How Does Valuing Money Affect Your Happiness?

How Does Valuing Money Affect Your Happiness?

Two new studies find that tying your self-worth to financial success hampers happiness and well-being—even for the well-off.

By Jill Suttie

It may seem that money is a sure path to prestige and happiness. After all, many of our most well-paid citizens are held up as role models of success, leading seemingly perfect, enviable lives. Still, some people embrace the opposite idea: Money can’t buy you happiness. So, which of these is right?

In recent studies, scientists have found that the connection between wealth and well-being is not clear-cut. While some studies seem to tie wealth to well-being, others show that, after a certain point, a higher income will not bring more happiness or life satisfaction.

Now two new studies shed further light on the relationship between wealth and happiness. Their findings suggest that money doesn’t fulfill basic psychological needs, like belonging and competence. That’s why making more of it will not increase your happiness, even if you value money above other things. In fact, it may do the opposite.

What Money Can And Can’t Do For You

In one study, University of Buffalo researcher Lora Park and her colleagues investigated what happens when people tie their self-worth to financial success, scoring high on the “Financial Contingency of Self-Worth” scale, or FCWS. The researchers found that doing so made people engage in more social comparisons, experience more stress and anxiety, and feel less autonomy than those who didn’t tie their self-worth to income, regardless of their actual economic status.

“People in this society are often focused on pursuing money, and they don’t think there is anything bad about that,” says Park. “But in terms of your psychological well-being, there are all kinds of negative consequences.”

It also might affect your problem-solving ability. Park and her colleagues randomly assigned participants to write about their dissatisfaction with either an aspect of their financial situation—like not having enough money to pay rent—or their academic performance, like getting a bad test grade. Afterwards, they reported on what coping strategies they would use in response to the situation.

Research assistants analyzed the essays and found that participants who scored high in FCSW used more emotionally negative words and reported more disengagement strategies—like giving up or avoiding solutions—when writing about a financial stressor versus an academic stressor than people scoring low in FCSW. None of the results were affected by the actual income of the students.

People who are facing a problem should, logically, be focused on figuring out ways to solve it, says Park. “But what we found is that high financial contingency of self-worth somehow blocks that response.”

Why would this be?

Park believes that when people feel their self-concept is threatened in some way, they will become more self-protective so as not to experience low self-esteem. So, if your self-esteem is tied to money, a financial stressor will cause a lot more stress than it would for someone who doesn’t feel that way. Some support for her argument comes from another part of her experiment, where having participants high in FCSW remind themselves of their character strengths—like their intelligence or sense of humor—seemed to negate these avoidance effects.

When your self-image takes a hit, reflect on what matters

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_does_valuing_money_affect_your_happiness

Here’s Why “Plan A” Really Stinks

Here’s Why “Plan A” Really Stinks

Notes From the Field By Simon Black Sovereign Man  July 18, 2023

The legendary walls of Constantinople were supposed to have been impenetrable. At least, that’s what the citizens thought. But shortly after midnight on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, they watched in horror as Turkmen mercenaries from the Ottoman Empire breached a section of the walls that had stood proudly for more than 1,000 years. The city fell hours later.

Ottoman soldiers looted and pillaged Constantinople with such barbarous ferocity that their ruler, Mehmed II, was said to have wept when he inspected the city three days later, remarking, “What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction.”

Prior to the Ottoman siege, Constantinople had been the capital of the Byzantine Empire… which was for centuries one of the most powerful empires in the world.

Byzantium was the legitimate continuation of the original Roman Empire; Constantinople was even initially known as “Nova Roma,” or New Rome.

But over time, the Byzantine Empire became weaker and weaker, just as the Roman Empire before it.

And, similar to Rome, many Byzantine emperors were legendary for their incompetence. A 2012 study from the medical journal Geriatrics & Gerontology International, in fact, concluded that at least seven Byzantine emperors exhibited signs of pathological confusion consistent with dementia.

Byzantine rulers squandered the empire’s wealth, inflated the currency, and failed to secure their borders.

They engaged in disastrous trade and economic policy. They adopted highly unpopular social positions that were out of touch with mainstream citizens… then canceled anyone who disagreed with them. Some ideological dissidents were exiled, while others were blinded or had their tongues cut out.

