I love reading personal finance blogs. Not only do I steal borrow ideas, but I see ambitious people doing cool things and making more money.

Today I want to highlight some new personal finance blogs to help them gain some traction. Enjoy!

Broke vs. Poor @ iHeart Budgets.

How To Win Scholarships @ Monet Life and More.

Creating New Revenue Opportunities Through Buying Established Websites @ Modest Money.

Carnival of Personal Finance #362 – LessJunk Edition @ James Petzke.

When you first start working on your new business, a new program at school or even a new job, your friends will preach the gospel of having a schedule. You need a schedule.

Everyone seems to love to talk about schedules. We don’t want to be “off schedule” or “behind schedule.” We often run around trying to fit everything into our schedules. Schedule this, schedule that. Get a life and stop scheduling every single moment of your day.

You might not like this next thought but I need to write it. I hate schedules and I don’t believe in them. We are human beings, not mindless drones. We shouldn’t base our whole day on what some schedule tells us to do. Screw schedules.

Now don’t get me wrong. You have to follow your schedule at work if you don’t want to get fired. You also have to follow your class schedule because you want to attend the right classes.

I was a huge fan of the idea of a schedule except I just couldn’t figure out how to put a decent one together. Finally I heard a podcast with Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan (UFC announcer, Fear Factor host) where Ferriss brought up how he doesn’t believe in schedules. He brought up that Arnold Schwarzenegger and others are not into schedules. They both bashed schedules and the myth of setting the perfect schedule.

The idea was presented that you should set a few key tasks to get done in a day without a scheduled time for everything.

This really resonated with me. What I do now is I set a few key tasks that I want to complete every single day. This could be something like “write 1,000 words for new project” or…

• Go to morning kettleball class.
• Hang out with brother.
• Respond to every blog email.
• Write three new articles.

You don’t need to set a specific number of tasks. I just believe in planning to get done 2-3 three important things. Tagging your friends in photos on Facebook isn’t important, sorry.

Instead of scheduling everything or trying to plan to your day out, I recommend that you make a plan to get a few main tasks done.

This doesn’t mean that you have to ditch your work schedule or school schedule. I just think you’ll benefit more from actually setting out to get something done. By this I mean measuring your work in output, and not time. Output and results are far more important than what time you did something or how long it took you.

I urge you to give this try. This weekend or whenever you set out to get work done, try to plan to get a major task or two done. Don’t worry about what time you do it or how you do it. Just do it. Give it a shot.

Oh and once again, please don’t show up late to work tomorrow because some blogger-dude told you to show your schedule the middle finger.

Yeah! Another month with a small increase in my net worth combined with a debt reduction! All right… the debt reduction was smaller than expected. But still… I’m heading in the right direction!

The biggest reason why I didn’t see a major debt decrease (my debts went down by all of $354) is because I had my pool installed. As I mentioned in my previous net worth statement, I will have to get a loan to buy a pool this year as I overestimated my tax refund (darn! I should definitely do my own taxes!). This also means that my debt level will increase by $5,500 in June when my pool loan will appear on my balance sheet (yuk!). In the meantime, I had to cover several other expenses while installing the darn pool. Because the pool price doesn’t include the bulldozer and the water in the pool… Long story short, I had to spend a good $700 over the past 2 weeks for my pool (on top of the $5,500 loan coming onboard…).

This sucks, but this is my vacation budget as well (I’m not going anywhere this year). I also have a “plan” to drop my debt quicker as I will cash in a good part of my employer stocks (I’m allowed up to 75% without penalties) to pay off a part of my debts. The longer I can wait, the bigger the amount will be as I’m putting over $600/month in them. I expect to be able to get about $4,000 from my employer stocks. This will almost compensate for my pool loan!

June Net Worth Should See a Big Jump

I’m expecting a big jump on my asset side next update since we’ll be looking at the value of our company shares. As a valuation model, we use 3 times the yearly gross income minus all debts. To calculate our yearly gross income, we consider the average of the past 12 months (so from June 2011 to May 2012). I expect the value to go up to around $125,000 per shareholder (so the total company would be worth $250,000). This would jump my assets by more than 10% in a single month. I don’t think it’s exaggerated to think that my company worth this much since it currently has the possibility of paying me $18,000 per year in dividend (which is currently used to pay off corporate debts). Assuming a capital value of $125,000, the company will eventually pay me a 14% dividend on my investment… not too bad, huh?

