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Giving money as a gift can be one of the best gifts that you can give today. A lot of times though people don’t feel like giving money as personal or creative or thoughtful enough, which is a complete joke because honestly, cash is king. More often than not, the receiver of the gift actually … Read more
Read More… 45+ Creative Money Gift Ideas That will Surprise
Source: moneybliss.org
It’s important to discover your own personal happiness style so you can fill your life with activities that make you, as an individual, happy.
The post How Knowing Your Happiness Style Can Help Your Marriage appeared first on Bible Money Matters and was written by Melissa. Copyright © Bible Money Matters – please visit biblemoneymatters.com for more great content.
Source: biblemoneymatters.com
I've received several questions from Money Girl podcast listeners about paying off credit card debt. It's a fundamental goal because carrying card balances come with high interest, a waste of your financial resources. Instead of paying money to card companies, it's time to use it to build wealth for yourself.
If you're carrying card balances from month-to-month, it's essential to understand what it costs you. As interest accrues, it can double or triple the original cost of a charged item, depending on how long it takes you to pay off.
The first step to improving any area of your life is to acknowledge your mistakes, and financing a lifestyle you can't afford using a credit card is a biggie. So, stop making new charges until you take control of your cards and can pay them off in full each month.
As interest accrues, it can double or triple the original cost of a charged item, depending on how long it takes you to pay off.
Yes, reining in your card spending will probably require sacrifices. Consider ways to earn extra income, such as starting a side gig, finding a better-paying job, or selling your unused stuff. Also, look for ways to cut costs by downsizing your home, vehicle, memberships, or unnecessary expenses.
Before you decide to pay off credit card debt aggressively, look at the "big picture" of your financial life. Consider any other debts or obligations you should prioritize, such as a tax delinquency, legal judgment, or unpaid child support. The next debts to pay off are those already in default or turned over to a collection agency.
In many cases, not having a cash reserve is why people get into credit card debt in the first place.
Assuming you don't have any debts in default, focus your attention on your emergency fund … or lack of one! I recommend maintaining a minimum of six months' worth of your living expenses on hand. In many cases, not having a cash reserve is why people get into credit card debt in the first place.
Many people who can pay more than their monthly minimum card payment don't do it. The problem is that minimums go mostly toward interest and don't reduce your balance significantly.
For example, let's assume your card charges 15% APR, you have a $5,000 balance, and you never make another purchase on the card. If your minimum payment is 4% of your card balance, it will take you 10½ years to pay off. And here's the worst part—you'd have paid almost $2,400 in interest!
Make a list of all your debts, including credit cards, lines of credit, and loans. Include your balances owed and interest rates charged. Then rank your liabilities in order of highest to lowest interest rate.
Getting rid of the highest interest debts first saves you the most.
Remember that the higher a debt's interest rate, the more it costs you in interest per dollar of debt. So, getting rid of the highest interest debts first saves you the most. Then you can use the savings to pay more on your next highest interest debt and so on.
If you have several credit cards, evaluate them the same way—tackle them in order of highest to lowest interest rate to get the most bang for your buck. And if a credit card isn't the most expensive debt you have, make it a lower priority.
In general, debts that come with a tax deduction such as mortgages, home equity lines of credit, and student loans, should be paid off last. Not only do those types of debt have relatively low interest rates, but when some or all of the interest is tax-deductible, they cost you even less on an after-tax basis.
If you have assets such as savings and non-retirement investments that you could use to pay down high-interest credit cards, it may make sense. Just remember that you still need a healthy cash reserve, such as six months' worth of living expenses.
If you don't have any or enough emergency money saved, don't dip into your savings to pay off credit card debt. Also, consider what you could sell—such as unused sporting goods, jewelry, or a vehicle—to raise cash and increase your financial cushion.
If you can’t pay off credit card debt using existing assets, consider optimizing it by moving it from higher- to lower-interest options. That won’t make your debt disappear, but it will reduce the amount of interest you pay.
Balance transfers won’t make your debt disappear, but they will reduce the amount of interest you pay.
Using a balance transfer credit card is a common way to optimize debt temporarily. You receive a promotional offer during a set period if you move debt to the account. By transferring higher-interest debt to a lower- or zero-interest card, you save money and use it to pay down the balance faster.