Political blunders led to humiliating defeats of the Byzantine’s once-dominant military, causing a severe loss of the empire’s reputation around the world.

They failed to keep up with their rising adversaries; as rivals like the Ottoman Empire and Venice grew more powerful, many Byzantine rulers ignored the obvious threats and continued to mismanage the empire.

Just like Rome, there were occasionally strong Byzantine emperors who undid some of the damage of their predecessors. But they couldn’t stop the inevitable decline.

And by the time the Ottoman armies approached in the spring of 1453, the Byzantine Empire was done. It wasn’t even an empire at that point; at just a few square miles, it was no larger than the size of a small county in Rhode Island.

Yet even with such an obvious decline-- and even with an invading army moving towards their city-- the residents of Constantinople clung to the past… to the idea that their empire and city were still invincible.

As a result, many people did absolutely nothing in the face of such obvious danger. They just sat and watched Ottoman engineers chip away, brick by brick, until the walls fell.

This is what I call “Plan A”, i.e. do nothing. Hope for the best.

Misguided optimism is a powerful force in human nature: our instincts are great at detecting threats. But our brains make us want to ignore these threats and assume that everything will be OK... because it always has been in the past.

This is why people consistently misplace their confidence in a system that produces terrible leaders who have a track record of deceit, corruption, or incompetence. And this irrational trust in a broken system is at the core of “Plan A”.

The fall of Constantinople is just one example; “Plan A” is very common throughout history… and we can certainly see a lot of it today, especially in the West.

To illustrate, here are a few obvious examples of some serious challenges facing the United States:

1) It was only four months ago that the US financial system was in dire straits. Multiple banks failed due to the negative impact of rising interest rates on their bond portfolios. And then, poof, ‘confidence’ was restored and everyone started pretending like the problem had gone away.

And yet even the FDIC announced last month that banks are still sitting on over $500 BILLION worth of unrealized losses in their bond portfolios. Meanwhile, bank customers withdrew $472 billion worth of deposits last quarter-- the largest withdrawal EVER since record keeping began in 1984.

This massive flight of deposits coupled with historic unrealized bond losses is one of the worst combinations for a bank to suffer. And this doesn’t even include the potential losses that banks will suffer from a looming commercial real estate meltdown.

Yet most of the market is still happy to pretend that everything is just fine, and to misplace their trust in a financial system that has consistently deceived them. It’s classic Plan A.

2) Social Security is another example. The program’s trustees state very clearly that Social Security’s key funds will run out of money within 10 years.

What is the government doing about it? Nothing. What are most individuals doing about it? Nothing.

It’s Plan A: let’s just pretend that everything will be OK despite all rational evidence to the contrary.

This barely scratches the surface of the challenges. There’s the national debt, crumbling education system, weaponization of government agencies, cancel culture, the increasing likelihood of the US dollar losing its dominance, etc.

The larger point is that you have options and the power of choice. And, as I’ve been writing about for more than a decade now, this is what a “Plan B” is all about.

Unlike “Plan A”, a “Plan B” is a rational way of looking at the world… not from a position of fear, but from a position of strength. It acknowledges obvious risks, yet it takes sensible, non-disruptive steps to reduce their impact.

For example, if there’s a credible risk of mostly peaceful protesters taking over your neighborhood and declaring a new, woke republic, it’s probably too disruptive to pick up your family and move to Timbuktu tomorrow morning.

But it would be sensible to consider other places to go, and even have another residence at the ready.

There are obvious threats to Social Security as well. Yet there are plenty of great options available to take charge of your retirement with robust structures like a solo 401(k).

The beauty of a “Plan B” is that you won’t be worse off for having done any of it. You won’t be worse off for having a more secure retirement… or having a smaller tax bill, second residency, stronger asset protection, greater freedom, more privacy, diversified investments, etc.

These are all sensible things to do regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen next.

Yet if this trajectory of incompetence and decline continues in the West, a solid “Plan B” ensures you’ll be in a position of strength when it really counts.

