Frugaling

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Archives for February 2014

Entrepreneurial Secrets That Turn Side Jobs Into Main Incomes

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Entrepreneurial Google Founders Wikipedia Photo
The Google Founders. Photo: Wikipedia

My first year of writing is nearly complete. In starting my own online site and business, I realized a few entrepreneurial secrets that aided in the success and development of Frugaling.org. Hopefully, some of these ideas inspire you to make more and take advantage of any downtime you have to achieve your own entrepreneurial dreams!

A fun alternative to a temp job

Finding time for extra income opportunities was daunting last year. I wanted to make and save more money to pay off an overwhelming amount of student loans. I was rapidly approaching $40,000 in total debt last May. I thought about getting a menial job that paid me about $8 an hour after taxes. I scoured Craigslist for random temp jobs, but grew hopeless as the opportunities didn’t often fit within the parameters of my challenging semesters. The debt was unmanageable.

Sometime in mid-July, Frugaling.org became a real second income for me. My advertising revenue and traffic skyrocketed. I felt a rush when I published articles that would get read by 10, 100, 1000, and eventually by up to 10,000+ people at a time. But the excitement was heightened because I knew this would perfectly sync with my busy graduate student schedule.

You make your own schedule

Here and there, I began to work on the site. I’d type a story between classes or when I finished work for the night. In a fleet of passion through my fingers, I’d hammer out intricate articles that were entirely my own desire. As much as I wanted to share my voice with others, I was writing for my own growth, too.

Unlike the Craigslist opportunities or strange side jobs around my college campus, writing online and becoming entrepreneurial allowed me even greater freedom in money-making endeavors. It was far easier to squeeze an hour of work where I could fit it, then worry about someone else’s overlapping or differing schedule. Frankly, it was empowering.

Entrepreneurial success is often predicated on fall back options

Graduate school, work, and my other job account for about 60 to 70 hours of work per week. At times, it was hard to digest how many hours were dedicated to my education. Until this academic year, I considered myself to be lazy. I didn’t want to work all that hard and found any opportunity to waste time.

By creating an outlet for my thoughts and conveniently forming it around my schedule, I kept my prior obligations while starting a new project. My grades and school experience hardly changed; actually, I was more diversified and felt grounded in life because of my entrepreneurial spirit.

Starting a business takes a certain gusto and risk, but having options helped insure against failure. If Frugaling didn’t work out, that would be okay. This wasn’t the only business venture going for me, and I wasn’t putting all my eggs in one basket. The failure of this would simply be a drop in the larger bucket.

Follow these examples to find your own achievement

I’m not alone in starting a business while staying busy. There are a tremendous number of tech titans that took to something on the side, and it turned into their main income. Here are two examples:

Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox

Houston was searching for a method to avoid the constant need for a flash drive. As a graduate student at MIT, he coded a rough basis for Dropbox.com. Basically, it would allow users to place a file online, and have access anywhere in the world to that same file, as long as there was Internet. Houston met his business partner at MIT and launched the company with the safety net of getting a masters degree from a top-tier institution with massive social connections. If Dropbox had failed, he would still be hirable at some terrific institutions. If it succeeded, he would get the best of both worlds.

Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook

Zuckerburg’s story is legendary now. Through a series of startups and ideas, Mark created a site that was exclusively for Harvard students. It was originally entitled, “The Facebook.” This elite establishment became the perfect territory to foment incredible demand. From there, Zuckerburg and his partners slowly spread the idea from university to university. The elite model appealed to a variety of people, but if it had failed, he would still be getting a Harvard degree.

The Purchase Paradox: Wanting, Until You Own It

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Audi Luxury Car Vehicle Purchase Paradox
This is the purchase paradox and a nice, new Audi. Photo: NRMA/flickr

Despite aspiring to a new, more frugal life since May, I was looking at used car prices for newer models. Nothing is wrong with my older Honda Civic, but something was stirring inside me; at times, an inescapable and indescribable animalistic desire for more (even if I cannot afford it).

Something shook me from my ogling – a realization. We want what we cannot have. When we have what we desired, we no longer crave it. This phenomenon is the purchase paradox.

Purchase Paradox Oscar Wilde QuoteIt’s in the perpetual want and desire that we maintain our spending – a hamster wheel that is hard to depart. I could simply blame advertisers for causing and creating this false demand. I could point out how our capitalistic system encourages it. But there’s a fundamental human need to perpetuate this paradox.

Seemingly, it is nature to crave what we cannot have and lose attraction to that which becomes ours. We buy a fashionable coat, thinking it’s needed, craved, and desired. Purchased, owned, held, and it’s merely another accoutrement filling your burgeoning closet with stuff. The superfluous is only found after it’s written, purchased, and owned.

We adjust to a lifestyle. Buy the luxuries, feel the thrills, but eventually it fades. Objects cannot be more than fascination for long. They melt and meld into our identities and lives – defining a new normal and looking for the next fix. Bigger, better, fuller, fancier – the search continues.

Flirting with temptation and desire can motivate poor decisions and spending, but it fuels us – fundamentally. I cannot escape my desires every time, but I learn from each. We are walking paradoxes, spending like there’s no tomorrow, while recognizing that our days are numbered.

Stephen Colbert Interviews A Fast Food Employee About Minimum Wage

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Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report spotlighted a KFC employee, Naquasia LeGrand, who has been advocating for a higher minimum wage. Ms. LeGrand works 15 hours a week at $8/hour. She’d work more, but she can’t – they won’t let her. She’d get another job, but KFC doesn’t schedule out – she can’t reliably predict her schedule.