I received a question from Sarah F., who says, “I love your podcast and turn to it for a lot of my financial questions. I have credit card debt and am wondering if it’s a good idea to get a personal loan to pay it down, or is that a scam?”
And Rachel K. says, "I love listening to your podcasts and am focused on becoming more financially fit this year. I have a couple of credit cards with high interest rates. Would it be wise for me to consolidate them to a lower interest rate? If so, will it hurt my credit?"
Depending on the terms you’re offered, using a personal loan can be an excellent way to reduce interest and get out of debt faster.
Thanks to Sarah and Rachel for your questions. Consolidating credit card debt using a personal loan is not a scam but a legitimate way to shift debt to a lower interest rate.
Having an additional loan added to your credit history helps you build credit if you make payments on time. It also works in your favor by reducing your credit utilization ratio when you reduce your credit card debt.
If you qualify for a low-rate personal loan, here are some benefits you get from debt consolidation:
A couple of downsides of using a personal loan to consolidate debt include:
While it may seem counterintuitive to use new debt to get out of old debt, it all comes down to the interest rate. Depending on the terms you’re offered, using a personal loan can be an excellent way to reduce interest and get out of debt faster.
Credit cards come with many benefits, such as purchase protection, convenience, and rewards. Don't forget that they're also powerful tools for building credit when used responsibly. If maintaining good credit is one of your goals, I recommend that you keep a paid-off card open instead of canceling it.
You don't need to carry a balance from month to month or pay interest on a credit card to build excellent credit.
To maintain or improve your credit, you must have credit accounts open in your name, and you must use them regularly. Making small purchases charges from time to time that you pay off in full and on time is enough to add positive data to your credit reports. You don't need to carry a balance from month to month or pay interest on a credit card to build excellent credit.
To learn more about building credit and getting out of debt, check out Laura’s best-selling online classes:
Source: quickanddirtytips.com
Source: makingsenseofcents.com
Looking for entry level work from home jobs?
Are you wondering, “How can I work from home with no experience?”
I know it may seem like every job out there today requires several years of experience. This makes it very difficult to find a job, especially if you are brand new to the field and trying to get your start.
It can be difficult to find a way to make money from home when you are brand new, but it’s not impossible to find entry level work from home jobs.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you want to start working from home, then I have a great list of no experience work from home jobs for you to look into.
Now, just because these jobs, businesses, and ways to make extra money don’t require experience, it does not mean that they will be easy! Remember, good things don’t come easy.
You may have to learn a new skill, take a course, and so on.
Also, please remember that entry level means you are starting from the bottom and working up. That means it may take a while to establish yourself. Still, there is room to grow in many of these jobs.
What you’ll find in this list of entry level work from home jobs are new careers and businesses you can start without having a college degree or years of experience.
There are many ideas on this list that involve starting a freelance career by using existing skills, like if you have a good eye for spotting grammar and punctuation errors, then you may be interested in proofreading.
There are other ideas on this list that will require you to learn some new skills – all ones you can easily pick up online.
The most important part is that all of these jobs are 100% work from home ideas. Yes, these are all jobs you can work from the comfort of your own home, while you travel, etc.
Finding a work from home job can be a great way to make money.
After all, it’s what I do, and I love it!
And, there are so many different options depending on what you are looking for. You may be able to find entry level work from home jobs that are part time, full time, that work while you are traveling, and so on.
Plus, many of the entry level jobs from home on my list allow you to have a more flexible schedule, where you may be able to choose the days you work, your hours, and more.
So, if you are looking to start making extra money or if you want a new career path that lets you earn money from home, this list is especially for you.
Before you’re scared off by any of these ideas, please remember that you don’t need to be an expert in any of them right now. As with any new job, you learn as you go and can find training as well.
Related content on entry level work from home jobs:
If you’re looking to work from home, I recommend that you think about starting a blog.
You don’t need previous experience, and most bloggers are brand new to blogging anyways!
I was brand new when I started my blog many years ago, and I learned everything I know along the way.
I read lots of online articles written by other bloggers who were once in the same spot I was, and I have also taken several great courses to help me improve my blog over the years.
I created Making Sense of Cents in 2011, and since then, I have earned over $5,000,000 from my blog.
Blogging allows me to travel full-time, have a flexible schedule, and I earn a great income doing it.
