of managing growth I reckon, such that wasting money or letting people rip you off a bit here and there are the financial equivalents to religious sin IMO


But while things like credit cards are better viewed 'debt' cards - debt is not necessarily bad if its being used to make more money, and this is where loans can serve as important instruments to engage with a market to try and generate an improved position, and then manifest the profit to step back, resteady and reassess. Again, done so in the context of risk and uncertainty, know the particular market as much as you can, start small and learn from mistakes.... as there are plenty of lessons waiting to be learned!! It might be good to try and find a market you can work successfully with, and focus on that, rather then diversifying too much - unless you want to be work as a financial planner or something.

So that considered, it might be best served by changing ones definition of 'wealth' - to its capacity to create more wealth. Otherwise passive income sits alongside the other types of income like earned income (working for it), and portfolio income (taking profit from changes in market position) and these usually each are taxed differently, because a government likes to model its taxation to promote growth in business activity rather then just perpetuating a growing body of paid working class employment. So for me I started with earned income, then used that to additionally get portfolio income before being able to build passive income... well that is the theory!!! I think this is how people in the present and future will have to organize their retirement now that corporations and governments decided they can not afford proper pensions anymore.

So things like owning investment property, running a successful business if you don't have to work in it, getting dividends from shares and I guess earning interest on savings can all be passive income. Portfolio income is probably things like the different types of money and commodity markets, shares, and property - as mentioned getting in and out to take profit. While of course earned income is the grind of running on the mouse wheel to afford to keep running on the mouse wheel. Best to try and plan to get off that mouse wheel at some point, and unless winning a huge amount of money or finding a deceased long lost relative, we might have to build it ourselves. They should probably teach this sort of stuff to 18 year olds, you've got 30 years to build your own engine of wealth otherwise your going to get regret it later on, and GO!! But it's never too late to start I'd reckon. But to go back to the definition of wealth... I think its less about how wealthy one appears, and rather about how well their finances are structured. Some of the richest people I've known drove really old cars (because they value and care about what they've got) and wore cheap clothes (because clothes wear out). So if I had to summarize, and link to TotJO tenets, I'd say perspective, focus and timing - as an ongoing hobby nee passion.

Adder wrote: So for me I started with earned income, then used that to additionally get portfolio income before being able to build passive income.

What kind of passive income source do you have?

Kit wrote: Between my husband and I we have six bank accounts. Two joint accounts, the bills account all of our money goes into, and a joint savings account for an emergency fund. Then we each have personal checking and saving accounts. Those are for our "fun" money.

Separating accounts to keep things tidy and make more difficult to mess things up. It sounds like a great idea, thanks!

I totally get the kids being expensive! I hope you can start snowballing that debt payment soon.