Financial Planning

The alarm buzzes until John is forced to wake up and turn it off. Like a trained laboratory rat, he automatically does as he’s been programmed to do for years. He stands up, makes a pot of coffee, showers, dresses and heads to work.

John, like most people, will spend all day working for someone else on someone else‘s property, doing someone else‘s bidding. He will live this way for the rest of his life. The tragedy is John thinks this is normal and healthy.

The goal of most workers is to “get a good job” and work for another person or business. This article will show why, for most people, a job should be seen as a short-term step on the journey to financial independence. Almost anything else is a blind waste of time, money and financial security.

It Used to be Different

Business was incredibly different just a century or so ago. Although many the fundamental business principles of profit, supply and demand are generally the same, society has nearly completely abandoned all understanding of self-reliance and individualism when it comes to making money.

For most, a career means becoming a slave for hire — find someone to work under and do their bidding for the rest of their life, and hope to see some benefits. You’ll be paid per hour of work. Wage slavery. Some jobs might be nicer than others, but that’s generally what it comes to when it’s all boiled down.

The idea that there is something beyond a “job” is rarely considered. Even the over-achievers are encouraged to get jobs and work for others. “Go to college so you can work for a firm/company,” society tells us. It wasn’t always this way.

Before huge corporate interests completely dominated every aspect of society through mass-media and mass-marketing, business was oriented towards small business and “shops.” Most work was done locally. Most labor was done in small family-operated shops. Taverns were run by families. Products like candles and furniture were built in small shops.

A business was usually managed by the owner and his apprentices — workers who helped the owner. The apprentices were there only to learn enough to start their own shop later in life. They worked for someone for a period of time only so they could work for themselves later.

The entire system was based on independence, individualism and creative enterprise. You learned a trade, you opened shop and you worked for yourself. The goal was financial security. Now the idea of self-employment is slowly dying.

Blindly Working for “the Man”

Rather than hoping to own a business or have one’s own shop, most plan on having what’s called a “career.” The ultimate goal of a career isn’t independence or complete financial security; the ultimate goal for most college-bound individuals is to learn just enough to “get a job” and then spend 50 years working for another business. With luck, they might land a managerial position. Most don’t.

This means that we have an economy based on glorified apprenticeship — only the apprentices never think to leave and start their own shop.

The impacts of such a view are widespread: rampant depression, feelings of wasted potential, weak work ethics, diminishing wages and a big-corporation takeover of nearly all business niches.

But now, things are about to change. As Bill Gates said:

“This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.”

As we’ve moved into the Brave New World of the information age, business has forever changed. One doesn’t even need employees to build a successful income — or a job. This further magnifies the tragedy of the career-mindset. The mindset is already destructive by limiting the lifestyle, limiting the income, wasting the time and eroding the financial security of the worker.

If you want to learn more about how business has changed forever and how you can make money online, make sure to subscribe. I’ll be publishing a tutorial in the near future. But rest assured, it makes more sense than the typical dollars-for-hours job. Read more below.

4 Reasons to Never Get a “Job”

Aside from simply being a situation of servitude, the traditional job also wastes time, wastes money and is incredibly insecure; upset someone and your job is toast. Below are four basic reasons the traditional job is broken. After some thought and even personal experience, I’m sure you could double or triple the list.

• Not Enough Pay. A typical job pays by the hour. If you work 10 hours you are paid for that ten hours. Period. Next year if you quit, the money stops coming in. There’s an old saying that rings perfectly true; “The poor work for their money. The rich make their money work for them.” The best method of making money is through building a system that continues to pay after it’s built. That’s not a typical job.

• Not Enough Creativity. The human mind is a creative mind. Most animals simply live a very basic routine. Find food. Eat. Sleep. The human mind comes with a built-in “inventors” toolbox, with rationality, creativity and a drive for achievement. You’re not here to just go through the motions working in someone else’s system. You’re here to build your own.

• Wastes Your Time. The typical workplace is completely rife with incredibly inefficient ways of doing business. Meetings, pointless hours, and time-consuming traditions. In my first office job I revolutionized the way the office functioned and sliced my work-time in half. I almost got fired for not having anything to do. The emphasis of most workplaces isn’t on productivity — it’s on busyness. There’s a difference. If you work for yourself you can focus on productivity rather than pointless busyness.

• No Job Security. Job security is an oxymoron. Are you at the bottom of the totem pole? A dip in sales and you can lose your job. Are you at the top of the food-chain? White-collar jobs are getting sliced like crazy, as of the Panic of 2008. Working for someone else or another company puts your entire livelihood on the basis of their whim. If you work for yourself, getting fired won’t happen.

These issues are really just the starting point. Almost every employee has a collection of horror stories

The typical “find a job” view of earning an income is broken. It wastes time, money, creativity and provides little in the way of security. This article deals specifically with the “broken” aspect of the typical job — not for the alternatives. But don’t worry, there are literally dozens of alternatives to the typical job that you can start within the next year. They take work, thinking outside the box and creativity.

You can learn more by reading the other articles in the How to Make Money series. These articles go through the fundamental building blocks of business, rethinking the “job” and looking at various ways you can built the best financial planning for your life. Make sure to subscribe below as a new series is under development that will go into the specific ways to make money. I did the research — you just have to read.