My blog was created on a whim as a way to track my own personal finance progress. When I first started my blog, I honestly had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t even know that people could make money blogging!
One of the reasons that blogging is one of the best entry level work from home jobs is because blogging is quite affordable to start.
You can easily learn how to start a blog with my free How To Start a Blog Course.
Here’s a quick outline of what you will learn:
Yes, you read that correctly. You can sell items on Amazon while working from home.
Even if you have no experience, you can earn money selling all kinds of items on Amazon, from books, work out equipment, electronics, and more.
Amazon has many people who sell items and earn money from home. Most have no experience selling things online or have ever worked at Amazon.
Jessica Larrew, of The Selling Family, is a friend of mine, and she and her family started selling things on Amazon FBA a few years ago without any experience – they made over $100,000 profit in their first year! And, they were working less than 20 hours a week total.
Jessica now has a FREE 7 day course that will teach you everything you need to know in order to start selling on Amazon. I recommend signing up for it now!
I interviewed Jessica in How To Work From Home Selling On Amazon FBA, and we talk about:
This one will probably surprise you, but there are entry level work from home jobs where you teach English to kids in other countries. You don’t need to have been a teacher or speak a language other than English.
The requirements are that you have experience working with kids. That can include mentoring, tutoring, coaching, babysitting, or being a parent.
That’s a pretty easy requirement, though!
You can typically earn around $14 to $22 per hour by teaching English online.
Learning how to teach English online has become extremely popular, making it one of the best online jobs from home for many good reasons – it’s flexible, there’s a high need for teachers, and it pays pretty well.
My top three picks are ones my readers have recommended and ones I have researched:
Learn more at Make Extra Money By Learning How To Teach English Online.
To go along with the above, you can also work from home as an online tutor.
Course Hero is a website that has entry level work from home jobs where you help high school and college students with course-specific questions.
Course Hero was founded in 2007 and is an online learning website where students can find tutors and search by their specific school to find study guides, videos, practice problems, class notes, and step-by-step explanations.
Using the website, students connect with Course Hero tutors on a wide range of subjects and classes, which makes this a great option for people with different educational backgrounds and experience.
What might surprise you to learn is that you don’t need to have experience as a tutor, professor, or teacher in order to become a Course Hero tutor.
However, you will need to share information that proves you have expertise in the subjects you would like to help students with, such as degrees or previous work history.
Tutors earn an average of $3 for each question they answer on Course Hero. Earning between $12-$20 per hour, Course Hero tutors earn an average of $300 a week.
Here’s how this online tutoring job work:
Learn more at How To Make $300+ Weekly As An Online Tutor With Course Hero.
Several years ago, I was a virtual assistant.
I had no previous experience, and I simply learned skills as I worked.
Virtual assisting is a field that is growing a lot, and there are lots of entry level work from home jobs as a virtual assistant.
Virtual assistant (VA) tasks may include social media management, formatting and editing content, scheduling appointments or travel, email management, and more. Basically, you can get paid to do any task that needs to be done in someone’s business, but doesn’t need to be done by them.
My friend Kayla is a full-time blogger, virtual assistant, and project manager who earns over $10,000 per month while working from home. She is also the founder of $10K VA, a course where she teaches exactly how you can make a consistent $10,000 per month as a virtual assistant!
Kayla used to work a full-time job as a credit analyst, earning about $2,000 per month. She was struggling to make ends meet while paying off debt, so she started a side hustle as a virtual assistant.
I interviewed her at How Kayla Earns $10K/Month From Home as a Virtual Assistant, and we talk about:
And more!
A Search Engine Evaluator (also known as a Google Rater) is where you rate websites based on their quality and usefulness.
You are rating websites to help Google improve their search engine results.
This is one of the entry level work from home jobs that almost anyone can do – you don’t need to be a technical person in order to make money as a search engine evaluator.
Another great positive is that you can work in the language of your country, as Google operates in nearly every country around the world.
Learn more at How To Become a Search Engine Evaluator.
Did you know that you can make a living from Facebook? With Facebook advertising, you can help businesses expand their reach.
And, yes, this is a skill that you can learn!
Last year, business owners spent over $88,000,000 per day on Facebook ads. This is expected to continue to grow, and it is one of the largest advertising spaces that exists.
