Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I am not a Huckster

Various Hucksters, Charlatans, Confidence Men, and some Financial Analysts have commandeered this useful expression for use in their nefarious fast money making schemes, however, the question Does Your Money Work For you, or do you work for it? is an excellent question to think about in terms of your personal finance position. As a quick note, remember anybody who says they are not a huckster or charlatan, you should be skeptical of their comments (as you should with anything in a Blog as well).

If your money is working for you, it is helping you reach your goals in life and is being helpful, whereas, if you are working for your money, you simply are feeding the money monster which seems insatiable, this is my simplistic interpretation of this phrase (others may disagree and if so, please feel free to comment on my opinion).

How do you get your money to work for you? That is an excellent question, or possibly another more obtuse question might be how do I stop having to feed the money monster? Either one of these questions is asking how do I get control of money in my life? This blog and many other excellent sites are dedicated to this exact topic, and the easiest way to get back control of your monetary world, is by information and education.

Information

What kind of information do you need to get your money working for you?

• How much money do you make in a year?
• How much do you spend in a year? This is a very hard question to answer honestly.
• How much do you  save? Why do you want to save is the other question attached to this one (House, Retirement, vacations, etc.,).

Lots of other information about your monetary situation needs to be collected not just this small subset, however, if you start here, that would be a very good thing.

Education

That one is simple, read useful books, sites and such to collect as much information as you can about how money can work in your life. Understand the various savings vehicles that are available to you, and understand what debt is and how you want to treat debt. Make a plan based on what you have learned, and execute it (and then fix it when you have made mistakes).

I have made Debt my arch nemesis, in my opinion there is no Good Debt anywhere, anyhow, and I have had a lot of folks disagree with me, but this is part of my Personal Finance concept, and after all my opinion should really only matter to me.

The Twist

Will this mean your money will be working for you? No, the actual expression is a Binary query about whether your are Rich or not. If your money works for you (i.e. it grows and builds faster than you need it), you are rich, if not, you are a working stiff and you are working for your money. I am in the latter category, and can’t see where I’d ever end up having my money work for me, but maybe one day if I am lucky I can break even (maybe when I am much older, and have less financial liabilities, my pension will be sufficient).

Sorry, this was a trick post (nasty trick for a Monday).