Making ends meet using technology begins by defining what we want our financial lives to look like. This means we need to know who we want to be and where we are starting from.
We live in a world enabled by technology and this means more than just surfing the internet for information and buying stuff. It means putting tech-enhanced tools built on information to work for us. Its not just about big tech taking our data, its about our own ability to put that data to work for us as well.
When it comes to defining our finances with tech, the questions and therefore the datapoints, are simple. Does the money that we make surpass that which we spend? A.K.A. do we track our expenditures using digital trackers? And does the money we don’t spend, our savings, work for us? A.K.A. do we put our money to work with digital tools in tech fields so that we make money while we sleep?
It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.
(#CommissionsEarned)
– Robert Kiyosaki, American Businessman & Author; Works Include: FAKE: Fake Money, Fake Teachers, Fake Assets: How Lies are Making the Poor and Middle Class Poorer, Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom, and Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
Making Ends Meet
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Budgeting
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Just like a cyborg mercenary working extra-long hours on the side to make ends meet, we’ve gotta set ourselves up.
The second step in the process is knowing where we stand financially. Unfortunately, there is no better way to do this than to write down what we have, know what we keep and discover how much we spend to keep the lights on and ourselves jacked into cyberspace.
Image by Prince C from Pixabay
Stepping forward means building the path along the way, it means building a budget. Following the Making Ends Meet link below, we discuss how to get into budgets and keep on track with them.
Defining a Starting Point
Deficit spending and expanded consumer credit are tools the system uses to make us into slaves. This need not be intentional, but the effect is the same. We need to ask ourselves; do we really want to live the rest of our lives paycheck to paycheck and struggling with debt? In the end, it is all on us to break free of the slavery we so willingly bound ourselves to.
For some of us, it is not so easy though and it takes more for us to wake up. The game of life is set against us. It operates to lead us astray and it’s on us to drive toward our own goals. If we are not careful it can be terribly difficult to tear free from the bonds of the 40-hour work week and the supposed “safety” it accords us. We, the individuals, can be the agents of our own change.
For all the guru’s and so-called experts who spread all their paid programs saying their way is the only way, we really don’t need any of it. We simply need to build our capacity to exceed for ourselves. In doing so, we will define who we want to be.
Define Our Financial Self
When I got started, I was a mess. Luckily, I had a job, but it did not feel like much else. Heck over the course of the first year after my separation from my family I had as many as six of them at a time! Some were super short term, some longer.
While all this work helped to pay the bills, all the extra hours were not helping. My kids were gone, and I’d fallen into a deep funk. In conjunction, I heard all the time all I had to do was focus on my work, it will help take my mind off things and then things would get better. So, what did I do? I worked all the time. And one thing I can tell you for sure, is that working for work’s sake, did NOT help! And as it turned out, it was also completely unsustainable.
The year after my kids were stolen from me, I hit a wall. My divorce and bankruptcy concluded and my kids were further away than ever having been pulled half a country away by the ex. Furthermore, I was wiped out and forced to borrow from family to keep above water on my debts; yes, even with bankruptcy there are just some debts that just do not go away.
I was worn out, depressed, and riddled with anxiety. The whole experience left me sitting in an emergency room, alone, not knowing where to turn and all the doctors could offer were mind-numbing drugs.
This was rock bottom.
So, this is where I am supposed to say I found this incredible religious theory or some cult figure or philosophy about living your best life now. Yeah, I am not ashamed to admit it, I tried all that. After all, it is what you are supposed to do. Right?
After some terrible experience, we are supposed to find the self-help guru who speaks to us and answers our prayers. Or the one system that leads us to nirvana, or whatever.
Well, all I had ever found were more people searching. Searching and not finding. Everyone looking for answers to their problems and never looking to see who they really were or what they could do about the issues in their lives for themselves.
Sitting in that hospital room, cold and alone, I began to think about all those stories I had gotten myself lost in. Those cyberpunk tales of dystopia, where characters were often beaten down and outcast by society.
They were stories where characters had something to help them in their drive to be something more and to move beyond their current condition. These characters were able to orient themselves and use technology to do it. They would use technology to break free from the tyranny of normal and define their lives for themselves. And so, would I.
I was the one who would define what I wanted to be again, and I would seek out those technologies that would help me do it. The wool the system had pulled over my eyes: the forty-hour workweek till I am dead system, the guru’s, the suck-it-up-and-take-it advice because I was a guy, would no longer rule my life. Everything was going to change, I was going to change.
It began with how I viewed money and the world. I know, big stuff. I had always believed the world around me that said, “money was the root of all evil.” Rich people are “the enemy.” But in the end, money is just a tool like any other. It is who we are underneath that defines what we do with it. Simple, but revolutionary.
I knew I had no interest in huge homes, fleets of cars, or my own personal jet. I just wanted to have a steady stream of income, not work so hard (remember I was working up to six jobs), explore my personal fascination with technology and cyberpunk, and have a personally defined sense of freedom. I wanted to choose who I was going to be and define my own life for me. Most importantly, I knew I had an ally that was always there, growing all around me: technology.
So I laid out my plan, I was going to use technology to help me to get on a budget (yeah, I know, it sucks; but it really does help), work less, avoid the things that sucked my money away from me, explore opportunities in tech, and find a community that could help me along the way.
Building A Budget That Works
I knew I wanted to start by working less, but how could I afford that. I had child support, expenses to see the kids as I could – it is funny, being a divorced dad means paying twice to see your kids – and oh yeah, that surviving day to day thing. I knew that getting on a budget was step one. So where did I turn, but the best of all technologies: the internet.
The simplest method I discovered while searching around on the web was the zero-based budget as advocated for by Dave Ramsey. I know what you are going to say, its another guru! True, but only one part of the answer. Piecing it together for ourselves again is the key. We build ourselves up in parts and define our lives to be what we want them to be. Nothing outside of us will ever be a complete answer.
The best thing about Ramsey’s system is that it is simple, straightforward and immediately puts us in touch with understanding of how each dollar that comes into our lives is ultilized. The core element offered by Ramsey’s system is the notion of Zero-Based Budgeting. It is a simple idea within which every dollar we earn in a month gets a name before that month begins. As we are paid, we then allocate out our income and expenses accordingly. The budget itself is a zero-sum game whereby each dollar earned is put into a specific category. Income-Expenses = 0. In short, there is nothing left unaccounted for.
The biggest benefit to Ramsey’s system I found is that it teaches us to understand that Expenses should also include those aspects that empower our financial lives. Including investments, various emergency fund levels, etc. The budget strategy offered in Zero-Based Budgeting gives us the straightforward means to pull out, each month, a little piece of the pie for ourselves. Something to grow on in a responsible manner.
When I started, the budget tool offered by Ramsey’s website was a downloadable excel file and that was only a few years ago. Today, Ramsey has an Every Dollar App that helps us build a zero-based budget and so much more. Incredible tech tools that are at our finger tips. We only need to download.
Most importantly, Ramsey’s budget helped me to set my path. Using the zero-based budget it helped me through some very lean times (for instance only having $80 for an entire month’s grocery budget), and helped me create a system to grow on and orient from. Using the system, with rigor and discipline, we can begin to outline for ourselves a more controlled and effective use of that one thing we spend so much of our lives to acquire: money.