One of my Personal Goals is Achieved!

At the beginning of the year, one of my most important goal for me was to open a RESP account (special account to fund my children’s tuition) and invest $200/month in it. Well last week, I opened it! The $200 systematic investment will start in June. By the time that my oldest boy reaches 18, I’ll have gathered 44K in today’s dollar (assuming a 2,25% inflation rate and 5,25% investment return). This will pay 15K per kid on top of the fact that my youngest will start withdrawing 6 years after the first one. So I’ll probably have the time to build a 50K+ nest egg to pay for tuition. Considering that the cost of education is super low in Quebec, this should be more than enough to pay for University.

The $200/month systematic investment will replace my daughter’s private daycare cost in our monthly budget. We pay $360/month for 3 days/week ($30/day) and this ends in June! This means that in July, I’ll be generating an additional $160/month to pay off my debts faster while I will contribute to my children’s future! How cool is that?

I’ll Need Help To Drop Under $300,000 in Debts!

As of June, I’ll have around $21,000 (including the darn pool loan!) over the $300K debt I want to reach by the end of the year. This means that I will have to pay down for $3,500/month worth of debt… ouch! At least, I can count on my employer’s stocks along with a few thousand in dividends from my company. My last resort will be my year-end bonus but I can’t expect much from it this year since I’m starting from scratch. I’ll definitely need to chill by the pool this summer and leave my wallet in the drawer!

Assets:

ASSETS	PREVIOUS MONTH ($)	CURRENT MONTH ($)	CHANGE (%)
CHECKING ACCOUNT	$1 000	$1 000	0,0%
EMPLOYER STOCK ACCOUNT	$3 898	$4 319	10,8%
RRSP ACCOUNT	$28 628	$28 763	0,5%
PENSION PLAN	$20 218	$20 218	0,0%
HOME	$345 640	$345 640	0,0%
COMPANY SHARES	$98 000	$98 000	0,0%
MAZDA TRIBUTE	$16 492	$16 058	-2,6%
MAZDA RX-8	$4 400	$4 000	-9,1%
TOTAL	$518 276	$517 998	-0,1%

Debts:

DEBTS	PREVIOUS MONTH ($)	CURRENT MONTH ($)	CHANGE (%)
CREDIT CARD	$6 371	$6 672	4,7%
LINE OF CREDIT	$19 945	$19 900	-0,2%
HELOC	$263 400	$263 433	0,0%
CAR LOAN	$16 492	$16 058	-2,6%
Personal Loan	$10 208	$9 999	-2,0%
TOTAL	$316 416	$316 062	-0,1%

This is an “interesting” moment for my blog and whole online company right now. The blogging industry has moved, once again, towards another business model. I’ve discussed how I intend to survive Google. In a few weeks, my partner and I will be discussing how we will “attack” 2012-2013 (our company fiscal year ends on June 30^th, this is why we meet in May-June each year). This is always a very important moment in the year as we determine which projects will be developed and how we will use our free cash flow. The interesting point with our company is that we don’t really need to withdraw money from it to live. Therefore, we can do pretty much what we want with the money. My perception of things has changed slightly over the past few months though…

What Changed in Early 2012

There are 2 things that have drastically changed my perception of the business in early 2012. The first thing was the major purchase we made at the beginning of the year. Everything was running smoothly and we were on target to achieve our best year in terms of gross income. Revenues have never been so high and expenses were kept relatively low. I was ecstatic to buy another site and once again grow our online empire. For us, we were going to make $15K/month in no time with this acquisition. We even borrowed money to complete our acquisition.

Then, there was the Google PR Slap in March. This has created a huge commotion in the PF blogging industry. Several bloggers were penalized by losing their Page Rank or by a drop in traffic from the November 2^nd Panda Update (there was also the Penguin update in April… is Google starting a zoo?). Fortunately, our sites have been spared from these modifications. Even better, our traffic has never been stronger than of late!

