Career Planning Saved My Life

Career planning may be the only thing between you and total insanity! Take my word for it, planning your career can help you find a new job that you’ll enjoy more than the one you have now. 

Career planning can help you get a better job that pays more, teaches you new skills, requires you to work fewer hours… whatever it is that will make you happier in life.

Career Satisfaction, Zero

I was unhappy in my old job for quite a long time but didn’t spend much time on career planning or career development.  I was SUPER busy at work, then I’d come home to spend time with family, work on Money Smart Life until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and then crash for the night.

My wife pleaded with me to get a new job.  I was always stressed out and unhappy but for some reason I couldn’t seem to get “unstuck” and look for a new job.

What I probably really needed was some career counseling or career advice from someone who had been in a similar position before. I must not have been looking hard enough because I never did find a career coach to work with.

Quitting My Job, Kind Of

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day I knew I was going to quit my job. The morning started with the typical daily frustrations but with each miserable meeting my soul protested more and more violently. Full to the brim of misery I entered an unused office with two of my co-workers to join a conference call for one of my “favorite” projects.

I can still see the look of confusion on my team member’s face when the client dropped a major bombshell on us.  The look slowly contorted to one of horror as she realized the implications of the changes and how much work it would require in a short amount of time.  I felt exactly the way her face looked and at that moment decided that I’d had ENOUGH. I could see from past experience exactly how this was going to play out and how my team was going to get screwed over yet again. I realized that I didn’t have to take it anymore and that my life was going to change.

The rest of the day was pretty much a blur, I had been unstuck. My mind was now focused on the next step, whatever that would be.  I didn’t end up quitting my job until several months later but that day finally kicked me into action and into some major career planning.

Career Planning, Blog Style

I still wish that I would have found a career coach to work with because I think it would have made the process easier.  However, I didn’t have one so I spent a lot of time in self-reflection and writing down some of my career planning steps here on the site. Following is a view of my career planning journey from searching for answers, to giving my two weeks notice, to learning from my co-workers.

Career Planning

• Quit Your Job Or Keep Your Job – How to Decide When a New Job’s Right for You
• Make Morey Money & Be Happy in Your Job Using a Work Portfolio
• Would You Take a Better Job for a Lower Salary?
• How to Make Your Job Better or Find a Better Job

Quitting Your Job

• Two Weeks Notice – The Art of Quitting Your Job Gracefully
• How Quitting Your Job Can Make You a Better Employee

Co-Worker Feedback

• Career Advice to Help You Get Ahead & Feel Good About It
• Career Tips from Co-Workers Show Room for Improvement

Career Planning Saved My Life

It’s been a year now since I’ve switched jobs and I’m amazingly happy. Career planning didn’t literally save my life but so far it’s saved me a whole year of being miserable. 

A year during which we watched our 2 year old toddler turn into a 3 year old little boy.  A year when my expecting wife had our sweet baby girl.  It’s been a spectacular year that I’ve been able to enjoy, thanks in large part to some focused career planning.

---

The Sad Tale of Gansel and Hetel

The plight of Hansel and Gretel is known to many but have you ever heard the sad story of Gansel and Hetel?

Two middle class kids “adrift” in the consumerist shopping mall culture take a bath in debt and almost ruin their lives… can they be saved?

Bad Health & Bad Luck

Gansel and Hetel had it rough growing up with divorced parents.  Their dad didn’t take care of his health and didn’t buy enough life insurance so their mom was left to raise them totally alone after he passed away. 

Their mom didn’t have the choice of staying at home with her kids vs working since she was the sole breadwinner.  She tried to teach her kids about money but she was working three jobs and hardly ever around.  Then when she got really sick she lost her job, couldn’t pay her insurance premiums, and her medical expenses forced the family into bankruptcy.

Bad Decisions

Gansel and Hetel obviously skipped school on the day they taught about how to stay out of debt. They didn’t understand that managing money is mostly about your behavior and mindset and preferred to appear rich, which kept them broke.

After turning 18 and leaving home they both fell into a pit of debt and had to turn to a MonaVie Scam to try and dig their way out.  The scraped up extra money by signing up for new checking accounts and earning bank bonuses each month.  Of course their checks almost always bounced so the bank overdraft fees quickly ate away the bonuses.

