Scott Free Thinking

When it comes to time management, it is always a wonderful thing when you can get to the point of experimentation. Lately, I’ve been trying to experiment with how much time I spend on my business as opposed to how much time I spend playing music or even just leisure - the results have been truly extravagant. I’ve reduced the amount of time I’ve spent working on my passive income projects by over 50%, and the amount of income I’ve received has not changed at all. It has not gone up, granted, but it certainly has not gone down. Some people are spending so much time working on getting more money, or spending so much time on individual projects they have no idea how much time they truly have to spend until they actually try.

So what have I been doing with my spare time? In part, I’ve spent it at an actual job to earn some “faucet” cash. If passive income requires little or no effort and continues to be generated over time regardless of attendence, “faucet” money is sort of the opposite. When you go to an hourly wage job, it is sort of like being their to turn a faucet which then no longer gives you money at the end of the day, where it is “turned off.” This whole concept and terminology is something that Bill Perry of Financial Freedom Library taught me. And I think it is important to understand. While it is possible to generate an income off of both passive and active sources, you will probably find it often makes sense to do a mixture of both.

At least, that is the current situation I now find myself in. Now, I’ve got a tight budget that I work with to cover living expenses, a passive income that is now going into savings, future plans for marketing and advertising campaigns after money as accumulated to a certain extent, items I’m selling off and liquifying to make room for my new recording setup, and much more. All in all, you could say I’ve “diversified,” but I do not want to be so quick to name that term, as it carries too many business oriented connotations. Instead, I’ll simply say that a variety of financial techniques have been employed to give me more money now than I have ever had before.

This spare time has given me a chance to keep my sanity, to have more fun(which is more important than many realize), to take care of my physical health just a little bit better, and overall it has given me a chance to take a step back and examine my current situation in more detail with broader scope. Let’s say, for instance, that you have a person who works a minimum wage job(or close to minimum wage) for 11-12 hours every single day. This is commonly what is considered to be a double shift. Let’s also say that their earnings allow them to make about $24,000-$26,000 per year.

Then you have a person like myself, working a $7 an hour job, going to college, and then, in combination with that, I also have what I like to call my “penny sources,” or in other words: passive income sources that continuously generate pennies every single day. I currently earn about the same amount of money doing about 30%-40% of the work that the other person would, working under the same sort of income levels. Is there something a little distorted with this picture? Perhaps to the guy who is working double shifts every day for no good reason.

Finance has always been about a number of factors. To me, your financial wealth rotates around these particular factors:

1. Chance and Probability - There is always a possibility that you are under harsh conditions, or in an evironment that simply does not tailor to your financial needs. Sometimes, it can even be said that you were born into these less than ideal environmental states. Maybe you have a poor family with little capital to help you in any endeavor to undertake. Maybe you are not in a location or place in the world where an education is an easy thing to find. Whatever the case, this category of factors and possible events, occurrences, and conditions can be said to be the only thing that is not under your control.

2. Ingenuity - What is ingenuity? Essentially, it could be said that ingenuity is how ‘clever’ you are, but clever is not a word that can sum it up or describe it so simply. Ingenuity also is related to your ability to adapt to a given situation, or your resourcefulness, in coping with a particular problem and how you go about resolving that problem. The road to wealth in the different areas of your life, and especially with money, is more often than not filled with obstacles. If your goal is to start a business, can you find an effective niche with a largely untapped market? If your goal is to get promoted at your job, what is something unique and innovative that you can bring to the attention of your managers? How can you also generate a better working relationship with the others around you?

3. Learning - It might seem sort of obvious to some, but learning is so ridiculously important that I have found myself shaking my head at some who seem to be doing everything right minus the adaptive actions they are required to take to move to the next level. Learning is important to life in general, but when it comes to money, it is equally important. Why is it that in high schools today children are learning geometry and algebra, but are not taught about personal finance? Much of the financial world is protected by nothing more than knowledge. They say that knowledge is power, and money is power - it is both because money can get you knowledge, and knowledge can get you money. Together, these things are indeed very powerful. If the stockholders in the world today were dealing with an educated public, it is entirely possible that the major corporations of today and the stock market itself would not at all be the same. Those investing in mutual funds when others are not, or those who hold valuable stocks that others do not, or those that find a powerful business that others did not, they all operate off of that single concept: they continue to learn, they continue to gain knowledge.

Perhaps some of this seems overly simplistic. But is it really, and if so, why does it need to be complicated? Some of the most powerful methods for personal growth, or that matter, for any kind of growth in any area, are very, very simple. Think about the core of mathematics - which is arithmetic. Arithmetic is something that is extremely simple, but runs the bulk of the modern economy. Retail is a multi-billion dollar industry, but all it is is making products at a low price and selling them for a higher - simple, but earns billions of dollars, gives thousands upon thousands of people jobs, and plays a major role in virtually everyone’s daily lives. When you study for a test, you will likely do better if you write concepts down. Simple, but powerful. I rest my case.