To your freedom,  Simon Black, Founder  Sovereign Man

https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/heres-why-plan-a-really-stinks-147862/

9 Out of 10 People Are Willing to Earn Less Money to Do More-Meaningful Work

9 Out of 10 People Are Willing to Earn Less Money to Do More-Meaningful Work

Shawn Achor   Andrew Reece   Gabriella Rosen Kellerman   Alexi Robichaux

In his introduction to Working, the landmark 1974 oral history of work, Studs Terkel positioned meaning as an equal counterpart to financial compensation in motivating the American worker. “[Work] is about a search…for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor,” he wrote.

 Among those “happy few” he met who truly enjoyed their labors, Terkel noted a common attribute: They had “a meaning to their work over and beyond the reward of the paycheck.”

 More than forty years later, myriad studies have substantiated the claim that American workers expect something deeper than a paycheck in return for their labors. Current compensation levels show only a marginal relationship with job satisfaction.

​By contrast, since 2005, the importance of meaningfulness in driving job selection has grown steadily. “Meaning is the new money, an HBR article argued in 2011. Why, then, haven’t more organizations taken concrete actions to focus their cultures on the creation of meaning?

 To date, business leaders have lacked two key pieces of information they need in order to act on the finding that meaning drives productivity. First, any business case hinges on the ability to translate meaning, as an abstraction, into dollars.

 Just how much is meaningful work actually worth? How much of an investment in this area is justified by the promised returns? And second: How can organizations actually go about fostering meaning?

 We set out to answer these questions at BetterUp this past year, as a follow-up to our study on loneliness at work. Our Meaning and Purpose at Work report, released today, surveyed the experience of workplace meaning among 2,285 American professionals, across 26 industries and a range of pay levels, company sizes, and demographics. The height of the price tag that workers place on meaning surprised us all.

The Dollars (and Sense) of Meaningful Work

Our first goal was to understand how widely held the belief is that meaningful work is of monetary value. More than 9 out of 10 employees, we found, are willing to trade a percentage of their lifetime earnings for greater meaning at work. Across age and salary groups, workers want meaningful work badly enough that they’re willing to pay for it.

The trillion dollar question, then, was just how much is meaning worth to the individual employee? If you could find a job that offered you consistent meaning, how much of your current salary would you be willing to forego to do it? We asked this of our 2,000+ respondents.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://hbr.org/2018/11/9-out-of-10-people-are-willing-to-earn-less-money-to-do-more-meaningful-work

One Decision Separates the Wealthy From the Non-Wealthy

One Decision Separates the Wealthy From the Non-Wealthy

Dr Benjamin Hardy

“Courage can be developed. But it cannot be nurtured in an environment that eliminates all risks, all difficulty, all dangers. It takes considerable courage to work in an environment in which one is compensated according to one’s performance. Most affluent people have courage. What evidence supports this statement? Most affluent people in America are either business owners or employees who are paid on an incentive basis.”   — Dr. Thomas Stanley

The problem with most people’s lives is that they are being shielded from the consequences of their behavior. There’s little to no accountability.

The fastest way to make success inevitable in your life is to only do work that is incentive-based. Only do that which you are rewarded and punished for the quality of your work. Everything you do needs to matter to the outcomes, consequences, and results you get in life.

So what is the decision?

The decision is to take complete ownership of every decision in your life. And how you do that is by only doing things in which you are compensated based on performance.

This goes completely against the norms in society. It goes against public education — which shields people from progressing at their own rates. It goes against most job structures, wherein a person is paid an hourly rate or salary.

If you want to make dramatic strides forward, you must only work in environments where the consequences of your actions are immediate and REAL. You need to be demanded by your situation to come up with a result.

This article will show you how:

Are You A Part Of The “Results Economy”?

Founder of the exclusive entrepreneurial coaching platform, Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan distinguishes between those who are in the “Time-and-Effort Economy” with those who are in the “Results Economy.”

If you’re in the time and effort economy, you are focused on being busy. You actually believe the amount of time and energy you put into something merits praise. Those who are focused on being “busy” are protected in some way from the consequences of their actions. 

They’re not being forced by necessity to come up with a solution. Chances are, they are an employee. They are part of a bureaucracy. And they’re striving to follow rules rather than break them.

