Moneywise24 Personal Finance

Sometimes I am wondering, what I do all this for. I mean, all the work, financial planning, breaking my head over my retirement planning. Often, a typical month would look like this:

• I work the hard, the entire month,
• I pay taxes on my salary, and receive about half of my salary on my bank account at month’s end,
• I pay for my loan from college times,
• I pay my rent, and all other bills,
• I cover for my expenses,
• And, with a bit of luck, I will have some money left and the end of the month.

Often, when I have something left at the end of the month, I am so proud of myself that I give myself a treat and spend the money anyway. Or I start traveling and go places… so in the end I have nothing left anyway.

I stumbled on this chapter in “The Cashflow Quadrant” by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Kiyosaki writes, that you should pay yourself first, before spending any of your hard earned money.

The basic principle is, that you should look at yourself as a running business. And the main purpose of a running business is to make profit, and to increase assets. What individuals do in stead is focussing on paying the bills first, i.e. other people’s profits and assets, before they focus on their own life.

So what does this mean?

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Retirement planning seems to be a pretty hot topic, it is everywhere and people are discussing it intensely; in magazines, on blogs, and over a drink with friends. I agree, I want to maintain my living standard when I grow old myself, maintaining a degree of financial security. But I just can’t help having this creepy feeling, that in despite of all the saving, investing, and calculations, I have no clue what I am actually doing.

Retirement systems are different around the world. In Europe, where I live, retirement is usually built on three major pillars:

• Governmental retirement payments – an amount is subtracted along with taxes by the government. The money is used to support who are retired at this very moment. As time passes, I am collecting points, and when I retire I will be receiving a governmental retirement support, which is based on the average salary during my lifetime.
• Tax deductable retirement fund – This portion is subtracted from the gross pay, and it is directly invested in a retirement fund. Often, employers will fund a portion of the retirement fund.
• Privately organized funds, such as health insurances or individual investments, which are paid for after taxes have been deducted.

The importance of each pillar may be different in each counry in the European Union, my writing is primarily based on the German system.

The question is, where is this actually going? Each pillar has a number of variables, which need to be in order to ensure that the retirement planning actually works:

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I think, that sometimes being modest and cautious can be a good thing; it has for sure helped me to avoid wrong decisions. Also, social anxiety is a physical protection mechanism, which in some times has its use. However, many people out there are so shy and anxious, that they are simply not able to lead the life they really want. And getting rid of it can be difficult, very difficult.

Shyness and anxiety is not something you choose for. It simply is there. How we behave is usually an expression of how we see the world, and this again is often the result of all the experiences we made in the past, both good and bad. The human mind tends to create a world image according to these experiences, and creates expectations as a result.

Shyness and anxiety is present in many variations. Some people are shy only in particular situations. Some people are anxious only up to a particular point, and can push them through the barrier, whereas others may become paralyzed completely by their shyness and social anxiety. The result is, that those people are unable to connect with other people easily, they become paralyzed, and basically close themselves up to others. As a result, other people may perceive them as extremely formal and closed up, or even arrogant and unpleasant to be with.

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As I am an expat myself and always interested in culturally focused articles, I stumbled upon an article about the Dutch culture on Fluent In 3 Months.

You can read the article here.

Being Dutch myself, I very much enjoyed reading the article. One thing, that especially caught my attention is was a paragraph about the Dutch very much following an agenda, leaving little room for spontaneous meetups or undertakings.

If I look at myself, I think I am living by an agenda too. But to be honest, it didn’t use to be like that.

When I was much younger, I was much more spontaneous. I used to meet up with friends regularly, and it usually was enough to give my friend a call an hour before meeting up. When I was in high-school and in university, me and my friends were rarely using fully packed agendas to keep our lives organized. Perhaps with the exception of a few hours a week for sports training.

As soon as I started working full-time, my agenda started growing. Everything needed to be planned, because free time started becoming scarce. Sporting events have to be planned. Cinema has to be planned. My regular martial arts trainings have a recurring event in my calendar. Parties need to be planned.

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In my previous post, I already expressed that my interest in samurai culture, and my regular Kendo trainings. Yesterday, I had another training in preparation for my next exam, and for the first time we had been shown a simulation of a Kendo fight between two fighters.

The rules are already well known to me, but our teacher made a remark, which kind of stuck in my head:

If you are being hit during a fight, and your opponent mistakenly hits you on a part which is not protected by the bogu (bogu is a protective armour on the head, the waist, wrists and hands, and the throat, which may be hit during a Kendo fight), it might happen that you get hurt.

It is unfair to stop the fight, just because it hurts (of course excluding any serious injuries which need medical attention), and you can even get penalized for stopping the fight because of it; your opponent might just have started a movement of action, and it is not fair to stop the fight and mess up his chances. A true samurai will not just stop because he gets hurt. He will keep going on, until the fight has been decided upon.

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