We are entering into the last few weeks of the year and it looks like it is going to be a pretty hard winter, with rising prices for necessaries and a lot of uncertainty in not only the marketplace, but society as a whole. I suspect I am not the only one who is at least mildly concerned with what s going to happen, especially since this year has seen a lot of outgoing income, rather than incoming.
However, there is very little point in dwelling too heavily on missed opportunities or even the current conditions, as there is very little that can be done about those now, so it is all about looking forward into the spring.
For us, this means that we are going to try and put more aside from our salaries, however we have a couple months of large bills still ahead. And because I failed to adjust my tax percentage correctly, for the last four months of the year plus January, I am getting taxed at the highest percentage possible - which is obviously not ideal. This means that I won't get that money back until somewhere in 2024 or so.
I screwed up.
Don't dwell....
This means that the next few months ahead are going to be quite tight for us, but we are looking to do what we can to get into a position to thrive instead of just survive. Survival is never guaranteed and a life of constantly surviving is not much of a life in my opinion, but working toward thriving can add quality.
In some ways, it is the position of an entrepreneur, who has to be willing to forego the short-term desires in order to meet the needs of the long-term view. Again, there is no insurance that it will happen, but that working toward something that is valued, has value in the present moment also - even if it doesn't have a direct return right now.
Of course at some point, it will hopefully return something, but there is a survivorship bias involved in business, where we generally only hear about the successes (and failures) of the larger, and forget that the majority of entrepreneurs are small business operators, many struggling to survive for years on end. Should an entrepreneur give up because the return on their investment is less than they would get working for someone else?
I actually think that this is something that comes up in Hive a fair amount, where for example, a lot of people say putting effort into posting "isn't worth it", because they can earn far more per hour, flipping burgers.
I agree, it isn't worth it.
Not for an hourly salary at least. But for additional income that can be used as a base for investment and with the potential to be worth far more later, it definitely is, in my opinion. Not only this, like the entrepreneur who might be struggling and failing, there is still value in the attempt, the trying to accomplish something, to get somewhere else in life. Sure, none of us are truly self-made, but this doesn't mean we don't get satisfaction from creating something for ourselves and of ourselves.
It really isn't all about the money.
But, money gives some kind of "score" to the processes and results, quantifying our behaviors and can help us direct our activities now for the future. The incentives are often misaligned with what many might consider good outcomes, but they do offer an incentive and a way to organize ourselves. Without the ability to trade with each other, I don't believe that the world would be a better place, rather, quite the opposite. The ability to trade has its problems, but it also means that violence isn't the only way to get hold of what we want, but others have.
Expecting people to act and give out of the goodness of their heart, even though it goes against their own vest interests, is never going to work. Altruism has its place, but it really is impractical for the majority of people, given their general positions and acquired needs.
And the needs keep growing.
Or perhaps, changing. As our lives change through various stages, we also need different thing in our lives. whether it is out of need, desire or convenience might be debatable, but it just is the case. Some of these things like house, car, family might be driven by cultural habit in some respects, but I suspect, it has always been the case, though the items that get our attention might have changed.
Items of survival and then items of empowerment might be the first few things on the list, but once we are "secure enough", it is likely that we start looking at other aspects, like convenience or beauty - unnecessary in the needs of survival, but perhaps necessary in the needs of humanness. We might be able to exist with far, far less than we do now and we probably should, but where is the line?
At what point do we put so much effort into survival that we lose what makes humanity special, what sets us aside from the animals from which we have forked away from? We are still on the animal spectrum of course and always will be, but we are definitely out at the extremities in terms of how able we are to affect the world in which we live - positively and negatively.
At some point, all of the current uncertainty of the economy will melt away and solidify into a longer period of growth and relative stability or more accurately, upside. But for now, there is the sense of the downside impacting on our thoughts and activities, and as such, we question what has to change in our lives in order to survive. In general, it means cutting out the objects of desire and convenience in order to focus on survival - but people shouldn't forget the items of empowerment.
This isn't a weapon per se however, it is just tools that we can use to improve our position from where we are today, with investments being one of these. Money is just a tool and it is also a byproduct of other tools, including our ability to trade our time and skills for it, two other tools in our box. What we do with the value we have traded is going to have an impact on the value of the trade we made in the past.
What might not "be worth it" right now, may be worth it down the track.
But the unanswerable question is how long that track is, so we have to find ways to survive the journey, which is why they say that it isn't the destination that is important, it is how you get there.
Regardless what happens though - there are always going to be missed opportunities and new opportunities that arise.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
