I was talking to a lady today who moved to Vancouver not too long ago as a result of her husband having to relocate for career purposes. Because of that, she wasn’t too familiar with the area. The interesting thing was instead of just taking free time and exploring the area or say paying someone to help her, she decided to do some work that required frequent traveling to different locations. As a result, she got to learn the area pretty well as well as getting paid for it.

I definitely agree with that train of thought provided one has the time and flexibility to do so. I remember another example way back where one guy I knew decided to learn about restaurant management and paid thousands of dollars to learn about it and afterwards with that training and knowledge he found a job in his desired profession.

At the same time, another person literally just worked from bottom up at a restaurant and eventually became a manager pretty much at the same time as the other person. It is safe to say that they both were qualified to work in a management position. I thought that was such an interesting contrast at the time too where it was literally one person was being paid to learn and the other was paying to learn.

Of course that’s not saying for example you should never pay for say an education as in many situations that is the most productive and safe way to do it. But in general even other examples like say if you want to join an exercise club to stay healthy which you pay a monthly membership for, deciding to casually work at something that requires more physically activity may achieve similar results too and at the same time you can earn some money while you’re at it.

For one reason or another over the past week I suddenly got the urge to want to learn something new/different. Usually for myself this either involves trying a new activity or learning some kind of new knowledge to enhance my lifestyle which means spending some money.

I was thinking for a bit on what kind of things I could learn that I don’t normally focus on too much to really get my time and monies worth. The thing that struck me a bit from a business point of view is how the health and wellness industry is usually very big for older people as by then it seems like people are willing to spend thousands of dollars to try and look/feel younger.

So then I thought, as crazy as it sounds maybe this time around I will invest in something that I don’t necessarily need at this point but would give me a good head start in terms of knowledge. It’s just like making or saving money I suppose as you don’t want to just wait until you have say no money until you try to take action or learn ways to become better. At the same time, there are probably usually better ways to doing something even if things are going well.

I feel kind of silly in some ways, but as a result I decided to buy these two books:

The books I chose are “Brain Rules” and ” You: Staying Young”. My memory is definitely still very good and being youthful is certainly not an issue. These are one of those things that I do for balance as well when it comes to spending and saving money as I think a lot of times people don’t spend enough on things to help themselves grow, so to speak, as we are more focused on entertainment or survival.

In many ways I think times like these are great to learn about important things that you may need for the future too as that way you aren’t trying to learn them during a time of desperation which can result in emotional purchases and costing you more money. Very similar to how when someone needs money they buy every get rich quick book there is. Guess I just have to wait a few days for the books to arrive now.