Conversely, when you are in the results economy, you are only focused on achieving a specific result. You are focused on results because if you don’t get the result, there will be consequences to pay — for you and others. 

You’re not worried about your reputation. You’re not worried about following the rules of ridiculous systems which are seeking to make you their slave anyways.

Dr. Thomas Stanley found in his research that those who are paid based on RESULTS are most courageous and also the most wealthy.

You actually have to take risks.

You can’t be sheltered from the consequences of your behavior.

And you certainly can’t be a part of a system which supports “busyness” to maintain the status quo. Hence, Dan Sullivan says:

Entrepreneurs have crossed “the risk line” from the “Time-and-Effort Economy” to the “Results Economy.” For them, there’s no guaranteed income, no one writing them a paycheck every two weeks. They live by their ability to generate opportunity by creating value for their clientele.

Sometimes, they — and you — will put in a lot of time and effort and get no result. Other times, they don’t put in much time and effort and get a big result. The focus for entrepreneurs always has to be on results or there’s no revenue coming in.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/one-decision-separates-the-wealthy-from-the-non-wealthy

The Number One Reason Most People Are Broke Or Have No Emergency Fund

The Number One Reason Most People Are Broke Or Have No Emergency Fund

June 14, 2021 by Todd Kunsman

I’m sure if you are reading this, you’ve come across other articles that talk about the importance of building your savings or having some sort of an emergency fund.  Whether that be for an unexpected medical bill, something breaks down in your car, etc.  I’m not personally a fan of the “emergency fund” term, as you should be building up your savings to use for investments, retirement, etc. But whatever it may be, most Americans are in pretty bad shape if some expensive issue comes up.

Because of a lack of prep, many times people are forced to rack up credit card debt to pay for the expense or get tons of late notices with extra fees thus essentially getting stuck with more and more bills, costing you a chance to stack that money away.

Yet, what’s even scarier is the lack of savings the groups of 35 and under have saved. Whether that is for an emergency fund or retirement.

In a Business Insider article, they broke down savings rates by different categories by using data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

First, average savings account balance by age, which was not looking too pretty:

Average savings account balance by age

Another section they broke down, was the median savings account balance by income:

median savings account balance by income

Understandably, higher earners are able to save more money and the older people get, the more money they will have because of time being on their side.

It also makes sense for the 35 and under group to have low savings for a few reasons: Paying off student loans, just developing their careers, maybe still going to school, etc.

Of course all the above can attribute to other things, these are just some examples.

But, we also know people with low incomes have amassed huge retirement or savings fortunes, so a lack of income is not necessarily the main cause.

So, why do people seem to have no money or struggle to save?

Before I dive in, I know it can be tough out there. Stagnant wages, climbing student debt, job loss, etc. Everyone has a unique situation, but many also would be better financially off if they did this one thing. Do you know what it is?

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://investedwallet.com/number-one-reason-most-people-are-broke/

Makes More Money Happier?

Makes More Money Happier?

Wealth On The Whole Is An Illusion

 The Final Wake Up Call  By  Peter B. Meyer

 Happiness Is Independent Of Money

 Over half the people of the world work just to survive, while the other portion works to get ahead. They aim to get richer. Why so much effort if there is no connection – none at all – to happiness?   And why are so many people investing their money, if there’s no assurance that it will contribute in making them wealthier?  ​As there is no link between more money bringing more happiness, could it possibly be the other way around: more money equals less happiness? As actually more money can result in more of the wrong choices!

Growing up during childhood, it was experienced that happiness is independent of wealth. Happiness comes from the home and the family. As a child, we learn that this is the base to face whatever challenges and hardships may come our way, confident as were that our happiness was safe at home.

If you want to be rich, you’d better learn to like poverty first, as he who has material success may not be able to bear the risk of failure.

When young, money really didn’t matter that much as the majority is largely indifferent to it.

So, in hindsight this would be the perfect period to take chances.

​By the same token, this is the best disposition in which to start your own business. It is the best route to success. ​

No matter what it is you undertake, it is very hard to lay your hands on serious money. When you come of age, someone else seems to already own all the money in the world and they will not turn it over to you readily.

