Beating Broke

I Quit My Job: Where I Went Wrong

August 15, 2012 By Shane Ede 13 Comments

I tried, through my previous posts, to adequately cover the reasoning, and process, of quitting my job. One thing that I didn’t cover, however, was the mistakes I made along the way. I think that, partially, I couldn’t because I hadn’t had enough time to ruminate on them. I also think that I couldn’t because I didn’t want to expose my weaknesses. Now, I’ve had time to think about it, and I think I can easily identify the things that I would do differently should I have the opportunity to try again. Maybe they aren’t all mistakes (I don’t count some of them that way).

Quitting Your Job The Right Way

One of the biggest changes I would likely have made would have been to quit the right way. The decision I made, while necessary, was made quickly (over two days), and without much fore-planning. Part of the motivation was that I had wanted out of the job for quite some time. How much I wanted out wasn’t really clear until after I was out. In hindsight, I should have started making moves well before I did. Unfortunately, I was mired in the comfort of a position that I had held for over seven years. Lesson learned: comfort is nice, but freedom is nicer.

Have a Full Plan B

Because of the hastiness of my departure from my position, I didn’t have a full plan B. I had no idea where the money was coming from to even partially replace my income. What income I had wasn’t dependable. In a way, I was smart enough to at least get a part-time job. But, without a full plan B, I think it was likely doomed to fail.

Get After IT

This is probably the biggest mistake I made through the whole ordeal. I quit my job, without a plan B, and then didn’t get after it nearly as much as I could have. I wanted to focus entirely on my blogs and websites and grow them to at least a part-time income. I severely underestimated the time it would take to do so, and should have spread my roots a bit and taken on other small projects to fill in dead time, and especially, fill in dead income spots. Towards the end of this round of self-employment, I started to realize that I needed to pick up my game, but by then it was too little, too late.

Have an Exit Plan

Nobody likes to think that they are going to fail. Just like nobody likes to think that they are going to get into a car accident or die, but we still buy car insurance and life insurance anyways. While you can’t just go out and buy entrepreneurial failure insurance, you can have an exit plan so that you not only know when it’s time to move on to the next thing, but you also have a plan on how to get there. I had none of that. As a consequence, I probably waited several weeks too long to even begin looking for a new full-time job, and risked not getting something in time to fill in the income I needed when our savings was depleted. I got lucky. My first paycheck at my new position came only a few days after the last transfer from the savings account happened. Even so, we’re still struggling to keep up without that cushion that we had grown accustomed to.

I Would Do It All Over Again

Despite all those mistakes I made, I would still do it all over again. I know the mistakes I made, and am better able to prepare myself to not make them again. I’m not afraid of failing. At least not to such a degree that it prevents me from trying. It’s a little bit like riding a bike. You’re going to fall off. It’s going to hurt. But, you’re going to get back on the bike because you like riding your bike. I like riding the entrepreneurial bike!

img credit : Crystl, on Flickr

Are You Afraid of Failing?

August 13, 2012 By Shane Ede 15 Comments

As I was watching the USA basketball team on their way to a gold medal in the Olympics yesterday, the commentators said something that stuck out to me. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it went something like this: Is it joy on their faces, or relief? The commentator went on to say maybe it was a bit of both, after all, this was a team that wasn’t supposed to lose. So, yes, in a way, there was some relief in the fact that they didn’t lose when they weren’t expected to.

Which got me to thinking. Are we afraid of failing? And the answer is, of course we are. We’re afraid of failing at lots of things. It’s another of those learned fears that we aren’t born with. Watch any young child trying something, and you’ll notice that they fail several times before they finally get it right. Sometimes they just learn that something just doesn’t work that way, and find the way that it does work. If that square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole, they’ll eventually find the square hole that it goes in.

But, somewhere along the way, many of us gain a fear of failing. So much pressure and expectation is laid upon us to succeed, both by our parents and by society at large. No longer is it something where we’re learning something new (even though we usually are), but expected to get that new thing right on the first try. And, like the USA basketball team, when we do get it right, we are just as full of relief that we didn’t fail as we are full of joy that we succeeded.

Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda

That quote is probably one of the most quoted lines of dialogue in the entire Star Wars series of movies. David Brin, a sci-fi author thinks that and many of the other actions of Yoda make him “about the most evil character that I’ve ever seen in the history of literature“. Why does Brin hate Yoda so much? It’s better if I let him say it:

unable to name for me one scene in which Yoda is ever helpful to anybody, or says anything that’s genuinely wise. “Do or do not, there is no try.” Up yours, you horrible little oven mitt! “Try” is how human beings get better. That’s how people learn, they try some of their muscles, or their Force mechanism heads in the right direction, that part gets reinforced and rewarded with positive feedback, which you never give.

I’ll repeat it for you. Trying is how people learn. When we try, and succeed, that’s positive feedback and that success is reinforced. When we try and fail, that’s negative feedback. We learn that the action we performed and failed is the wrong way to go about it, and then go about trying to find a new way to go about that action.

There’s also a very nice commercial that features Michael Jordan talking about how many times he’s missed shots, lost games, and been counted on to make the game winning shot and missed. He goes on to say that it’s because he failed all those times that he was as good as he was.

So. Why are you afraid of failing? Failure is a part of the learning process. It’s how we learn how things work, what methods will succeed, and how we make ourselves better. Don’t be afraid of failure. Be afraid of not trying.

Are You a Financial Olympian?

August 8, 2012 By Shane Ede 9 Comments

What is a Financial Olympian? It might first help if we briefly look at what it means to be an Olympian in the more popular sense. Unless you’ve been under a rock these last few weeks, you can’t help but have heard about the Olympic games going on in London right now. Athletes from all over the world have converged on London to compete against one another in their sport. Getting so far as the Olympic games requires a few things. You’ve got to have some talent, sure, but all the talent in the world won’t get you there by itself. You’ve got to have dedication, perseverance, and a no-quit attitude.

Financial Olympic Events — img credit: Accounting by 401(k) 2012 on Flickr

Being an Financial Olympian isn’t much different. Once again, talent only plays a very small part. You don’t need to know numbers inside and out, but merely how to add, subtract, and maybe multiply and divide. O.K., that might be an oversimplification, but you really can get away with just those skills, so long as you add in the others to top it off.

Financial Dedication

Like an Olympic athlete, a Financial Olympian must be dedicated to the performing at their peak ability. Neither takes a day off. Neither takes it easy. Each pushes themselves to be the best at their event as they possibly can be. It’s their dedication that gets them up in the morning to train, and it’s the Financial Olympian’s dedication that gets them to the table to do their budget, pay their bills, and to manage their money as best as they can.

Financial Perseverance

When an Olympic athlete fails, do you know what they do? They redouble their efforts, get up a bit earlier the next day, and train harder and longer than they have before. They are driven to continually improve their performance so that they don’t fail again. When a Financial Olympian fails, they do the same. They work harder at maintaining their finances. They get up a bit earlier, find new ways to increase their income through second jobs, better jobs, better positions, and even passive income sources, and they work hard to improve their knowledge of personal finance.

Financial No-Quit Attitude

If you want to be an Olympian, whether it be in the 100m Freestyle or in the realm of number-crunching personal finance, quitting is never an option. Any Olympian will fail. Just in the last week, I’ve seen Michael Phelps, the Olympian with the most medals in the history of the Olympics, lose several times. Does he quit and leave the next race to the other Olympians? Not a chance. He has a no-quit attitude. A Financial Olympian does too! If you break your budget or save less then you intended, you don’t throw your hands up and go on a spending spree. No, you figure out why you failed, you pull out a little of that dedication, add a bit of perseverance, and move on to the next month’s budget!

Are you a Financial Olympian? Do you have the dedication, perseverance, and no-quit attitude to make your personal finances the best they can be?