My blogging friend Bobby Hoyt knows a lot about this topic. Bobby is a former high school teacher who paid off $40,000 of student loan debt in a year and a half. He learned how to run Facebook ads on his own to earn extra money. Bobby now runs the personal finance blog Millennial Money Man full-time, as well as a digital marketing agency for local businesses that he started in 2015.
I interviewed Bobby about entry level work from home jobs running Facebook ads, and in our interview, you will learn:
Also, Bobby has a free webinar on this topic too. His webinar (you can sign up here) will teach you how to start this business even if you’re brand new, how to find paying clients, and more.
This isn’t exactly a job, but it is a way to make extra money.
And, you don’t need any previous experience.
Yes, you can get paid to share your opinion!
Companies use surveys all the time to learn what their current and potential customers think of their products, services, and company. With the surveys you take, companies get valuable opinions on how to improve their products, and that’s what they are paying you for.
Below are the survey companies I recommend:
This is one of the entry level work from home jobs that many people are surprised to hear about. But yes, you can start your own online store, and you don’t need to have tons of experience or a lot of money to do so. Many people start with absolutely no background.
I had the opportunity to interview Jenn Leach of E-commerce and Prosper, who explains exactly how to start an online store.
Jenn is a corporate mom turned e-commerce store owner and blogger.
She started her online business a little over three years ago, and since then, she has developed and grown three successful online e-commerce stores earning an average of $19,000 per month.
She is super successful despite only spending around 5-10 hours per week on her e-commerce business.
You can read our interview at How Jenn Makes Over $10,000 A Month With Her Online Store In Less Than 10 Hours Per Week.
I’m sure you’re surprised to hear that bookkeeping is an area with entry level work from home jobs, but it definitely is.
A bookkeeper is someone who tracks the finances of a business, handles billing and payments, making spreadsheets, etc., but that doesn’t mean you need to be an accountant or have any related experience.
Ben, from Bookkeeper Launch, helps people get started as bookkeepers even when they don’t have any experience. Ben is a CPA who founded his business after realizing that many businesses needed better bookkeepers.
In our interview, we talk about:
You can read all of his answers and more in our interview Make Money At Home By Becoming A Bookkeeper.
Also, you can sign up here for a free series that will teach you more about running your own virtual bookkeeping business.
This is one another one of the entry level work from home jobs that anyone can start. That’s because we all have lots of stuff in our house that we can probably sell online.
Have you ever found something that you thought you may be able to resell and actually make some money?
Melissa’s family earned $133,000 in one year through buy and sell flipping, and they were working only 10-20 hours per week.
Yes, just 10-20 hours a week!
Some of the best flipped items that they’ve sold include:
You can learn more at How Melissa Made $40,000 In One Year Flipping Items.
I know so many people who have found entry level freelance writing jobs. You don’t need a background in writing or a degree in English or creative writing.
A freelance writer is someone who writes for a number of different clients, such as websites, blogs, magazines, advertising companies, books, and more. They don’t work for one specific company, rather they work for themselves and contract out their writing.
My friend Holly from EarnMoreWriting.com (as well as the popular personal finance blog Club Thrifty) is a very successful freelance writer and has earned over $200,000 writing online!
Her freelance writing course includes nine video modules, several printable worksheets, and awesome add-ons, too. Here are some of the things you can expect to learn if you take her freelance writing course:
Learn more at How I Earn $200,000+ Writing Online Content.
Transcription is the art of turning any audio or video content into a text document.
There are many businesses looking for transcriptionists too – since general transcriptionists convert audio and video to text for virtually any industry, there really isn’t a typical client. Some examples include marketers, authors, filmmakers, academics, speakers, and conferences of all types.
Beginning transcriptionists earn around $15 an hour to start.
There are many transcriptionist jobs that don’t require experience, and most transcriptionists learn more and improve their skills as they work.
You can learn more about becoming a transcriptionist in the interview Make Money At Home By Becoming A Transcriptionist. The interview explains:
Finding entry level proofreading jobs online is very possible.
All you need to work as a proofreader is a laptop or tablet, an internet connection, and a good eye for pointing out mistakes.
Proofreaders look for punctuation mistakes, misspelled words, lack of consistency, and formatting errors.
