The Slacker Method for Building a Nest Egg
Posted by Jacques - January 31, 2009
Saving money for the future can be a tough thing. Especially if most of our energies are focused on the present. If the world stopped tomorrow, would you think to yourself, gee, I wish I had spent more time on my budget?
While I certainly don’t condone forgoing financial planning, it can easily become an obsession. For me, I want to create it once, and then revisit it annually. In between those times, I want nothing to do with it.
Another problem with building nest eggs is that people tend to overdo it. While I agree more people need to save more than save less, we have to be careful to not let it affect our lives. Afterall, money is a symbol of time and power. We want to use it to our advantage, to make our lives and the lives of others meaningful and enjoyable. Too often people become slaves to their 401ks and IRAs without realizing how much of their lives they have sacrificed in order to retire. But what is retirement really? That’s another article.
Here are some easy tips for building your future.
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Slacker Interviews Lazy Man
Posted by Jacques - January 8, 2009
One of the blogs that I watch a lot is Lazy Man and Money (our logos look eerily similar). The concept is really cool, if you’re lazy but want to respect your money and time, then there are some basic concepts you should learn.
Lazy Man, thank you for agreeing to do this interview. One of the things I have to ask is if you think being “lazy” is good or bad, or just the way some people are?
I think you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to laziness. I often miss out on opportunities because I’m lazy. The other day I missed a deadline on a Black Friday rebate and I’m kicking myself for it. Lazy Man and Money isn’t about that kind of laziness. It’s about working smarter instead of working harder. It’s realizing that saving and investing today can put you in a position to not have to work tomorrow. I go into a little more detail on my About page.
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Slacker Method for Easy Holiday Gift Tags
Posted by Jacques - December 20, 2008
Seems like every Christmas I go out and spend money on wrapping paper, bows, and the like, but I always seem to run out of gift tags. I often waste a lot of time hunting down tags or going out and buying more. However, over the years, I’ve learned that people don’t really care about the wrapping all that much or even the name tag. What matters is that you thought of them, and that you took the time to give them something you think they’d enjoy. Well, the gift matters too, but the point is, not the tags.
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Why do we procrastinate?
Posted by Jacques - November 24, 2008At this very moment I am delaying a long list of tasks that I could be doing right now. At some point, people will tell me that I’m procrastinating. But at what point does postponing become procrastination? Is it a period of time? Is it the importance of the task at hand? Some people would say it’s a combination of both. Many dictionaries would define procrastination as needless or unnecessary delay or postponement. Still others who are somewhat more intelligent would add, that people who delay doing things because they are inconvenient, annoying, loathed or feared would be procrastinating. By that definition a delayed birth isn’t biology, it’s procrastination!
But who can judge whether something is needless or unnecessary? Who decided that the task is delayed simply because I chose not to have a huge buffer between the day I completed the task, and the final day that task was due?
What I’m trying to get you to understand is that procrastination is an arbitrary label placed on slackers by society. True, some people will avoid taking out the trash or doing their work because they are lazy. But those aren’t really the kind of slackers I’m talking about nor the type of people who read this blog. I purposefully and intentionally choose not to perform tasks for two reasons. First, I know that I will use more time if more is available to me to perform a task. Secondly, I’m not always in the mood to do certain things and when I force myself to flow against my karmic energy, I will get moody.
Yes, I said karmic energy, but there’s no other way to explain why sometimes I feel like working and sometimes I don’t. The moodier I get, the less efficient I work, and eventually I will not be able to work at all. So, stop telling me I’m procrastinating, and just understand that this is the way tasks flow through my pipeline. We are not straight pipes, we have twists and turns, feelings and emotions, so sometimes we will work hard and sometimes we won’t. Sometimes we’ll begin tasks as soon as they are available to do, and at other times we will simply wait until there is not much time left to do them in.
I just want everyone to know that this is okay and that in the end, our accomplishments do not balance out the harsh reality of life, they do not help us overcome ourselves, and we can’t take them with us where we are all eventually going.
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