But this was a huge warning sign for our business model. Private advertisers were going to drop significantly in 2012. That was the message we understood and have since acted accordingly. This is why we decreased the number of private advertisers significantly and I guess they will eventually fade away. Obviously, this comes with a drop in gross revenue! To be honest, our gross revenue is now back to what it was at the beginning of 2011. We lost approximately the equivalent of 1 year of gross revenue progression. The good news is that we are making a lot more money with other sources of income and we have diversified our business even more.

Goal #1 Paying Our Debts

As is the case with my own personal finances, one of the goals for our online company in 2012-2013 will be paying off our debts. Since February 2012, we started an aggressive debt repayment structure. This is why we are reimbursing $3,000/month on our corporate debts. At this pace, we will end-up paying them off pretty fast J. We have decided to do this because I think it’s time the company starts to pay us a little bit more to our pockets. Since we can’t do it as long as we have debts, it’s important to clear our loans before thinking about ourselves (no iPad for me in 2012! Doh!).

Goal #2 Cut down our Expenses

These aggressive payments combined with a revenue drop are no very good for our free cash flow. This is why we are looking at cutting down on expenses. For 2 years, we have been investing massively in our sites. This was a smart move as they grew significantly. However, we noticed recently that some of our expenses were now used to “maintain” some sites that don’t necessarily generate enough income to justify our spending. This is why we will cut $500/month in expenses in the next 12 months. We have already started to examine our situation and will be cutting in content and servers.

The interesting point is that both content and server quality are super important. We can’t cut on quality… but we surely can cut on quantity! I noticed that most of our blogs would do just fine with 2 updates/week (don’t worry, I’m not cutting on TFB! I just love to write on it!). This is why we are cutting the number of posts and will generate the same traffic and the same income. We have tried different things to improve our sites over the past 12 months and noticed that some didn’t work (like increasing the number of posts). This is why we can cut back and make our company more profitable!

Goal #3 Create Money!

I mentioned it on this blog, 2012 will be an important year for our company. This will be the year where we will finally know if it can be a successful company or a great sideline. The latter will make me work my day job longer  . I truly enjoy what I do but the perspective of being semi-retired at the age of 35 sounds better… no kidding! We absolutely need to find other ways to make money and the solution lies within products and affiliate marketing. Today (yeah… as you are reading this very article), I’m trying to monetize one of my newsletters. I hope this will show a better result than my $463 email. This time, I hope to write about my $1,000 email . My partner doesn’t like when I go crazy with my “astrological predictions”, but let’s just say that if I convert my offer at a 3% rate, I will make $2,000. 3% is usually the average conversion rate in the industry… I just hope that I’m on target with “the industry”! The problem is that the “industry” range is quite wide when you talk about the blogging universe! Oh well, I’ll let you know shortly!

Is The Storm Over Yet? … I Don’t Care

Most bloggers probably wonder if the Google storm is over or if there will be other updates or slaps that will jeopardize their online money making machines. In all honesty, I don’t really care. I don’t care because the latest changes forced me to think differently about my business. Those events pushed us to develop our own branding, our own products and to keep our own traffic by providing great content. You follow The Financial Blogger most likely because you like my writing and like to follow my entrepreneurial adventures. You didn’t find me through Google anyways . I think we are only at the beginning of the storm and those who think it will just slow down are blind. I was blind for a while too… and I thought I could make over 15K/month this year…. Now I have opened my eyes and know that the storm is not over and that 15K will be darn hard to make…. But only for this year!

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Carnivals are important to the personal finance community and other niches as well. It’s a great opportunity to build links, find new blogs, gain exposure, and to pick up some momentum as a new blogger. I also love to see bloggers coming together to help each other out.

This is why it’s important to give back and share the link love.

Carnival of Personal Finance : Arguably the most popular carnival in this niche.

Carnival of Personal Finance #361 – The Mothers Day Edition @ One Cent at a Time.

Carnival of Personal Finance: The Color Wheel Edition @ Money Talks Coach.

