Embrace a New Financial Mindset

We live in a debt-driven society in which credit cards and loans (student, auto, mortgages, etc) have surpassed the old method of paid-in-full cash payments. With that being said if you follow the current system…you are going to get into some type of debt! Without debt you wouldn’t be bound by the ambiguous magical credit score that companies use as a primary factor to judge whether or not you are the type of person that they want to lend money to. I mean it’s not like these companies ask you to provide: your name, address, employment, income, social security number, references or any other information that they could use to track you down if did not pay your obligations back right? We don’t live in a society where companies lend out monies without consent usually agreed upon through the formation of contracts and any breach of that contract leads to said companies retrieving your assets. Okay, sarcasm aside-at some point in your life you are going to get into debt. However, you do have the freedom to choose not to stay in debt.

Probably the biggest reason why so many individuals are in debt right now is because of reckless money management that stems from the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality is used to push consumer consumption of unnecessary or extravagant products. This external competition to keep-up-with-society not only leads to conformity and complacency; but, also steers many individuals towards the path of unavoidable debt.

To illustrate our point let us create a chart displaying the typical work day for someone working a traditional full-time (40 hours a week; 5 days a week) schedule.

Beginning with 24 hours let’s:

• Subtract 8 hours of sleep (recommended)
• Subtract 1 hour of round-trip travel time (estimated)
• Subtract 8 hours individual spends working
• Subtract 1 hour (45 min lunch and 15 min break usually required by law but varies)

After all of those subtractions you should come up with a figure like the one illustrated below.

As you can see this individual only has a mere 6 hours remaining of the day to enjoy. However, if one were to factor in eating (breakfast and dinner), bathing, cleaning the house (laundry, dishes, etc.), as well as other activities  how much time is that really? Well let’s examine the above figure in terms of percentages.

That 6 hours of “Free” time accounts for only 25% of our day which is horrible considering that 42% of our day is spent either working (34%) or being controlled by our work schedules (traveling-4%; Lunch-4%). Still not convinced? Well let us go one step further and eliminate the sleep estimate. By eliminating the sleep estimate we are able to see that we spend a whooping 62% of our day (or the time that we are awake) oppressed by our work schedule.

The above examples show just how much working off to pay our debts impacts our everyday life. How you might ask? Well think about how much you value your vacation time. Now, if you did not owe anybody money would you work that type of schedule EVERYDAY or would you spend more time with your family relaxing? Unfortunately, the reason we work these types of schedules is to make enough to pay off those: student loans, rent/mortgage, phone bill, utilities, etc…

We want to reverse these horrifying statistics by educating individuals about money management, budget planning, business development, etc. hopefully allowing individuals to gain a sense of freedom by working less and enjoying more of their life.