Here's some advice I wish I had heard as I started my adult life so I could save my money and not starve, and now I'm bringing it to you.
quit your job
It seems a little counterintuitive, but a lot of people are in jobs that don't favor their growth, and favor the laziest, laziest employees. One example is jobs where you sell your hours instead of your productivity: if you don't produce enough hourly to justify hiring yourself, you're better off earning by the hour, whereas if you produce a lot more hourly than is asked, it's better look for a job that pays you for productivity.
Of course, this is not an absolute rule, it's no use running to your employer with your resignation letter now because it can only make your situation worse, but it's good to think about it with great care, especially if you're already dissatisfied and have wanted to quit for some time: choose your job so that you earn more money the more you produce. Some ways this follows are:
- bonuses by goals
- Production profit sharing
- Company profit sharing
- Minimum production of the day (that production is finished, you can go home)
Of course, these are just examples, it's up to you to analyze each case and see what makes the most sense for your situation.
Use your spare time smartly
Of course you need spare time, that's obvious, but use them wisely and conscientiously. Tell me what makes your life better by spending 2 hours watching a romance movie on Netflix? And watching a documentary talking about an investment that could be profitable?
I'm not saying not to have any kind of fun, but use your spare time as smartly as possible, if you are indifferent to relaxing with a book of poetry or a book on financial education, choose the one that will bring you a better life in future.
Financial control programs
Many people in the past had a notebook, where they recorded all the expenses for the month and all the earnings as well. You, however, have the help of technology for that. Choose an app to make your financial control and make this control. Here are some suggestions:
Another idea is to take your favorite Office suite and use the spreadsheet feature to do the tracking as you like. Don't want to spend money on Microsoft Office? No problem, you can choose an Office package using this and this posts, which contain some of my personal recommendations.
the "mattress"
The so-called "mattress" is slang for money you have tucked away under your mattress, "just in case everything goes wrong." A good part of investors (not to say almost all) have a little money that allows them to keep for some time even if everything goes wrong.
It's not really static money, but with great liquidity. Remember: any money that is really stuck is subject to inflationary corrosion. A good example is savings: despite being money that does not have a good profitability, it is money that remains liquid, and can be withdrawn at any time, as opposed to a share of a company, which has a value and higher profitability, but a very low liquidity, which forces you to wait for a buyer to have access to the money you have invested.
All investments you make have greater or lesser liquidity, depending on what you've invested and how much you've invested. In short, diversify your investments so you don't suffer if everything goes wrong. An amount that allows you to live for 2 to 3 months (even without time off) with all your essential expenses (medicines, water, internet, etc.) should suffice.
the winning ticket
Consider this: A guy, clearly poor and ignorant, appears in front of you with a lottery ticket, and asks you to help him go to a lottery office and check his lottery ticket. Another guy, clearly poor but smarter, looks at the ticket and says it's a winning ticket, and tells you to buy it. The first guy says, suspiciously, that he agrees to sell the ticket for two thousand reais. The second guy says you accept, and that even if you and the poor second split 100% of the ticket money, it's still going to be an absurd profit. You buy the ticket and run to the lottery with your new friend (the poor second), but when you get there, you find that your "friend" has run away, that the ticket's original owner has also disappeared, and that so-called winning ticket owned a fake stamp and that was just rubbish.Congratulations, you have just fallen into the winning ticket tale.
This is just one of the types of scams that exist, so stay tuned. Pyramid schemes, ponzi schemes, monkey NFT investment, games that pay you for playing there, be suspicious. Everything that promises you easy money deserves special attention, both for good and for bad. Be careful.
The thief's dilemma and multiple piggy safes
A thief breaks into your home and sees an extremely attractive piggy bank right next to your television. Since the safe is easier to carry than a 70-inch TV, he tucks the safe under his arm and walks away. When you get home, you despair, because in that vault were all your savings from the last 20 years.
Now imagine the same situation, but in that safe was only half of your money, and the other half was in a similar safe on top of the fridge, which the thief did not see and left there. Of course the situation will still be unpleasant, but it won't be that desperate. And that's exactly why you should diversify your investments.