Carnival of Personal Finance #359 – Most Expensive Bottles of Wine – April 30th, 2012 Edition @ MPFJ.

Carnival of Financial Planning:

Carnival of Financial Planning – Money Management Edition #235 @ Cult of Money.

Carnival of Financial Planning – Money Management Edition #236 – May 11, 2012 @ Prairie Eco-Thrifter.

Best of Money Carnival:

Best of Money Carnival #155 @ Stock Market Basics. The Dividend Guy Blog was mentioned in this edition.

There are many other carnivals out there. Please feel free to mention them in the comments section.

Please continue submitting your articles to carnivals and sharing the link love!

I’ve actually seen two sides to losing a job. I’ve seen friends bounce back stronger than ever by finding better work that paid more. Getting fired can be like getting out of a toxic relationship. You’re finally released from prison and now able to do anything that you want with your time. I’ve met at least 5 personal finance bloggers that lost their jobs and then went full-time blogging after. Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income and Bob of Christian PF are two that come to mind.

I’ve also seen the flip side, the negative reaction to getting fired. This is a complete depression from losing a job. This is the feeling that you’re useless and not good enough to work. I saw a friend go through this in 2009 when he got fired from a job, not because of the economy, but because of his own foolishness. This person in question had been warned and progressively disciplined. He felt that he was untouchable because he had some friends in the company. He screwed up one time too many and ended up getting fired permanently. I saw him spiral into a year long period of depression after this. He lost his girlfriend and became unbearable to most of his old friends. He had no motivation to do anything. He slept on his brother’s couch and felt sorry for himself.

The point here is that losing a job can be inspirational for some and total doom for others. You can bounce back higher. You can also become very depressed for a long time.

How can losing your job be the best thing for you? Allow me to explain the positives of losing a job for those of you that are completely worried about getting fired tomorrow morning:

• You’re free to work on your own projects.
• Your health will improve because of the reduction in stress.
• You can finally move.
• There are better jobs out there.
• You’re no longer comfortable. You’re now working harder than ever.
• You’ll have more time for your friends and family.
• You’ll finally get that vacation you’ve been dying for.
• You’ll be humbled in a huge way.

Getting fired isn’t that bad, right? All I’m suggesting is that losing one job isn’t the end of the world. This is also why I often promote the idea of making money on your own.

What would you do if you got fired tomorrow? Would this be the best thing for you?

I got an email from Blake last week (a fellow planner and loyal TFB reader). He’s a really good, honest planner and knows that he can add a lot of value for his clients. He is meticulous and is always looking to improve his clients’ situations. In other words, he’s part of us good guys . He told me that he was able to close almost everybody that he meets in a one-on-one conversation. The problem is that he would like to get more clients (who doesn’t want to make more money anyways, huh?). In our business, there are 2 ways to gain clients:

1-      Referrals (from existing and happy clients)

2-      Cold Calls

This is the same situation for most businesses in fact. You either get a reference from a buddy or client of yours or you pick up the phone and book a meeting by yourself. Life is easy when you get a referral since the potential client has been sold on you by someone he can trust. Therefore, he is willing to give you 2 super important things you need as an entrepreneur (advisor, salesmen, representative, etc):

1-      Time (he will allow you to meet him)

2-      An open mind (he will actually listen to what you have to say and might even ask questions to know more)

Ironically, this is exactly what you don’t have when you make a cold call. Most people don’t have enough time in a day to do what they enjoy doing the most (whatever it might be), so why the hell would they have time to listen to you? Chances are that you are distracting them from a very important task (according to them) when you call.