Investing in Their Future

Gansel and Hetel looked for any possible way to save a few cents.  One method was hanging out in the public library all day and keeping thier furnance in their apartment turned off. One day Gansel was surfing the web on the library computer and ran across a few personal finance blogs and started to learn about money.

He called Hetel over and they read about debt elimination, paying off credit cards, debt repayment plans, and the debt tsunami.  How come no one had told them this stuff before?

They moved from debt into the investing categories, reading about the Coffehouse Investor, dollar cost averaging, steering clear of Fidelity, and asset allocation. After that they came across these huge resource lists for people who are in their twenties, trying to be frugal, learning about personal finances, and trying to save money.

That afternoon Gansel and Hetel made a pact to pay off their debt and then start investing in their future.  They knew they had a long road ahead of them but reading the stories of others in debt had inspired them.  Who knows if they’ll make it but they’re on the right track!

---

Teach Your Kids How to Manage Money in 7 Easy Lessons

As a parent, you are responsible for teaching your kids how to manage money. No matter what their age, children should start learning how to manage money throughout their childhood. Children taught these lesson turn tend to turn into financially responsible adults instead of jobless and in debt adults sitting on their parents’ couches watching TV all day.

Budgeting and Planning

Whether your child is five or 16 years old, they typically receive money from allowance, part-time job or as gifts for special occasions. This is a great opportunity to teach your children about budgeting and planning for the future. Yes, your child should be able to spend this money on what they want (to a point), but it should also teach them about spending responsibly. Instead of allowing your children to blow all of this money, require your child to use a certain amount of their money to pay for some of their own expenses. For a teenager, this may mean requiring them to pay for one tank of gas for their car each month. For a younger child, it may mean that they have to put 10% of it in their piggy bank to save for a rainy day.

Household Budget

It’s also important to teach your children that money is limited. A great way to illustrate this is with money jars labeled with the family monthly expenses. Using real money or play money, start out with a pile of money that includes the monthly income of your household. Go through the list of bills and expenses for the family each month, removing the expense amount from the pile of money and dropping it in to the appropriately labeled jar. Continue this until all of the expenses are paid. If there is money left over, explain to children that this is spending money. If there isn’t any money left over then explain that there isn’t any money left after bills are paid for any extras.

Live within Your Means

It’s also time to instill the need over want mentality in your children to teach them how to live within their means. Danny Kofke, father of two young daughters (5 and 2) drives this point home by paying an allowance in exchange for chores completed. Allowance money isn’t used solely for spending. Ava (5) is required to split her earnings between three jars–give away, savings and spending (in that order). If Ava sees something she wants, Danny and his wife Tracy tell her she has to see if her spending jar holds enough to buy it, or Ava can dip into her savings for items that may cost a little more. Ava uses the give away jar money to buy presents for others and donate to organizations.

Financial Contracts

Teach children about contracts and financial obligations by acting as a lender from time to time. When your child wants to buy an item, “finance” it for them. You can form on agreement (on paper, if you wish) with the child where you fund the purchase of the item but they are required to pay you back with their own money until the “loan” is paid off. This will prepare your children later in life when it’s time for them to take out a loan or mortgage with a real lender.

No Bailouts Available Here

You may be teaching your child a more valuable lesson by not bailing them out every time they hit a financial snag. Financial snafus are opportunities for your child to learn ways to better manage their money or create a strategy to come up with the money they need to get out of trouble on their own–take on a job, get a second job or create a budget to manage their spending, so this won’t happen. If you do bail them out, then require them to pay you back.

Investing Today for Tomorrow

Take a trip to the bank with your child to open their very own savings account or take it a step further and open an investment account. Require them to deposit a certain amount of their money into this account on a regular basis. Sit with your child and review the statement for their account(s) each month so they can see how their money grows over time. It may seem like a basic concept but it teaches your child how putting money away today grows it for the future.

Bills of the Future

While your child may not have any expenses now, they will in the future. A good way to teach them what kind of expenses they’ll have in the future is to make a list and go over it with them. Teach kids about some of the bills they will be responsible for paying as adults. Again, this drives home the value of money, the need to budget and to cover necessities before being able to splurge on their wants.