Starting out, you don’t know yet what you have to do, to make a success out of your business. More than likely, it will fail, and that’s precisely what you want to avoid at all costs.

 So, it is of the utmost importance to take advantage of all opportunities, as it is uncertain in the beginning as to what exactly will be successful. Eliminate failures is the only sure route to success.

  The challenge is to fail early and enough to be vigilant and diligent enough to enforce your nerves and cleverness, learning from your mistakes along the way until you finally stumble onto something that works.

  But even if you are able to separate yourself from material success, it still plays a role in life. Most want more wealth for a reason, but most don’t know the reason.

​Entrepreneurship means taking risks to obtain something, with the purpose of obtaining satisfaction and delight if success is achieved.

​It is not necessarily the money that satisfies, it is probably more the satisfaction of choosing the best option available at that time, because life is competitive. People want to win, and money is a way in showing the score.

In a typical job, one is more or less told what to do. One may earn a high salary or a low one for the same job. People may like what they do, or they may suffer on the job, but it will often not provide serious wealth or satisfaction.

 Going with the flow while wanting to get the best out of opportunities, one could either focus on disruption, like a disruptive technology, or one could change the way money is earned, and spent, by altering the capital landscape.

  If you are to get more, others will relatively get less. Which gives the competitive money-maker a deep sense of reward, even before he is successful. You may not necessarily be the richest man, but probably the happiest because of an accomplished goal.

 Earning Money Is Difficult, Keeping It Is Even More Difficult

 Earning money may be difficult, but keeping it is even more difficult, there are always people around that want to help you lose it. The whole money system is volatile. There are too many counting on calm, sunny weather, and a longer growing season for their money.​

Everyone invests in stocks, hoping to beat the market, but they don’t realise they are the market, only a few are able to beat it, most of the time by accident.

Of course, US-stock market participants were happy when the market went up, and hit new records, they are hoping for even more success in the future.

​The question is whether they gained real wealth?

​​From whom are they gaining, or to put it simple, who is at the other side of the trade? The economy expanded at 2% per annum, that created over the last seven years a grand total of approx. $350 billion in extra wealth to divvy up.

 But, how is it possible that stockholders can obtain ten times as much as the amount of wealth that the economy creates? In actual fact, the mystery is far more complex than that.

Since the ravage of the financial crisis of 2008, household wealth has gone up by $21 trillion. It has gone roughly from $50 trillion to $71 trillion.

During that same time, real household earnings for the typical family have gone down. Wages have gone down. And the net worth of the typical family has also declined. Growth rates have declined and the number of people with jobs has proportionately declined.

​Real GDP is only about 6% higher than it was in 2007. Although, household wealth has gone up nearly 20 times faster than GDP since 2008. How could that be? The Central Banks increase the real estate and asset prices.

This wealth effect added $21 trillion to the nation’s balance sheets. This was supposed to increase demand, which would lead to more spending and investment.

 But should it not be that a nation should first produce before it spends? There is somehow approximately $20 trillion in excess spending power that seems to have come from nowhere. How could that be?

Wealth Gathering

 Wealth is either physical, such as the ownership of a house or a Picasso painting, or it is paper wealth. But there is $21 trillion of real output and real wealth. If there is no increase in real wealth, that money just competes for the same quantity of goods and services that were already priced at $50 trillion, five years ago.

​In other words, the nation has not become wealthier. This is exactly the problem with paper assets.

All paper assets are a claim against true goods and services.

You can’t get more goods and services than the economy can produce.

​Since the economy of 2008-18 has produced only a fraction as much real wealth as the claims against it, those claims will have to be applied to future output.

So, when will the economy produce $21 trillion of new wealth so that these new claims can be realised? “annual US gross domestic product growth has averaged less than 1.8%.” That’s about $300 billion. Let’s see, how long do you have to wait – at $300 billion a year – to cover $21 trillion in claims? – The answer is 70 years!

 Well, that’s not going to happen, is it? Long before 2088 rolls around, those claims will be marked down and written off. In other words, the additional wealth is mostly an illusion.

 Real Money Must Be Earned

 Real money is different from debt money. It doesn’t need to explain itself. It doesn’t need to state where it’s been or what it’s been up to. Take a gold coin as it is. No backstory or balance sheet is necessary. That’s the way real money works: It closes transactions. You accept payment and the account is settled.