If you think you don’t have the time for someone who calls you, the first thing you think of is “how can I politely hang-up ASAP?”.  The word “politely” is probably your only chance of having more than 30 seconds with the prospect. Some people just don’t care and will hang-up on the spot. For this type of client, I don’t have many tricks… but when I have more than 30 seconds, I’ve developed a few techniques to make my way through. I’m not an expert in cold calling and still have a lot to learn about it. On the other hand, I’m able to get an appointment every 4 calls I make. In all honesty, you should expect 1 appointment per 20 calls at first, then it will rapidly drop to 1 appt /10 calls and then can become better at selecting your prospects to hit a 20-25% batting average after a few months. My techniques don’t apply to all types of cold calling as I’m in a profession that offers high value services. I guess that most of these techniques would not work if you are a telemarketer selling credit card insurance! Here’s how I do it:

Be Confident

If you are not convinced that you can truly and genuinely help the person you are calling, don’t even bother dialing the phone number. You need to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. What’s in it for the client? Don’t answer this crucial question by the characteristics of your products and services. Answer this question with benefits for the clients. Don’t think about you, think about the client. What would make YOU change your mind about someone calling you? The very first thing is the confidence of that person who thinks that he can truly make your life better.

If you are not confident in your services/products, I suggest you check with other colleagues, your boss, a mentor to enhance this part of your offer. Without confidence, you won’t get a single appointment.

Prepare a Script But Don’t Over Prepare

Anxiety starts when you are about to pick-up the phone. This is when you “don’t feel ready” and want to practice again. It’s important to have a short script with a few “pick-up lines”. But don’t over practice your script. It has to be natural to avoid going on for 4 minutes without breathing and without letting your prospect talk. He won’t listen anyways. Your script should be split in 3 parts:

a)      Who you are (Hello Mr. X, It Mike from XYZ situated at and I’m doing ABC)

This quick intro is just to tell your prospect that you are a real person working for a real company doing a real job. I personally ask my prospects how he is doing. This usually generates a small “fine” tainted by either a small interest but most of the time I know that the client is annoyed already. This is when I jump into the second part of my script:

b)      What you are doing / what you are offering

This part must be less than 1.5 minutes if you want to make sure the client doesn’t lose interest and that you can ask him a question that he will answer (because he is still listening). The point in that 90 second timeframe is to go directly to what you do best (what’s in it for the client). It doesn’t really matter which point you want to highlight as long as you sound very confident and that your 90 seconds ends with a question. This question should lead to interaction with the client so you become more “human” and less “that annoying telemarketer”. You want to engage in a conversation and “open doors” which is part 3:

c)       Asks questions to open doors

By asking questions of your prospect to know with whom he deals with, why he deals with them, if he has heard of “XYZ” strategy or products, if he knows how much it costs him, etc. The point is to get the prospect talking about his situation and note everything he says. With this information you should be able to open doors to an appointment. The door opening comes when the prospect gives a “weak” answer such as:

Why are you doing business with them?

-          Because I’ve always been (meaning he never considered another option)

Have you heard of XYZ strategy / product that can help you do ABC?

-          No, never heard of that (here’s your chance to explain what is it, make it sound interesting and to book an appointment to explain the whole strategy/product)

Do you know how much it costs you?

-          Not really / It’s been a long time I haven’t check that / Yeah, it’s $$$ (You can then offer something cheaper in most cases)

When is the last time you met with your advisor? Did he check everything, not just the investments?

-          I met him last week, 6 months ago, he just looked at my investments (now’s your chance to offer a global approach).

Are you convinced that your bank is offering you the most? Would you allow me to confirm that with you?

After you have opened at least one door, you can “close the call” by offering the following:

Here’s what I offer; you take 45 minutes to meet with me, I’ll even go to your office. Within 30 minutes, I’ll guarantee you 2 things:

-          I’ll offer you something you never heard of

-          You won’t be wasting your time with me

There is absolutely no obligation on your side. The worse that will happen is that you will have spent 45 minutes with a professional and will have a few questions for your own advisor to challenge him.

It won’t work all the time as many folks won’t answer your questions and you will be left with very little ammo to convince them to meet you. For those situations, I don’t have any tricks yet. But for those who give you a few more seconds to prove yourself, you will definitely hit a question that will open a door and will allow you to book your appointment. Then, the only thing that you need to do is to ask him a few more questions “in order to present the right thing for him and not waste his time”. You do that once the appointment is scheduled so the prospect will be willing to give you additional information.

All you need to do after that is to prepare a killer presentation!

How would you react if a professional (not a vacuum salesman) called you with that approach? Would you give him 90 seconds to prove his point?

