YMF Response to Old Money Finance

YMF Response to Old Money Finance

If you’ve seen the articles on the site recently, you’ll know that I was fortunate enough to have on older, wiser, personal finance enthusiast share some of his wisdom with me. I’ve known Mr. K for a few years now and always enjoy my conversations with him. It’s so cool for me as a young professional see an older retiree model personal financial success so well. Mr. K is happily retired and has a great family and is so happy! I asked him a while back if he’d be interested in sharing some of his wisdom with a younger generation and he happily agreed to. A few weeks later, I got a 12 page Word Document with lots of great content! It was actually Mr. K’s advice to break the post up into 3 different article and in case you missed them, here they are again: Success in your career and money, Success in other areas, the Summary pulling it all together for a balanced life.

A couple of things really stood out to me from his article, things that I’ll be taking to heart moving forward, and other things that were just really good reassurances. Let’s dive in to my thoughts on Mr. K’s great post:

Save and Invest

All throughout the first post, Mr. K touted the importance of saving and investing. He talked about how he and his family attempted to minimize their expenses, lead a balanced budget, and be smart with their money. He also spoke of investing, whether it was for retirement (prior to a 401(k) being a thing), in a house (loved the phrase about how good a house can be as a long-term investment), or in the stock market. It’s clear that Mr. K did his homework and was smart with his money when it came to investments. 

Mrs. Money and I too share this mentality, and hopefully that’s not a surprise if you’re an active reader of this site. I’ve done articles on how I used to save 33% of my income, talking about how we attempt to save and invest as much as we can. I’m a big believer in the time value of money and know that starting early and doing as much as we can now will pay off in the long run. 

Grow your career 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Unfortunately, most of us all will need to work for the majority of our lives. I know that there’s the old adage “find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life again” but unfortunately being a professional athlete or a movie star isn’t in the cards for most of us. The reality is many of us won’t love the work we do. Perhaps we like it, don’t mind it, or don’t hate it, but at the end of the day we all have bills to pay and need a job to help do that. 

I appreciate Mr. K calling out that he never really loved being in sales, but was good at it, and stuck with it. I think it’s important to figure out a career path for ourselves, and leverage past jobs and experiences to grow our career. Mr. K changed jobs a few times in his career, and was rewarded with a salary increase. I too feel like I’ve leveraged past jobs to get the job I have now, and have benefitted by an increased paycheck. It’s clear that Mr. K also worked HARD at his job – and worked to develop professionally to become better at what he did. 

The same should apply for us – find a job you like, or don’t mind, work hard, always be learning and improving and don’t be afraid to change jobs or companies if needed and it pays more. 

Take chances 

Wow, I loved the story about Mr. K bravely branching out on his own to chase after this new idea of “cell phones” (I wonder how many of you are reading this from your smart phone – oh wait Google Analytics tells me about 40% of my readers do). I’m a big believer, and it seems Mr. K is too in taking smart risks. 

I once called myself a ‘risk mitigator’ – in the sense that I think it’s still important that you take risks – no risk no reward! Notice that Mr. K wasn’t betting his entire life savings on this business and wasn’t taking on tons of debt either. Be smart, but take chances! 

Invest in more than money (i.e. balance) 

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

I loved how Mr. K spent so much time talks about how important investing (i.e. spending time, energy) in more than money is important. It’s clear that Mr. K learned more to value and prioritize more than his career, and although it wasn’t always easy, it’s something to strive for. Whether it’s family, emotional or spiritual health, Mr. K found the secret to a successful life is balance in many areas. I’ll admit that I don’t do the best job of this myself, but I do attempt to make it a priority – to focus on family, faith and friends. 

Success is so much more than money

To reflect on the 5 rewards Mr. K called out: wealth, fame, power, peace and happiness, it sounds like Mr. K felt the most satisfied with the last 2. I would agree with that, and need to be reminded of that on an ongoing basis! I read a cool study saying that making $60-$75K is the optimal amount for emotional satisfaction. Less than that, you’re stressed about paying the bills, and more than that had a didn’t really see your emotional health increase anymore. Focus on what you’ll be most proud of on your deathbed – and I don’t think it’ll be how much money you made, how popular you were, or powerful. 

A huge thank you to Mr. K again for his article! I hope you enjoyed them as well and may have learned something! 

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