In 2014, Caitlin made slightly over $43,000 by being a freelance proofreader.
You’ll learn more about this in my interview with Caitlin that I link to below, but proofreaders take content that other people have written and then go over it with a fine-tooth comb. You might be proofreading blog posts, print articles, academic articles, website copy, ad copy, books, student papers, emails, and more.
This job is for a very specific type of person who LOVES to correct grammar or makes a note of spelling mistakes on a restaurant menu… it takes a certain “eagle eye” ability to be good at proofreading!
I interviewed Caitlin on what it takes to become a proofreader, and in our interview we go over questions such as:
You can find out about entry level work from home jobs and more at How To Become A Proofreader And Work From Anywhere.
Caitlin has put together a FREE 76-minute workshop, where she answers all of the most common questions about becoming a proofreader, and she even shows you how to use the most popular tools used by proofreaders around the world. You can sign up for free here.
Scoping is when you are editing legal documents for court reporters. This is different from proofreading for court reporters.
I interviewed an expert on the topic – Linda from Internet Scoping School. She has been scoping for over 35 years and has taught scoping online for around 20 years.
She also has a free course that will introduce you to scoping so that you can decide if it’s one of the entry level work from home jobs you want to pursue. You can find the free course by clicking here.
Scopists who are working with an average court reporter tend to make around $30,000 to $45,000 per year working pretty much full-time.
You can learn more at How To Become A Scopist.
Currently, there’s a huge demand for podcast virtual assistants.
There are over 800,000 podcasts out there, and that number just continues to grow. Podcasts are still a pretty new area, and that opens the door for lots of new entry level work from home jobs helping with all of these new podcasts.
While the podcast host can record themselves, other tasks like editing and publication take time, so many podcasters outsource their work to freelancers or virtual assistants. Also, some podcasters may not know how to do those things, or they may choose to focus their time on other areas.
Some of the different services you could do as a podcast virtual assistant include:
Learn more at How I Make $1,500 A Month As A Podcast Virtual Assistant.
Also, you can sign up here for free information on learning more about how to become a podcast VA. In this free resource, you’ll learn more about what exactly a podcast virtual assistant is, the services you can offer, and starting rates.
Freelancers are people who work for others by doing part-time jobs. A business may hire you on for one-time gigs or you may get a long-term job with a company as a freelancer.
In addition to some of the freelance jobs I’ve already mentioned (writing, proofreading, transcribing, and bookkeeping) there are even more entry level work from home jobs out there for people who are able to leverage existing skills, like:
This is one of the best work from home jobs because you can use a skill you already have and start finding work on job platforms like UpWork and Fiverr.
Many large companies outsource their customer service departments to people who are working from home.
Customer service representatives may be responsible for a number of things, such as:
This is becoming one of the best entry level work from home jobs because the number of large companies who need online customer service reps is growing. Companies like Apple, American Express, UHAUL, and more offer basic training for new hires.
Funny enough, many people think that you have to “know someone” or have previous experience in order to become a mystery shopper.
But, that’s not the truth at all.
You don’t need any previous experience in order to become a secret shopper.
This won’t be a full-time job, but it can give you some extra money each month. And, yes, there are some mystery shops that can be done by phone and online.
I remember when I first heard of being a secret shopper. I was working at a retail store and we regularly had mystery shoppers come in to grade how we were doing. We never knew who the mystery shopper was, but we would get to read their report afterwards.
I thought it was so interesting that people were getting paid to shop!
Not long after hearing about it, I decided to try mystery shopping to make extra money to help pay off my student loan debt.
I regularly earned around $150 to $200 a month mystery shopping, and I earned free items/services as well, such as $100 to spend at restaurants (which I had to grade while I was there), makeup, and more.
If this sounds interesting to you, you can join Bestmark by clicking here. This is my favorite mystery shopping company, and the only one I used back when I was mystery shopping, so I know it’s legitimate.
Learn more at Want To Make An Extra $100 A Month? Learn How To Become A Mystery Shopper.
A voice over actor is the person you hear but rarely see on YouTube videos, radio ads, explainer videos, corporate narration, documentaries, e-learning courses, audiobooks, TV commercials, video games, movies, and cartoons.
This job doesn’t require previous experience or special skills – you just need to have the right kind of voice that companies are looking for.