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It’s a total coincidence, but it seems that I’m making a lot of confessions this week. After telling you how I feel at work (I’m already doing better now!), I want to share some failures I have had in the past with regards to my business ventures. Believe it or not, this is not at my first attempt to build a company and not my first partnership either.

When I was in University, I started a small computer business. We were building new computers and repairing old ones. I didn’t know much about computers (like I don’t know much about tech stuff today!). But I liked computers and already had that entrepreneur bug in me. One of my friends was really good at opening up computer boxes and playing with them. On the other hand, he wasn’t much into sales and didn’t know how to start a small business (account openings, accounting, etc). At first, we thought we could do something pretty good. In fact, we had about $20,000 in sales during our first year. Considering that it was our third job (I was going full time at University and working 35 hours per week on deliveries), I think it was pretty good!

Nonetheless, this great partnership ended about 18 months after we sold our first computer. I was going to study abroad for a session and my friend didn’t want to sell computers by himself for 6 months. The company was closed upon my return from Europe without much drama. In fact, it felt like we both have lost the will to continue and wanted to move on… the funny part is that we didn’t have any other side projects and we just stopped having a profitable sideline for no clear reason. Since the computer business is fairly aggressive and new players like Dell were entering the Canadian market, I doubt that we would have built a multimillion dollar company with this sideline. Although I still think that we could have made a lot more money! Ten years later, I can look back and see why we failed. It’s not a specific reason but a group of them.

Lack of Planning

Most people start their business or sideline without a plan. They think that a good idea, a profitable niche and some talent are enough to succeed. They are all wrong. If you plan to head across the United States by car, you will need a plan. If you only have the good idea (going from the East Coast to the West Coast), with a good car and great friends, this won’t be enough to build a memorable trip. However, if you check out the right roads to pick, the right places to make pit stops and the right cities to visit in between, you can have the trip of your life. This doesn’t mean that you won’t get to the West Coast without a plan, but you may lose your way at times! This is the same thing with a business; if you don’t have a direction, if you don’t know where you are going, you will eventually get lost. While getting lost in a car could lead to some great stories, when you get lost with your business, you usually lose money along the way. I doubt this is what you want!

We never took the time to write a plan and it showed. There was no replacement when I left and no way for us to grow rapidly. Fast growth is one of the things that will keep an entrepreneur busy and, therefore, motivated. If you just work your sideline when you have some free time, you will eventually be bored and quit. This is true with your business, your blog and this is also true for most hobbies. Who can say they like soccer and play once every three months? I don’t call it playing a sport!

Lack of Communication

When I go pee while working on my sites, I tell my partner. This is how transparent we are about communication… okay… maybe I’m exaggerating! Seriously, if you don’t say what you do, what you like and what you don’t like on a weekly basis (we are actually doing it on a daily basis but that’s because we are best friends), you won’t make it over time. It’s important to mention what you don’t like the very same minute it starts to annoy you. If not, it grows bigger, becomes a problem and are then stuck with a huge situation to deal with. Intense communication is always very cool to exchange ideas and brainstorm. Each time I have an idea, good or bad, I send a quick email to my partner. These emails are sent at 4 am when my friend wakes up early and can’t sleep, at 10 am right after I met a client and got a flash or at midnight because we are not both sleeping . We basically send emails every day for anything. Most of our ideas are poor to be honest and the other partner analyzes it in a heartbeat. But from time to time, we generate some awesome ideas and can develop them the very same day.

Sharing the Same Goals

One of the biggest reasons why you will succeed in your partnership is if you and your partner share the same goals. The problem is it’s usually the case at the beginning of the partnership. But life evolves, you meet someone, get married, move out of town, start an MBA, have kids, want to travel, need money, ready to invest a big chunk of money, etc. We actually went through all of the situations mentioned above and we are still doing business. Why? We share our goals and discuss the company’s situation as well as our personal situation. We then know what to expect from each other and understand that we go through special events once in a while that allow us to work more or less on our sites. I clearly didn’t have see anything similar the first time I started a business and this is why we ended-up miles away from each other and never realized it until the company closed.