 But debt money is different. It comes with question marks: Who issued this debt? What is it really worth? Will I get paid? Here is the key to understanding debt money, as opposed to real money:

 Real money is the fruit of past efforts – distilled and preserved for future use.

Debt money is a claim on wealth that has never been produced. And perhaps never will be.

As the quantity of real money increases, a society becomes richer and more financially stable.

 Because it’s real wealth. But as the supply of debt money increases, more people owe more money; the economy becomes more fragile, and eventually goes broke.

 But if the authorities want to increase the supply of money, the only kind of money supply they can increase is the fake kind. Real money must be earned; like wealth, it cannot be printed.

 Money can’t solve the core problems of humanity

 Our world is plagued by dishonesty, unfairness, and wholesale rejection of the truth; the founding principle of life. In our world today ‘Might is Right’, it’s the order of the day; lawlessness; where the law of the jungle and survival of the “fittest” are the primary criteria for oppression and success.

And yet, despite the poverty stricken status of the human realms of trust, there is nothing stopping us from turning the ship of civilization around and righting our course toward prosperity and abundance.

 All the money in the world can’t solve the core problem humanity faces; the destruction of social trust and the capacity for individuals to restore the greater human family.​

Suppressed technology is ‘New’ to us, but very ‘Old’ to Beings from other planets, some of it going back millions of years.

 Money and banks are tools of the cabal to control us with their debt-based economy which can never prosper. So, ‘Paper Money’ and banks will eventually disappear, but ‘Coinage’ will not. 

The future will be unbelievably complete with Cards for our own Personal Credit. We will join ‘The Alliance’ and then we will live among races from other worlds and trade with them, which purportedly the secret space program has been doing for decades.

​We will eventually travel to other planets, inhabited with human or alien life; a very likely and realistic possibility.

 The Biggest Incomprehensible Lie

 The reason why the global economy is so depressed is that money has been stolen from us on a truly outrageous scale. Evidently, a tremendous amount of money is missing, which didn’t just vanish. It all went somewhere. The disappeared volumes are immensely greater than any luxuries the “one percent” could ever possibly afford.

 These missing quadrillions will be re-introduced into the economy by the Alliance, which is still a small figure compared to the total amount of theft that has taken place. 

Top insiders reveal that much of our money has been spent on the development of a vast amount of high-tech infrastructure in underground and off-world bases, as well in the know-how and facilities to make it all possible.

https://finalwakeupcall.info/en/2018/07/18/makes-more-money-happier/

How to Make Better Financial Decisions

How to Make Better Financial Decisions

By Barbara O’Neill  WiseBread

A key financial decision people struggle to make is how to allocate savings for multiple financial goals. Do you save for several goals at the same time or fund them one-by-one in a series of steps? Basically, there are two ways to approach financial goal-setting:

Concurrently: Saving for two or more financial goals at the same time.

Sequentially: Saving for one financial goal at a time in a series of steps.

Each method has its pros and cons. Here's how to decide which method is best for you.

Sequential goal-setting

Pros

You can focus intensely on one goal at a time and feel a sense of completion when each goal is achieved. It's also simpler to set up and manage single-goal savings than plans for multiple goals. You only need to set up and manage one account.

Cons

Compound interest is not retroactive. If it takes up to a decade to get around to long-term savings goals (e.g., funding a retirement savings plan), that's time that interest is not earned.

Concurrent goal-setting

Pros

Compound interest is not delayed on savings for goals that come later in life. The earlier money is set aside, the longer it can grow. Based on the Rule of 72, you can double a sum of money in nine years with an 8 percent average return. The earliest years of savings toward long-term goals are the most powerful ones.

Cons

Funding multiple financial goals is more complex than single-tasking. Income needs to be earmarked separately for each goal and often placed in different accounts. In addition, it will probably take longer to complete any one goal because savings is being placed in multiple locations.