She’s asking for executives to share the profits with employees on the front lines. For perspective, the CEO of Yum brands (conglomerate that owns KFC), David Novak, received $11.3 million in 2012.

Recently, I’ve been talking about income inequality, and how stagnant wages and food stamps are a consequence of executive excesses. This interview brilliantly captivates the struggle of minimum wage employees better than any article I could ever write.

The Debt Breaking Point: A Student Reforms His Budget

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Budget College Graduate Student Loans Debt
If your budget looks anything like this truck, you’re in trouble.

As a student, we are presented a nearly blank check in the form of student loans and financial aid packages (aka, more student loans). It can be hard to resist taking out more than you actually need. But once you open the intravenous drip of federal funds, it can be hard to quit it – hard to reduce your liabilities.

A close friend of mine confided in me that he was broke. The credit card debt had taken over. It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. He had student loans, but he knew better. Something had happened; sort of inexplicable, really. His expenditures soared, but the income was stagnant.

After realizing his budget couldn’t right itself, he scrambled to find help with friends and family. Fortunately, they supported him financially and he’s been fixing his broken budget. The following are some excerpts from our conversation (via email), as he’s learned a lot about what drove him to this level.

Romantic relationships and money

Our conversation ran the gamut, but for a moment, he focused on the impact of relationships and money. Implicitly, there’s a pressure as man (whether there should be or not) to treat and offer to pay – to be a provider.

I like the thought too about expectations, the impact on relationships (if one partner has to suddenly cut back). Part of my expectation (related to gender role socialization) has made it tough for me. I’m so used to being able to buy nice things for Susie, to pay for her dinner, to treat her to nice surprises (fuck, even for little things like buying flowers).

He ran out, and in sharing this with his partner, she was surprisingly accepting, supportive, and helpful. It can be difficult to admit budgetary defeat, and the longer it goes unnoticed, untamed, and denied, the deeper the hole can become. Here are some things he learned from confronting and sharing this realization:

…She’s been great about the whole thing. I think she’s honestly relieved a bit. She’s been much better at being frugal than me (more self-disciplined and better at handling money) from day one. I think she’s been very aware that marrying me means joining with my maelstrom of ego-driven impulse buys, not effortfully considering the true cost (long term) of my purchases, whether I can afford things in reality, and my staggering student loan debt.

Dinner Budget Student Loans Debt
Shopping and going out can be easy – too easy.

Last May, I realized I was sinking, and attempted to change everything because I didn’t want my debt to destroy a loving relationship. Seemingly, by confronting and asking for support from others (emotional and/or financial), the way back can be made easier. My friend decided he needed to start from scratch and analyze the budgetary gaps where money was disappearing.

The sink is shipping… How do I take back control?

For me, I had a similar experience to your 7 day challenge. I had so many little expenditures I didn’t realize (holes in the hull of my “finance boat” if you will). I had far less variety in food while I was getting the hang of it. I made rice & beans and had it for like 6 meals. I changed a few things up, would add cheese or salsa. I would wrap it in a tortilla or just have in a bowl. And I would intersperse a McDonald’s dollar menu purchase to balance it out. But it was tough feeling like I’d failed. Tough having to tell myself no, you can’t have it. I think it helps knowing I can’t “cheat” when I have these either-or decisions to make.

As he traveled through the joys of cutting back and realizing what needed to go, the budget was pretty clear; all or nothing, he had to change. The spending couldn’t be sustained. The credit cards were maxed. The student loans were tapped.

When I had literally $0 mid-way through December, I started to realize what had to be done. And magically, I was able to change my expectations, get a roommate, cancel many unnecessary things (gym membership, no more buying expensive proteins, no more consumer reports, got Comcast to lower my cable bill, etc). I’ve been able to set up a budget and stick to it. I’ve been able to track every expense, because I finally HAVE to do this. Years of attempts and failures, but finally having “skin in the game” lead to success.

Changing, fixing your budget is more difficult than it sounds

To spout out the mantras and trite cliches that simply say, “Change your budget to take in more than you spend,” can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds.

Adjusting my budget wasn’t a small change, it’s a giant lifestyle change that’s hitting nearly every area of my life. I needed to change my workout routine since I cut my gym routine. I have to get a roommate and change my living situation. I have to get used to rarely eating out. I have to change leisure time since I can’t really afford 20$+ to take Susie and me to the theater. My choice was to bottom out with no money in May again, or finally get my shit together. And for now, I’m on the get your shit together path.

Like many who’ve participated on this site, asked me, or debated online, the line between frugality and simply stingy/cheap is sometimes a gray area. Being cheap can sometimes elicit a value question.

A big question a lot of this leaves me with is how to be frugal without being cheap. I think there is some overlap, but that they are different. Frugal to me means cutting back, often not being fully satisfied at the reward of more savings. Cheap to me often reflects a self-interested style of frugality. In my mind, I think of friends who would leave little to no tip at restaurants, try to get everyone else to pay for them, continually try to ask “are you going to finish that.” As I’m making huge changes, maybe I’m trying to find a way to stay congruent with my values in the process.

By sharing my friend’s hard lessons learned and insights along the way, I hope it gives you a window into a world. What you do with that window is yours.

Special thanks to my close friend and confidant. Really appreciate being able to share your growth and story with my readers. All names have been changed, but you know who you are!

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