Blind Trust

There is one person that I can trust with my life in this world and it’s my partner. But this naïve confidence doesn’t come from our partnership but from a 40 day trip across Europe when we were 20. We saw each other in all emotional states and supported each other. At no moment did we get annoyed by the other even though we went through some epic debates. And when I talk about epic debates, I talk about two to three hours of debate on a single topic in the middle of a park, a museum or simply in our hotel. I guess this is why I can trust him and he can trust me the way we do it!

This Doesn’t Mean That You Should Cover Yourself

While we trust ourselves more than brothers, we still setup our business “the right way”. We have a shareholder agreement where we determined how we value the company and how one can buy the other (shotgun clause). If we were ever to split, everything has been written down and agreed in this contract. If you are serious about going into business with someone, you should do everything with the same seriousness.

Don’t Think About Money

My final advice about having a partner is to avoid concentrating about money. If you do it, you will start counting your hours and watching your friend. Setup goals instead and split tasks. It’s a lot more effective and you won’t concentrate on who’s bringing the money to the table. That doesn’t matter. What matters is if you have fun or not and if you want to grow the business. There is no “star player” on our team, we are just TWO geniuses doing their job hahaha!

Readers, are you or have you been in a partnership? What have you learned from it?

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An eye-opener in this post is some thoughts on red bull and vodka:

“The alcohol tries to slow you down, the caffeine tries to speed you up – your body has no effing clue what to do.”

Every young person going to a party after a long day of school or work, has tried this concoction of red bull and vodka.

Some interesting thoughts on drinking in your diet:

“I believe drinking can be done occasionally, in moderation, and a desirable healthy lifestyle can still be achieved.”

The best advice on drinking altogether:

Volunteer to be the designated driver.  That way, your friends will love you and OWE you as they don’t need to pay for a cab, and you have a built in excuse why you’re not drinking.

Do you cut out drinking when trying to lose weight?

I understand that anyone with a family, kids, a mortgage, car payments, or any other real responsibilities is obviously going to want job security. You want to know how much money you’re going to have coming in so that you can cover your current expenses and plan for the future. I totally understand that aspect of job security. Nobody wants to work in an industry with a high turnover rate when they have a family because they want to be able to put food on the table.

There’s one problem though. I want to ask you a simple question:

Do you care about job security too much?

I’ve recently encountered buddies that are far too concerned with job security. These are talented young people that could reach their goals if they worked for it Allow me to share a quick story.

At my part-time job, a friend of mine took a full-time position. His new position doesn’t fulfill him at all and he gets paid enough just to not quit. He’s never happy at work nor does he feel stimulated for one minute, yet he chose to accept a permanent position. Why did he do this? Because he feels that his job his stable and he wants job security. I think that he’s far too talented to be concerned about job security.

Should 25 year olds care about job security?

I don’t think so. At this age you have all of the energy in the world and you’re ready to grab a hold of life. Sure it helps to have a steady gig so that you can budget your money. I get that part. However, your only concern shouldn’t be money in your 20s. You could be apart of something remarkable or work on stuff that actually interests you. You can get that steady job in a few years. You don’t have to settle for the first secure gig that comes your way in your 20s.

When is job security important?

• When you have bills to pay.
• When you don’t have a backup plan.
• When you don’t have an emergency fund.
• When you prefer stability.

Should you quit your job, following your passions, and travel the world?

“Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.” — Seth Godin

Not at all. As much as I praise the idea of “working for yourself/following your passions” or whatever else you want to call, I do realize that it’s not for everyone. I have buddies that are huge risk takers in real life, but don’t care for risks with their income. Not everyone is meant to be self-employed and traveling the world like Tim Ferriss. It’s cool to work for a small startup or to accept work in a field that has a high turnover rate. You don’t have to ditch job security for self-employment.

I recently brought up a challenge to make an additional $5,000 in freelance income this summer because I do believe that we all have the potential to make more money in our 20s. We just get too distracted with dating, media, and other useless crap. If we can filter out the useless stuff once in a while, we can make find time to work on cool stuff.