I was at a seminar yesterday and one of the topics that came up was about making patents and how even if you don’t want to be the person who actually executes the idea, just thinking them up can generate people a lot of wealth.

I was then reading up about an individual named Ronald Katz who owns over 50 different patents with most of them consisting of technology patents that businesses use everyday. As a result, he generates billions of dollars licensing out his patents.

While this is not exactly the same, just by reading this it almost sounds like a person who just sits down while trying to think of the best domain names to register and then hoping that someone will pay top dollars for it. I can only assume that trying to patent an idea requires more financial investment, but it sure puts it in perspective when people say you just have to be the first to think of it.

It definitely made me more curious to learn more about the industry and process though.

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A person yesterday was telling me how he knows this guy who is in his 30’s and when it comes to money the only thing he wants to do is save it. He would refuse to spend it on anything that is not a necessity such as traveling for a vacation.

The gentleman was basically ridiculing him and how he doesn’t understand why a person like that would even bother making money if they don’t intend to use it. I can definitely understand not wanting to waste money on just anything, but just saving for the sake of saving money seems kind of counter productive both from a time and investment point of view.

To a certain extent being able to save a lot of money is a way to prove to yourself that you can manage money and follow through with goals. At the same time, I guess like most things you can’t keep conquering the same goals that you know you are good at or be afraid to lose a little. It’s like saying, you can’t grow much taller by standing on the same block. Stepping off that block might make you shorter for awhile, but once you find a taller block to stand on you’ll wonder why you did not do it sooner.

Another way to think about it is why should you do all the work while that lazy money sits in the bank account? You earned it, so find a way to make it work for you now.

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Since it is a long weekend due to the Easter holiday, for most people that usually means time off away from work/business. At the same time, a lot of people actually want to work on these days as many companies throw out incentives for people to want to work.

For example, I know one person who works for a cable company which requires around the clock customer service. To encourage people to work on holidays they are willing to pay people two to three times as much the legal requirement. Sure enough, a lot of people are more than happy to do so as a result.

When I think about it, when I was younger I used to always want to work on holidays as it was a great way to save a lot of money and not to mention the work was usually easier since it wouldn’t be that busy due to people going on vacations. Whatever works for your lifestyle I suppose.

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A person was telling me the other day that he has a pretty structured financial management plan as he always divides his funds appropriately. On top of that, he mentioned that for certain funds such as ones set aside for entertainment purposes he would force himself to spend it one way or another even if he didn’t feel like it.

He mentioned that this way he is making sure that he is constantly being active in life as oppose to always being tied down to work and money issues. I’ve seen quite a few people adopt this type of approach as well. I personally prefer to spend based in a non structured yet disciplined fashion. Would feel too much like a chore the other way for me I think.

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Recently I was debating if there was anything new for the year that I wanted to learn/do. While I am exploring my options and seeing the best ways to incorporate it into my lifestyle, in the midst of this I saw so many offerings ranging from small workshops that cost a few hundred dollars to intensive weekly program offerings that cost thousands as options to learn new things.

What this made me think of immediately was how it’s not enough to just want to learn/do something but rather you have to be prepared to make it a part of your life for it to really stick and be worthwhile. Unfortunately I don’t have a statistical source for this, but it’s almost like one of those wealth seminars or learning about finance in general. Basically, people say they want to learn something new for the better and spend hundreds of dollars learning from experts and yet more than half of the people will do nothing with it or simply forget it all in a short amount of time.

So before I invest time or money in learning new things I always question myself first whether or not I would truly be using my new found skill/knowledge throughout my daily adventures to grow as a person as oppose it being say some kind of resume item stuffer. Otherwise in most cases it just ends up as a time and money drainer I think personally and so I would avoid it. Of course this is referring to more time committing items and not smaller items.

If you invest in something for yourself then I guess it is only appropriate to expect something in return from yourself too.

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