In 2014, Carrie replaced her salaried day job to become a full-time voice over actor. People are constantly asking her how she got her start and how they can too.
So, she created a six-week online class, and it sold out. Several of her students booked voice acting jobs before the class was even over!
I was excited to learn more about this work from home job, so I interviewed Carrie to learn:
You can read my interview with her at How To Become A Voice Over Actor And Work From Anywhere.
As you can see, there are many different options for you if you are looking for an online job or work from home business with no experience.
I hope you are able to find what works best for you and your situation.
What entry level work from home jobs would you add to the list above?
The post 20 Of The Best Entry Level Work From Home Jobs appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.
Source: makingsenseofcents.com
So here we are just a month later, in a full-blown economic panic, and at the start of the most sudden recession ever.
The pandemic has spread much further and faster than most uninformed people (including me) would have ever guessed, and the whole world is on some form of lockdown. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before in the modern world.
What should we do?
On the financial side, I’ve seen media stories about “The End of FIRE movement”, and a close friend even said to me, “Well, I’ve got to go back to work now because with all my investments down 35%, I’m not financially independent any more.”
And I’ve seen plenty of similar statements out there on the Internet:
Even worse, some people are trying to time the stock market, selling off their investments at a discount in the hopes of “protecting” them, hoping to subsequently outsmart everyone else and re-buy them at an even lower price just before some future rebound.
On the human side, we have seen a death toll of thousands of people per day in the US alone with best-case forecasts of 200,000 by the time things calm down, which implies several million worldwide.
And so far, we have not been performing like a best-case country so these numbers will probably be higher.
This all sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
It makes sense that many people are fearful and pessimistic. So why is it that I remain as optimistic as ever, with the full expectation that you and I will come through this humbled but also wiser and better than ever?
It’s because I already know how this all ends.
The world will keep rallying and doing its best to slow down contagion. Caring people will keep helping each other. People will stay home and heal, hospitals will expand, nurses and doctors will do their best to save as many lives as possible, and the 80% of us in jobs that allow us to keep working, will keep doing our jobs.
Meanwhile, innovators are still innovating all over the world. People are staying up late working in labs, vaccines are being tested, genes are being sequenced and the current virus will end up beaten and then written up as a very significant chapter in the history books.
But apart from all of this, there is still way more going on out there, which just isn’t making it to the headlines. Engineers and scientists are still inventing things that will drastically improve the future. Solar panels are still streaming out by the trainload and being installed worldwide. Better and better batteries which will eventually displace all fossil fuel use are evolving. The most efficient factories in history are being built. Gene therapies are advancing which will eventually make a mockery of all of our current health conditions. Internet connectivity and education is becoming more widely available and cheaper which is allowing the next generation of brilliant kids to to grow up and learn faster and do more than you or I could have even dreamed. And all this will happen regardless of the course of the current pandemic.
If all that is true, then why is the world so Scary right now?
I get it – never before has something from the daily news come home to affect our daily lives so much. Grocery stores are cleaned out, people are wearing masks, and you probably have friends who are currently unemployed, or sick, or both.
But in this situation, it really helps to understand the big picture of what is actually going on. The world is not ending. The air outside your windows is not a swirling cloud of certain death.
All that has changed is that we are in a self-imposed economic slowdown that has been created purely to save the lives of our most vulnerable people.
Which is one of the most compassionate things our society has ever done. To me, this is a remarkable and wonderful moment and I would not have guessed that such a capitalist country would ever have the balls to do it.
To put it into a visual, we have decided to prevent the following worst-case scenario:
(IMPORTANT NOTE: The timing of these hypothetical deaths is not real medical data, just an illustration of my own personal guess – made with a mouse pointer rather than a spreadsheet. However the US background death rate really is about 2.8M per year per the CDC)
And turn it into this:
In the worst case, our public officials would all downplay the risk of COVID-19, and we’d keep working and traveling and spreading it freely. We’d maximize our economic activity and let the disease run its course.
From the disease models I have seen so far, about 70% of us would eventually contract it. Half of those would have no symptoms or very mild ones, a smaller (but still huge) number would get sick or very sick, 10% might end up in a very overloaded hospital system, and in total about 1-2% of our population would die from complications – partly depending on how quickly we could put up temporary treatment centers to cycle through 30 million people in only a few years.