Parents that teach children about managing money and finances tend to have responsible adult children. Take your opportunity to instill good financial habits in your children while they are young so they know how to manage their money later in life too.

---

Personal Budgeting Styles & Tools

Personal budgeting can be a different process for each person.  When I talked about how personal budget tracking can save you money, I used an example of how my employer saves money by tracking each piece of paper we print.

I showed how the act of tracking each job before it’s printed and assigning it to part of the budget causes us to more careful with what we print. I ended my discussion with two questions.

• Are you tracking your spending against your budget?
• What system do you have in place to monitor your expenses?

Personal Budgeting Styles

The example I gave was of a very detailed tracking system and Plonkee brought up the point that such precise tracking wouldn’t work well for her:

“I don’t know – there’s a limit to how much tracking is worthwhile. I’m not very detail oriented and would struggle to keep up with anything that was in depth. I prefer to give myself allowances. I can spend whatever I like, on whatever I like, but the total budget for *frills and frippery* is limited each month.”

I definitely understand where she’s coming from, in a financial confession earlier this year I admitted that I hate budgeting.  Of course ctreit sounds like he feels the opposite when he shared how he budgets and tracks his spending:

“When we track our expenses, we are very diligent. We include every single dollar we spend. After all, even the afternoon candy bar for 75 cents adds up to 20 bucks or so in a month. There is one big benefit when we track our expenses: we become very careful about spending money because we don’t want to face the music at the end of the month if we spend money stupidly. I for one would not want my wife to reprimand me for foolish spending.”

Our Credit Card Tracking System

I think each person has their own personal budgeting style that works best for them.  For example, when I asked, “are you tracking your spending against your budget?” the answer could be that you sit down with your credit card statement at the end of every month and see where you spent your money and how it compares to what you had budgeted.

We charge everything on our credit card, our system for monitoring our expenses is to leverage the technology of American Express and Visa to track and categorize each expenditure.  Then we can can download the transactions into Quicken to categorize anything that was missed and compare it against our budget.

I don’t what makes different budgeting styles fit better with one person or another.  I suppose it’s partly your personality and partly how you were raised to manage and think about money.  So regardless of what system for tracking and monitoring your expenses you use, the important thing is that you have and use a system at all.  If you have one, great.  If not, here are some tools for tracking and monitoring you can play around with to see what fits you best.  Credit cards for spending and tracking and personal finance software for monitoring and analysis.

Credit Cards

• American Express True Earnings
• Discover More Card

Personal Finance Software

• You Need a Budget
• Quicken Online
• Wesabe

---

Personal Budget Tracking Creates Results

Does your personal budget have holes in it, where the money just oozes out without you realizing it?  Do you have a system in place to track how the money in your budget is actually spent?

If not, here’s a story that might convince you to track your money more closely. It begins several years ago at my old job, where it was open season on our office printer.

Out of Control Spending

The cost of paper, ink, and printers was part of the general office overhead budget and kept growing each year.  The creeping costs were understandable, the table next to the printer was always covered with stacks of printed pages.  Some of them were printed and forgotten, they would sit there for a week before being tossed into the recycle bin.  The table was littered with mapquest directions, personal emails, order confirmation pages from Best Buy, all sorts of random things that had been printed.

Organized Spending

Now fast forward to the printer table at my current job and guess how many sheets of printed and forgotten paper there are lying around the printer table. Zero. 

That’s because the new company outsources all of the printing so every page you print has to be billed to a project. Every time you print a document a dialog box pops up and you have to decide which part of the budget the cost of printing will come from.

Tracking Our Spending

Since there’s a system in place to track and account for each piece of paper that’s printed people don’t waste it.  We’re not discouraged in any way from printing. If we need something printed we don’t have to ask or justify it, just simply pick which part of the budget it comes out of.  Of course that act of tracking the expense and tying it to a project budget keeps us accountable and helps avoid waste.

How Do Your Track Your Spending?

So the question is, what areas of spending in your personal finances would you like to improve?  Are you tracking your spending against your budget? What system do you have in place to monitor your expenses?

Until you have one, your actual spending may be more like a scattered heap of unused and wasted paper rather than the clean and organized budget that you strive to follow.