Research findings

Working with Wise Bread to recruit respondents, I conducted a study of financial goal-setting decisions with four colleagues that was recently published in the Journal of Personal Finance. The target audience was young adults with 69 percent of the sample under age 45. Four key financial decisions were explored: financial goals, homeownership, retirement planning, and student loans.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.wisebread.com/how-to-make-better-financial-decisions?ref=relatedbox

The Tangled Relationship Between Wealth & Money

The Tangled Relationship Between Wealth & Money

John Michael Greer 

One of the most dangerous mistakes possible to make in trying to understand the shape of the economic future is to think of the fundamental concepts of economics as simple and uncontroversial.  They aren’t.   In economics, as in all other fields, the fundamentals are where disguised ideologies and unexamined presuppositions are most likely to hide out, precisely because nobody questions them.

In this and future essays here at Peak Prosperity, I will explore a number of things that seem, at first glance, very obvious and basic.  I hope you’ll bear with me, as there are lessons of crucial and deeply practical importance to anyone facing the challenging years ahead.

This is, above all, true of the first thing I want to talk about: the tangled relationship between wealth and money.

Our co-host here, Chris Martenson, likes to remind us all that money is not wealth, but a claim on wealth.  He’s quite right, and it’s important to understand why.

Money is a system of abstract tokens that complex societies use to manage the distribution of goods and services, and that’s all it is.  Money can consist of lumps of precious metal, pieces of paper decorated with the faces of dead politicians, digits in computer memory, or any number of other things, up to and including the sheer make-believe that underlies derivatives and the like.

Important differences separate these various forms of money, depending on the ease or lack of same with which they can be manufactured, but everything that counts as money has one thing in common – it has only one of the two kinds of economic value.

The Two Kinds of Value

Economists call those use value and exchange value.

You already know about them, even if you don’t know the names.  Odds are, in fact, that you learned about them back in elementary school the first time that one of your classmates offered to trade you something for the cookies in your lunchbox. 

You then had to choose between trading the cookies for whatever your classmate offered and eating them yourself.  The first of those choices treated the cookies primarily as a bearer of exchange value; the second treated them primarily as a bearer of use value.

All forms of real wealth – that is, all nonfinancial goods and services – have use value as well as exchange value.  They can be exchanged for other goods and services, financial or otherwise, but they also provide some direct benefit to the person who is able to obtain them. 

All forms of money, by contrast, have exchange value but no use value. You can’t do a thing with them except trade them for something that has use value (or for some other kind of money that can be traded for things with use value).

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://peakprosperity.com/the-tangled-relationship-between-wealth-money/

How To Flip Your Money

How To Flip Your Money: 6 Ways To Make Supplemental Income This Way

James Holbach  Thu, July 13, 2023 at 12:00 PM EDT

Financial independence is a dream for most of us — something we will likely spend most of our working lives trying to achieve. The best way to get there is to make your money work for you, by getting a return on it or by turning it into a income stream on the side.

One way to do this is by “flipping” your money.

Now, money flipping may sound questionable, but there’s nothing illegal or shady involved. It really just means investing in an asset with the intent of holding it for a fairly short time before selling it or cashing out for a return. There are a lot of ways to do it, too. Here are five below.

Real Estate Wholesaling

Investing in real estate can be very lucrative, but it typically requires significant upfront money. For those who don’t have that kind of cash on hand, wholesaling can be a great entry point.

“[Wholesalers] can use some money to get leads that are looking to sell their properties for cash, put those properties under contract, and then sell those contracts to [investors like a] landlord or house flipper. Using that small amount of initial money they can have it flipped into a much larger assignment fee that they can have cashed out in as little as a few days,” said Sebastian Jania, director at Ontario Property Buyers.

It’s important to do some networking and research beforehand, so you have an idea of where to look for leads as well as where you can sell your contracts.

Website Flipping

Flipping a website is essentially the same as flipping a house — you purchase it, make improvements, and sell it for a profit. As with real estate, flipping a website requires some specific knowledge so you can identify sites with the most potential for improvement.

“A key aspect of website flipping is adding value through strategic optimization. This can include improving the website’s user experience, implementing effective SEO (search engine optimization) strategies, enhancing content quality, and optimizing monetization channels. These enhancements increase the website’s appeal to potential buyers and contribute to a higher selling price,” said Dominik Maka, head of SEO at LVBET.