The more you keep your investments focused on a single asset, the more you increase the risks of bankruptcy. If anything happens to that asset, you'll be watching ships as you watch your money take wings and walk away right in front of you without you being able to do anything.
Don't put all your money in the same piggy or all your eggs in the same basket. You will thank me for this later.
Learn the difference between an asset and a liability
Is a house an investment? It is a car? And the action of a company? It all depends on what it brings you.
I'll explain it to you more clearly. An asset is a good that makes you money, while a liability is a good that makes you money. For a person who just bought a property to speculate, this property is a liability, because that buyer will have to bear maintenance, taxes, fees, possible looters, etc., which makes it a liability, something that consumes resources. For a person who bought it for rent, however, this property is both a store of value and a source of resources, making it an asset.
Your secret here is not to have no liabilities (that's impossible), but to own as many assets as possible, and make sure your assets can support your liabilities. It's because of not following these rules that you see so many mega sena winners going bankrupt so easily.
The pillars of investment
When choosing your portfolio, you should divide the resources into three pillars:
- store of value
- fixed earnings
- risk gains
store of value
Stores of value are all the things that preserve most of the value given inflation. Gold, for example, is the perfect store of value, as you can buy with 100 kilograms of gold today approximately the same amount of various items, such as wine, that you bought two thousand years ago, while the fiat currency is the worse, because its value depends solely and exclusively on the Government not having printed more and more of its quantity.
When thinking about a store of value, you have to think about something that has great liquidity, low incidence of inflation and low risk. Public debt bonds, for example, may not have such great liquidity, but they are the safest investments that exist today, since if the Government does not have the money to pay you, it will print more, and, as you will be the first touching printed money, it will be the least affected by inflation (the so-called "Cantillon effect", where inflation impacts the least who receives the money first).
fixed earnings
Fixed earnings are those more traditional earnings, which have a lower return than risk earnings but have a lower risk as well. Real estate bonds are a good example of this, yielding a certain amount to the user per month at a low risk.
risk gains
Risk gains are all those where you can gain absurd amounts and also lose everything you invested. If you invest 200 reais today in the XYZ company, which started last week in the IT market, you have both a chance to profit a lot from the company's appreciation and lose your 200 reais with the company's bankruptcy.
about credit card
The bank is the worst loan shark there is. A moneylender, in the traditional sense of the word, will be irritated if you delay payment and tell you to be beaten up so you can "stay tuned". A bank is going to take your house, your car, your invested money, and it's going to get your name dirty.
Okay, but how to get out of it? Simple: don't get into debt with the banks. The overdraft, for example, is a pre-approved credit line that the bank makes available for you to use even if your account is zero. The problem is that this type of credit has a ridiculously high interest rate: 323% per year. Not even if you hit 100% of your riskiest investments in a year will you make such a high profit.
Card fees are as bad as: 300% per year on revolving credit and 175% per year on card installments. And many banks (I emphasize Bradesco because I've had problems with it in the past) fill their contract with fine print and unnecessary bureaucracy, as well as obscure clauses, which only serve to, if you can't pay 100% of the card's expenses once, you get stuck in a snowball where you will be forced to pay more and more, and the interest just goes up.
The biggest problem with a credit card is precisely that it's a bottomless pit, you start spending and you don't see the money shrinking in your hand, everything looks exactly the same in your bank account, and as you don't see the "make me -laugh" going away, you also don't feel the impact of the purchase, which is even worse if you have very high limits and an income that is too low to pay these costs, which will put you on the revolving card. If your overdraft money covers your card revolving charges, even worse, because you'll get caught in a snowball of interest-on-interest that will drown you in a tide of debt that you'll have a hard time escaping, no matter what. to do.
The credit card is not entirely bad, in fact it is a very useful tool, even when it has a cashback function or the like. However, it is better to stay away from it in the beginning, especially when you are not in good financial health, to avoid future problems.
What about cryptocurrencies? And the NFTs?
I'm not an investment advisor and I won't tell you anything in particular. I just need to warn you to avoid the "shitcoins", read carefully about the project to avoid getting stolen, and be careful.
So, did you miss any tips? What did you wish you had heard about financial education as you started adulthood? Tell me ;)