---

How to Lower the Cost of Health Care

How can we make health care more affordable?  How about cutting the cost of providing care?

My dad runs a micro-medical practice, where he’s a one man show (actually one man + one part-time woman since my mom helps out with office stuff some evenings). 

His startup costs were pretty low since he bought most of his equipment used and his overhead is low since he doesn’t have a staff. He’s automated and optimized a lot that goes on in his office, using electronic medical records and digitzing everything that he can.

Since his costs are lower that means he doesn’t have to charge as much; which is important to him since his efforts are to provide care for underserved parts of the population. He’s a member of a group of doctors who are taking this approach to medicine. One of them recently sent out a list of ways that he keeps his cost down by using cheap or free technology across his practice.  Here are some of the ways he lowers his cost of running his practice:

Patient Records

Practice Fusion – Electronic Health Record Software; free

Accounting

Office Ally – Billing; cheap

QuickBooks Simple Start – small-business accounting software; free download

FreshBooks – invoicing, time-tracking and expense service; free basic service

Information Technology

Adrive – : 50GB of online storage and backup for all file types; free basic service

Mozy – 2GB of online, data and remote backup solutions; free basic service 

Jott – voice-to-text service for creating notes, lists, e-mails and text messages; free basic service.

LogMeIn – remotely support and access digital information; free basic service

YouSendIt – send files up to 2GB; free basic service

Security

BitDefender Online Scanner: virus scanners; free basic service

ZoneAlarm: firewall protection from hackers and threats; free basic service

Office Productivity

Google Calendar: shareable calendar and schedule organizer; free

Google Docs – collaborative word processor and spreadsheet applications; free

OpenOffice – open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets; free

Project Management/Collaboration

ProjectStat.us -project management solution and updates

Dimdim – open-source web conferencing application; free basic service

Marketing / Networking

Microsoft Office Live Small Business: create a company website, domain and e-mail; free basic service

Blogger – blog publishing tool; free

Entrepreneur Connect – Entrepreneur’s social networking site; free

LinkedIn: business social networking site; free

What do you think? Would you go a doctor that used technology to run a one person practice? What if it meant better rates or better access to your doctor?

---

Federal Income Tax Withholding Too Low This Year?

Federal income tax withholding tables were adjusted earlier in 2009 due to the “Making Work Pay” tax credit as part of the economic stimulus package.  The reduction of federal income tax withholding was intended to provide a gradual financial benefit to the economy by putting a little more money in your paycheck each month.

Federal Income Tax Credit Impact

Many employers and payroll companies automatically handled the change in tables so many workers didn’t have to fill out any paperwork to take advantage of the tax credit.  Of course, based on your financial situation, this change could potentially result in withholding less than your personal income tax liability.

As we approach the final quarter of the year it would be smart to check your tax withholding levels.  The following groups of people should pay close attention:

• Pensioners
• Married couples with two incomes
• Individuals with multiple jobs
• Workers who can be claimed as dependents by other taxpayers

Federal Income Tax Withholding Calculator

You can check out the IRS Withholding Calculator to make sure you’re withholding enough from your paycheck for 2009.  The IRS Publication 919 (How Do I Adjust My Tax Withholding) is another good resource for income tax withholding.

Remember, although your payroll department may have adjusted your withholding automatically they don’t know your personal finance situation. This means it’s up to you to submit a Federal W-4 if you need to change your amount of withholding.

---

Missing a Mortgage Payment

I’ve written before about the dangers of online bill pay, one of the dangers I mention is assuming all your bills are paid automatically.  The advice I gave is to check your statements regularly, even if the payments are automated.

Well, I didn’t take my own advice and I got a call from my mortgage company today asking why I had missed my mortgage payment that had been due at the beginning of the month.  Typically that bill is paid automatically so I had to do some research to see why it wasn’t sent out.

Online Bill Pay Rules

The bill pay company is setup to automatically pay the incoming bills based on a set of criteria that I created.  The rules are different for each bill, if the bill doesn’t meet the criteria then it won’t be paid.

For example, for each bill I set a maximum amount so that it won’t send payment for anything over a specified dollar amount.  Obviously this is to protect our bank balance so that we won’t run into an overdraft in case a company sends us an enormous bill. 

