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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Someone was telling me how one of his strategies in order to save money is to work in industries that he normally spends a lot of money in order o save money. For example, it could be that someone buys a lot of electronics and so they work part time at a retail store to enable themselves to buy products for a lot cheaper.

In some ways when you think about it I suppose it can be a great way to save money. You are essentially getting paid to do something you are interested in anyways and at the same time you are saving money on things you were going to buy. The main drawback for some is that you are sometimes inclined to buy more than normal too since you figure that you are getting a discount to warrant purchasing more.

This concept isn’t just limited to materialistic items as people do it for things such as receiving specific service benefits too. One of those small extra things you can do assuming you have the time. I personally prefer to establish contacts to do so.

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One of my friends was telling me how a person he knew decided to take on two jobs to earn more income. On paper it sounded like a good idea as the person could be earning say an extra $500 to $1000 a week by doing so. Ironically, that wasn’t really the case.

By earning more income, the person was now placed in a higher tax bracket which resulted in more income tax deductions. Unfortunately, the person ended up working a lot more without seeing the expected financial return. I’ve seen this happen before in other situations as well such as people getting a raise at their job and due to being placed in a higher tax bracket afterwards the gain isn’t so great.

So if your intent is to earn more money, it would be wise to research what the tax brackets are ahead of time to give you a good idea on what he real outcome would be.

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I went to get a haircut yesterday from the usual people that I have been seeing for awhile now. It’s good too as the couple who do the haircuts also owns the business. Ever since they moved their operations to downtown we would often talk about business issues such as the cost of leasing a space. They pick my brain in regards to what I thought about some of their expansion plans which is always fun as I also get to learn more about the industry they are in too.

I guess when you get comfortable relating to people on specific issues that you tend to want to know more about their everyday life events. As a result, it seems like every time I drop by now they always ask if I have found the right girl even though I mention before that I don’t exactly go actively looking since I am focusing more on business while trying to learn and experience as much as I can in life at this point. This then brought up an interesting topic as I asked him when he got married and whether or not he tried to get his business established first before diving into a married life. I would imagine it must be something that requires a lot of your time and energy while creating additional financial challenges.

He then told me that he got married when he was 28 and in no way did he even consider trying to get the business fully established first before doing so. His reasoning was that it takes a long time to do and that if he had waited he would be too old by then. Instead, he wanted to find the ideal person and then try to grow and establish it together with women in his life. That was an enlightening way to look at it I thought.

I’m sure people have different views on this as I’ve seen things work with various directions. Whatever works I guess. Towards the end he kind of implied in a joking way that I should start looking soon. I re-affirmed my current direction and that if I meet someone then great, but I would rather stay focused on certain things to make things simpler for the time being.

Then came a funny part as when I said that he kind of stopped cutting my hair for a moment and said if I was seriously considering because he has a list of a lot of people he would send my way. The only witty response I could think of was I asked him if his plan was to add dating services to his business and that he was trying to use me as a test subject.

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This is kind of a follow up to yesterday’s post about how some people see $100,000 as the magic number to enable them to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. Just to make sure we are on the same page, the previous post isn’t about “retiring” where you don’t have to do anything anymore, such as having a few million dollars. Another way to look at it is how much do you need in terms of an income pool to place yourself in a very good position where you can simply create streams of income to sustain a lifestyle while not having to “work” in a conventional way? I guess you can call it passive income if you want.

With that in mind, these numbers are completely made up just to get the general point across on how some people approach it. For example, let’s say with the $100,000 figure, for the whole year our expenses for an individual is $30,000. Now let’s say the person is into real estate and purchases this nice small office space for say $50,000 and now leases it out to someone for $1200 a month. So now essentially you have $50,000 left while generating $14,400 a year. Now with a $30,000 a year expense and bringing in $14,400, that means the person needs to pay $15,600 a year. With $50,000 remaining that means you have about 3 years and 2 months to be able live your life assuming the worst case scenario that you still couldn’t generate new income sources.

Now maybe this person wants to do some venture capitalism and funds this new business that looks promising for $15,000 while getting 10% ownership of the company. It happens to do well which gives us an additional $1000 a month in income. Now that means we have $35,000 remaining while generating $26,400 a year. That translates to the person now having to pay $3,600 a year and with $35,000 remaining we have about 9 years and 8 months to keep going at that rate. Again, these numbers are fictional as you have to factor things like taxes while at the same time you can do some creative things to make your expenses lower. With looking at that though, you can kind of see how it can work where your income and expenses are basically kind of like on auto pilot to allow you to do other things.

Depending on your background and expertise, there are definitely other ways to yield better return on investments as well. Another way to think about it is if you had say $100,000 and your expense for the year is $30,000 in total, can you think of a way to use $100,000 to generate $2,500 a month in total? You can even go higher and say that if your yearly expense is $40,000 in total, can you find a way to use $100,000 to generate about $3333.33 a month for you? So really, you are still kind of like most people in terms of how you manage your finances such as you can buy a home by getting a mortgage. The main difference is that you are kind of letting your money/investments go out and work for you instead.

How much you need initially and how much one actually needs per month is obviously on a case by case basis depending on your current lifestyle choice and situation. It’s an interesting choice and direction I think because as mentioned before most people only think about saving that much so that they can “retire” in the sense of not having to do anything. On the other hand, some people use it to generate a continuous stream of income to create a lifestyle where they don’t have to be physically tied down in having to work all the time.

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