How Badly Is Your Job Bothering You?
Here is, essentially, the above question worded differently: In what ways is your current job motivating you to educate yourself financially to a level where you’d feel confident enough to start investing your hard-earned money into cash-flowing assets that will give you the luxury of choice as to whether to keep working or retire at an age of your choosing? Would you stay in your present occupation, be it as an employee or a business owner, if you had a monthly investment cash flow 800% greater than your monthly expenses?
As someone who has been actively investing for over a decade and working in the medical field for nearly fifteen years now, I can assure you that, on a bad work day (rarer as these have become thanks to experience), there’s hardly a more empowering perseverance factor than the knowledge that there is an actual, real choice as to stay or not to stay employed when things become unbearable, whether such a perception is caused by ungrateful clients (in my case — patients), incompetence at the workplace, incessant system bureaucracy, or all of these combined.
You may argue that a truly dedicated professional would stay to the bitter end no matter what, out of pure love for the job and community, and I’d agree with you, to an extent. I very much maintain that a human being must be useful to others in order to justify his or her existence — it’s not a hard concept. However, I have been in the workforce long enough to know that far too many people stay in their jobs simply because they lack choices when they need them. Some could use additional marketable skills that would help them transition to something more motivating or challenging, while others could benefit from being able to take some time off to reorganize their thoughts and, hence, their lives but they wouldn’t, simply because they can’t afford to miss a couple of months of work (let alone retire early) if they wish to continue paying their bills on time. That’s how occupational burnout happens, making a job feel far from satisfactory or fulfilling. Because, let’s face it, jobs change — leadership changes, decision-making shifts directions, ethics and morals acquire unexpected or unprecedented levels of flexibility in those making the most important ethical and financial decisions in the workplace. In other words, a job may take a slightly or completely different shape or form from what any of us originally bargained for.
It would be fair to say, of course, that not knowing how to invest the money you keep to make it work for you is a form of skill deficiency. You have no financial education, so you don’t know how money works and you haven’t been able to multiply it. There are several prominent reasons most people are and often remain profoundly financially illiterate:
Never being taught at school how money works, making the whole idea of learning about it later in life seem like unessential knowledge, which could not be further from the truth.
Perceived complexity of the financial jargon, financial instruments, and financial concepts/principles/strategies.
Unwillingness to dedicate the necessary time to learning finances — an attitude stemming directly from the challenge described in the first bullet point.
Fear of financial investment risk leading to lower risk tolerance thresholds in most while turning a blind eye to the not-too-popularly referred to risks in relying on job security and retirement plans that don’t require direct involvement, such as a 401(k).
Progressively shortening attention spans in people expecting a quick fix for their money problems. Keep dreaming, and good luck!
Procrastination on setting long-term financial goals resulting from lack of a long-term financial vision.
What are your basic motivating factors when going to work today and in general? Bills to pay? Fear of poverty? Craving for luxury items? Desire to impress those whose opinions matter to you? Excitement about getting rewarded for doing great work while solving other people’s problems and making their lives easier or better? Learning opportunities? Multiplying income streams through various investments outside of work? Securing retirement?
These are legitimate reasons that can all be present in your mind at the same time. The question is, which ones are priorities for you? Which one is the top priority? I know this is a hard one for some to answer, because the perceived urgency of our immediate necessities can easily obscure our long-term financial vision and routinely distract us from pursuing such a vision. This is especially true for those of us who have been conditioned not to dream big. The other side of the financial challenge coin is that many people lack the drive to work as hard and as long as it takes, no matter what, to get to where they wish to be financially. It’s one thing to think and talk about it, but taking action is a whole different story.
In the grand scheme of things, how much you love, tolerate, or hate your job isn’t as relevant when it comes to building wealth as many people like to think. The truth is that, with good financial understanding, discipline, and planning, you can build wealth practically from any job. Loving what you do is a great bonus, without a doubt, but not everyone happens to be so fortunate as to quickly find out what they really love doing so much and are so good at doing it that it would put them ahead of the competition and not feel like a job at all. Regardless, you can draw tremendous benefits from any job if you’re willing to learn and practice amazing behaviors and skills that would serve you anywhere you go, like work ethic, reliability, integrity, communication, accountability, vigilance, planning, budgeting for expenses and investing, self-discipline, various technology tools that can be used across many fields of expertise, you name it. There is no limit to learning. Your task is to make it relevant to your long-term financial goals, once you have those in place.
Could a slight shift in prioritization or motivation change your perspective enough to inspire you to take a different work attitude and course of action on your financial goals? Your most sincere long-term wealth-related goals will determine your work behaviors for the next five to ten years. No financially successful person makes one significant step only to hold still for several years before taking the next step. You need a plan and you must take it seriously and commit to the sacrifice and discomfort it entails if you want better choices than you have right now. As someone who’s been there and done it, I assure you that the sacrifice you make over the next five to ten years is minimal compared to the fantastic life it can provide for you over the next fifty years!