Apparently the mortagage payment amount was higher than it had been in the past so the bill didn’t meet the criteria and wasn’t automatically paid.  I’ve been rather pre-occupied the last several weeks and hadn’t logged into the bill pay account to make sure everything was running smoothly.

Missed Mortgage Payment

I’m glad that the mortgage company called me up to see what was going on with my payment.  I already owe a late fee but I don’t want to have late payments reported on my credit report.  An even worse scenario would have been if the bill had gone unpaid for several months, I don’t know what the consequences of that would have been but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.

I need to start listening to my own advice and make sure I check my online bill pay account more frequently so I don’t get any more calls about unpaid bills.

---

Tips for Preventing & Treating Swine Flu

Flu season is almost here and we have to worry about the swine flu again.  It seems like the flu starts to take off once kids go back to school with all their coughing, sneezing, and not washing their hands. 

One of my co-workers already had two of his kids catch the swine flu at school.  When they got sick he took them into the doctor and the pediatrician confirmed it was the H1N1 virus. Luckily his other two kids, his wife, and he were able to avoid catching thier bug.  I asked what they did to avoid getting swine flu and he sent me the email below with some tips for prevention and treatment.

The new H1N1 virus, also referred to as the swine flu, has caused the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years. Because many people do not have immune protection against the new virus, it is essential to take extra precautions. It’s important to note that H1N1 and the regular seasonal flu are two different strains and require separate vaccinations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges you to take the following actions to protect yourself and others from the influenza virus:

Get a Flu Vaccine

CDC recommends a yearly seasonal flu vaccine as the first and most important step in protecting against seasonal influenza

Vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, including young children, pregnant women or people with chronic health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, heart and lung disease and people 65 years and older

A seasonal flu vaccine will not protect against the new H1N1 virus. However, individuals are still encouraged to get their seasonal flu vaccine as soon as it is available 

Everyday Preventive Actions

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze
• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth which spreads germs
• Stay home when you are sick 

Antiviral drugs (Doctor Recommendation Required)

Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight against the flu by keeping viruses from reproducing in your body

Antiviral drugs can make your illness milder and make you feel better faster and may also prevent serious flu complications

For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started within the first two days of symptoms

It is important to take action now in order to protect yourself in the future. Remember, the CDC considers getting the flu vaccine the most important step in protecting yourself from the flu this season.

---

Life is Short: Save & Spend Wisely for Those Left Behind

Do you ever ask yourself why you’re being such a stickler with your money? We save and invest money for “the future” but how do we know when that future we’ve been preparing for becomes the present?

My Grandmother’s Apartment

My kids and I paid an evening visit to my grandmother this week, just so they could spend a few hours hanging out with her.  The memory of my grandfather, who passed away last year, still fills her relatively new apartment.  She moved into the independent living community after he died and as I walked in the front door I realized how people know when “the future” has arrived.

The place she’s living is wonderful. They have a computer room, a chapel, a game room, a workout room, a movie theatre, shuttles to drive the residents around town, a great dining facility, and most importantly… a nice community.  The people that live there congregate for meals, movies, games, worship, and just to visit.

The Future is Now

Of course all of these amenities aren’t cheap but it’s okay because “the future” that my grandfather saved for all those years has arrived.  As I mentioned in my memorial to him, my grandfather was tight with money, and proud of it.  Now all that saving and investing is paying off. Providing for his wife when he’s not there to care for her is EXACTLY what that money was meant for. 

He probably couldn’t visualize exactly how the money would be spent at the time of earning and saving it but he knew he was investing in the security of his family.  He didn’t know what the future held but he knew that it would eventually come and that he wanted to be ready when it did.

Condolences

One of the reasons I wanted to write this was because of Jason over at Frugal Dad who sadly lost his mother last Sunday. My visit to my grandma and his loss of his mom really got me thinking about where my parents and someday my wife and I will end up. 

I don’t know when that future will be. I don’t know what it will look like. But I’m glad that my parents and my wife and I are saving for the day when it arrives so that we can provide the rest of our family the security that we won’t be there to give.

---

Page 88 of 190« First«...102030...8687888990...100110120...»Last »