Maka also noted that building a network with other website flippers can be a valuable way to gain insight and experience, and to discover new opportunities.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/flip-money-6-ways-supplemental-160002861.html

Unexpected Habits Of A Frugal Millionaire

Unexpected Habits Of A Frugal Millionaire

jeff@debtfreedr.com

When you hear about someone being a millionaire, you typically don’t picture them as being frugal. The phrase, “Frugal millionaire” is not something that typically goes together such as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich does. But, if you’ve read books such as “The Millionaire Next Door” and Chris Hogan’s new book, “Everyday Millionaires,” you’d have a different outlook on how millionaires actually live.

Occasionally, when someone hears that a person is frugal, they automatically think that they’re cheap. Being frugal and cheap are two different things. So, before we discuss the habits of a frugal millionaire, let’s look at the difference of being frugal versus cheap.

What Is Frugal Living?

Frugal living is simply being intentional with your money. It’s mainly practiced by those who aim to:

cut expenses

have more money

get the most they possibly can from their money

Frugal people understand that paying more doesn’t necessarily mean better value. Again, just because someone is frugal, doesn’t mean they’re cheap.

Are Frugal People Cheap?

I know cheap people and I can tell you firsthand that they’re NOT fun to be around. Cheap people think that EVERYTHING is overpriced.

The bottom line is that these are people who don’t like to spend money. They complain to everybody about how much stuff costs.

Unfortunately, many cheap people I know also lack honesty and moral principles.

The reason I wanted to differentiate between being frugal and cheap is that the majority of research on millionaires concludes that they’re frugal. They put people above money and are known to give to worthy causes.

If you’re not yet a millionaire (keep reading the DFD posts and you’ll soon be one!) and want to know just how many exist out there, let’s move on to some stats…

Millionaire Statistics

Here’s a few millionaire stats you may not know about from millionairefoundry.com: 

There are 42.2 million millionaires worldwide, up 2.3 million over the last 12 months.

Of those, 41% or 17.3 million individuals are in the United States

This means that 7% of the U.S. adult population are millionaires

Approximately 14% of U.S. households are in the millionaire club

If you’re a millionaire, you’re in the top 0.6% of wealth for the world’s population

The nine cities with the most millionaires, in decreasing order are Tokyo, New York City, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Beijing, Osaka, Hong Kong, and Shanghai

Current projections are that 1,700 new U.S. millionaires are made every day

Let’s find out what it takes to become a frugal millionaire…

7 Unexpected Habits Of A Frugal Millionaire

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.debtfreedr.com/frugal-millionaire-2/

The No-Sweat Way to Protect Yourself From Financial Disaster

The No-Sweat Way to Protect Yourself From Financial Disaster

By: Laura Goldstein  Jun 29, 2015

hat nagging feeling that a bit of bad luck—a medical emergency or a layoff—could derail your finances is widely shared. A new survey from the American Psychological Association found that 54% of people rated paying for unexpected expenses a very or somewhat significant source of stress.

 And people across the income spectrum tend to be underprepared. A Pew Charitable Trusts analysis finds middle-income households typically have the equivalent of 20 days of income to tap, and even high earners have just 52 days. Building a bigger rainy-day fund may feel like a daunting task, given all your expenses and savings goals, but you can start by breaking it down into manageable chunks.

Do It One Essential Expense at a Time

Aim to cover three months of one regular bill, like your mortgage, suggests RBC Wealth Management financial adviser Darla Kashian. Then move on to three months of utilities, then car payments, and so on. This approach gives you the satisfaction of crossing one more potential problem off your list.

 Once you've hit three months of all essentials, make your new goal doubling your account to get to six months. Why so long? "When things get rough, your emergency fund enables you to make good choices, where you don't have to rush into a job you don't want or dip into a credit card," says Certified Financial Planner Board consumer advocate Eleanor Blayney.

Get It Out of Your Hands

Looking at your budget may help you find places to trim, but for big savings goals it may be easier and more sustainable to simply stash money away with each pay-check, just as you do with your 401(k), and live on what's left. Set up automatic deposits to a separate account just for your emergency money.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://money.com/collection-post/save-money-emergency-fund/