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"Get a good job, work hard, enjoy your life, and retire in comfort"
No matter how much education we receive through high school, and even college, the one thing lacking in our education is how to manage our careers, our money, and finances efficiently. Most of us were raised with the philosophy, "Get a good job, work hard, enjoy your life, and retire in comfort." And, if all that was true, life would be great!
The world we live in does not conform to anyone's pre-conceived notions. If we are fortunate enough to get a good job, working hard is not necessarily a guarantee of success. Quite often, our measure of success in our careers may be affected by forces that we never even considered when we went to work. We start our first job wide-eyed and innocent, thinking that we can accomplish anything...INVINCIBLE! But soon corporate politics, manipulation, and back-stabbing can all play a part in our forward progress. One of the first things we might be forced to learn is "how to play the game". At some point in time we may be faced with choices that require us to sacrifice our integrity to land a big promotion. We might be asked to set our principles aside "in the company's best interests". At very least, we will often be asked to put our family on the back burner to complete tasks that were assigned to us. In any case, going to work has already begun to alter the way we look at life in one way or another.
In 1950, approximately 22% of married women worked outside of the home. By 1960 that number had grown to approximately 31%. Today, among married couple families, two-thirds of mothers are employed (67.3%) and nearly three-quarters of unmarried mothers (73.2%). The workplace has changed dramatically over the last 70 years accompanied by the change in the family dynamic. "Working hard" has taken on a new meaning. Spending quality time with our families and, subsequently, "enjoying life" as well. Families are challenged with juggling their work and home-life balance to ensure time with children and their increasingly busy schedules. To make things worse, children are challenged to resist peer pressure and adapt to a world full of less-than-favorable choices and stay on a positive path of their own. This makes it even harder for these working parents to thrive in their careers and find a realistic measure of security in the family stability. Once again, our original philosophy is strained.
There are really five categories built around our money; (1) Earning the money. (2) Paying the bills. (3) Giving/blessing others with the money. (4) Saving money. and, (5) Enjoying all of the first four categories.
What's New...
Let's talk about retirement.
Are you retired?
If so, was it your choice or someone else's?
In the world we grew up in, retirement was designed to be something we strived to achieve. The "magical" time in our lives when we were able to stop sitting in traffic on our way to punching the clock for someone who told us when to arrive at work, what to do while we were at work, and when it was OK to go home. It was supposed to be the time when we could stop and take time to enjoy our families and the hard-earned rewards we were able to accumulate along the way. Now, retirement can take on several personas. While it's wonderful if a person is able to follow that yellow brick road that ends at the destination they originally planned for, many find that they became a victim of a system that decided they needed to retire whether they were ready to do so, OR NOT!