It would feel cruel and chaotic, but in reality we would still not be even approaching the conditions that people in the developing world deal with every day. Our world has always been cruel and chaotic in so many ways which affect a much larger number of people – we just happen to be used to them. And one thing that humans are exceptionally good at, is getting used to things.
In the more compassionate case which we are currently following, we drastically reduce the amount of contact we have with each other for a few months, which cuts the number of deaths in the US down from 3-6 million, down to perhaps 200,000. In exchange, our economy shrinks by several trillion dollars (it was about 21 trillion in 2019) for a year or more.
Assuming we are preventing 3 million early deaths, this means our society is foregoing about one million dollars of economic activity for each person’s life that we extend and frankly, it makes me happy to know we are capable of that.
So that’s the big picture: we are cautiously and temporarily buckling down and making some sacrifices, in order to help other people.
To me, that is not a cause for panic or fear – it’s a chance to try even harder and be thankful for such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Meanwhile, some good stuff is happening as a byproduct:
So How Does This Affect my Retirement?
Once you really get the big picture above, you can see that we are going to come through this better in every way.
Just as with any recession, weaker companies will go bankrupt, stronger ones will streamline their operations and get smarter, and the chaos and broken pieces will become the raw materials from which an enormous batch of brand-new companies will form.
Better ways to track and treat disease, more scalable and less bureaucratic hospitals, more options for remote medicine and more support for remote work and virtual offices and virtual learning in general. More home delivery services and fewer big box stores and wasted parking lots, more support for biking and walking, and a million other things that a billion other people will think of.
The end result will be a better, more resilient and richer world than ever. Yes, that will also eventually mean more money in your retirement account, but more importantly it means better and happier living conditions for every living thing on Earth.
While this all sounds like optimistic magic, it’s actually just a byproduct of human nature. We are a lazy and change-averse creature and we become complacent when our fearful and primitive brains think things are “good enough” for survival and reproduction.
So, oddly enough, we often need a good slap upside the head to get off of our collective asses and actually make some improvements. Observe the wisdom of our elders:
As old and repeated as these slogans might be, they stick around because they keep proving to be remarkably true. They are the real-world manifestation of a badassity that is built right into our Human DNA, which is why they are some of my favorite phrases in life.
Are things a bit hard right now?
GOOD.
See you in the inevitable and incredible boom-time that will result.
—-
Other Interesting Things That Might Help You Feel Better:
The Simple Path to Wealth, by my longtime author/blogger friend JL Collins, explains long-term investing in the most simple and calm way imaginable.
Towards Rational Exuberance is a more technical and detailed (but still very fun to read) history of the stock market and how the Federal Reserve bank serves to stabilize our system. Although I read this book over fifteen years ago, it has underpinned my understanding and confidence in long-term investing ever since. I would love it if author Mark Smith would add a few chapters to cover the two most recent market crashes as well!
A Guided Meditation for when the Stock Market is Dropping, is Jim’s witty YouTube reminder of the same thing, which he somehow created long before any of this panic started – how could he possibly have known in advance??
Good News, there’s Another Recession Coming is my own magical forecast of the present moment, made over two years ago.
Why We are Not Really All Doomed, my 2014 take on why the world was (and still is) well positioned for many decades of future prosperity.
How To Retire Forever on a Fixed Chunk of Money gets into the reason why stock market drops like the present one don’t really hurt an early retiree (it’s because the vast majority of your shares will be sold several decades from now, when the present panic is barely a blip on the graph.
And finally, just for fun here’s an example of something that is not written to make you feel better. In recent weeks, I spent several hours writing out some interview answers for an article in the New York Times.
I was truly excited to share the details of why the Principles of Mustachianism are more useful than ever in times like these, and it’s quite the opposite of “The End of FIRE” that the silly and financially naive media have been peddling in recent stories.
I was disappointed in the end result. Most of my answers were cut out, and instead the article is focused on “hardships” that other early retirees are currently working through. And the clickbaity title sets the expectations wrong to begin with:
They All Retired Before They Hit 40. And Then This Happened.
(that link will take you to my Twitter post about it, where an interesting discussion has formed in the comments – what do you think?)
Source: mrmoneymustache.com