Rob Severson | Financing Coach

I have often heard that our goal should be to take care of #1, meaning ourselves.  I believe it is important to be conscious about our well being but also have come to believe that we do better in life if it isn’t totally “about me”. 

The best example of this is how good consultative sales people.  They are skilled listeners and spend a lot of time learning about the customer’s issues and problems before presenting how they can help solve them.  When they put the customer first the customer starts to trust them and knows the solutions being proposed have their best interest in mind, not the sellers.

It is also true in jobs.  In my first job I thought it was about me, what I could learn and how much I could get paid.  I think I had an entitlement mentality of what a college degree should give me, but it didn’t last long.  In my next job, I learned that if I put my employer (customer) first I could learn what their needs were and gained promotions and salary increases when I found solutions for them.  On the other hand, if we wait for our employer to do something for us we can wait a long time for any furtherance of our careers.  This often results in job dissatisfaction, anger, worry and sometimes loss of jobs  that defeat our ultimate goal of pursuing peace in our lives.  This is also true for supervisors.  If they coach and train their subordinates properly they can improve their productivity and build people for more value to their organization.  If they can produce winners they will also win.    

Most of our money problems can also be traced to the “I” centered mentality.  Many things we buy just create more wants of more things.  Then greed grows from insatiable needs to satisfy ourselves with things we think will bring us happiness.  It isn’t just a malady of the rich; it affects all of us.

I think one trait we can develop to avoid that is to learn to give to the less fortunate.  By so doing we can learn to control the self centeredness that we all have plus see and help others less fortunate which not only makes us feel good, but also shows us how fortunate we really are.  I don’t see greed so much as a measure of income, rather a measure of giving.

I think like a finance guy. 

There is value in learning just about anything, even more value is learning how to learn in my opinion.  Most of us choose our majors based on what we think we want to do in life.  Many have no clue so just pick something of interest and go for it.  There is little wrong with that, unless you consider the cost of education. 

I believe cost should be looked at using this formula:  Debt upon graduation =  Total cost of education – family contribution, self earnings and scholarships/aid.  This should be fairly easy to estimate along with the amount of earnings needed to pay off this debt in a reasonable time period.  We need to keep in mind that the loan will be paid off with after tax income, not pre-tax so if one graduates with $20,000 of debt it would take dedicating about $25,000 of income to pay off the debt.

This seems simple, but often ignored when starting college.  I think the amount people want to invest in education is up to them, but the debt upon graduation should  be understood considered in the process of choosing a college, major and career.

Investing in education has an intangible value and a tangible one.  The investment in the tangible one should have a dollar return; the investment in the intangible one a personal return.  I would think about the debt upon graduation amount for intangible returns and consider studying these areas of interest over my life as I could afford it. 

Obviously it is much more complicated than this and I welcome other thoughts.  Something to consider, most think the price of education is too high; have costs gotten out of control to make it so?

In  my last article I wrote about running one’s life like a business, with mission, core competency/product, sales and marketing and money management.  In this one I will discuss the idea of transferrable skills and obsolescence.

I define transferrable skills as core competencies that we have developed that can be used almost anywhere.  Thing like sales, accounting, customer relations, use of computer work applications like excel etc., and many more are examples of transferrable skills.  Obsolescence occurs when one’s core competency skills are no longer needed by the market. 

Many people learned their core competency in college or trade schools which is a great place to start.  The problem I see with this is that many also fall in to the trap many businesses have, lack of or change in the market demand for those skills or product.   Business must constantly be aware of the demand for their product, watch for trends in it, and improve it or add to it over time in order to survive.  So, what can an individual do?

I admit that I was lucky!   I stumbled in to having transferrable skills.  A lot of the reason i did was that I had been fired once and didn’t want that to happen again.  I also saw a lot of people stuck in their current job with no way to transfer to another one so I focused on moving around the corporation.  I worked in the same bank for 18 years and public accounting for four during which time I earned a CPA certificate.  I learned that the CPA certificate was worth far more in a field outside of public accounting than it was there; it was expected there but in other fields it was viewed as a badge of knowledge!   So I was distinguished by that in my banking career and it gave me much more credibility among my peers.  At the bank I worked in many different disciplines, auditing, data processing and programming, systems project management, commercial banking, business development and management as president of a subsidiary of the corporation.  This diversity has helped me in my consulting business, but even better, gives me the luxury of being able to choose among many different jobs should I choose to seek one.  I was fortunate to have developed many skills that can be used anywhere.

I like to say that my main core competency is problem solving; that is how I got all my promotions and transfers in banking.  Being known as someone who get the job done or solve problems is the main thing supervisors look for and need.  As I learned how to seek out problems I recognized I could use skills that I had learned in past assignments and built on them.  And not staying in area too long helped me to not become obsolete. 

If one hasn’t been this fortunate there are many things we can do.  We need to watch the industry we are in and look for changes that may impact our current job role.  For example, when I was involved with data processing COBOL was a widely used programming language.  In the mid 90’s it changed and the COBOL experts soon faded away except for some Y2K needs.  Now there is little need for them.  Some of these folks missed the trend and didn’t expand their programming skills by learning the new languages where the jobs were going.  Some firms offered training to people, but probably only to the stars that they wanted to invest in for the future.  Those left behind needed to invest in themselves, but many didn’t leaving them without jobs.

A lot of us wait for our employers to invest in us because we are conditioned to believe that is their role.  As I said, they frequently do invest in their top talent but that leaves many of us out of the equation.  I invested in a CPA review course on my own and it was the best thing I ever did.  Had I waited for the bank to further educate me I may have still been there as an auditor and beeen stuck there forever.

In these times there are many places that offer re-training for folks out of work.  I have no idea how effective they are but hope that they solve people’s problems.  But I do know that if these folks had watched the market for their skills, made sure they were transferrable or not obsolete, they could have been ahead of the pack when the job market went away.

There is a bank ad on right now that I get a kick out of.  A man asks a girl if she would like a pony; she says yes and gets a toy pony.  He then asks the other girl if she would like a pony; she says yes and a real pony comes walking out.  The first girl is crushed and says, you didn’t say I could have a real pony!  The man answers, you didn’t ask for a real pony.  Then they go on to talk about their bank.

While it is funny, I have also seen it happen.  If businesses don’t know what to ask for, how to ask for it, and present a case for it, they may not get it.  So they settle for what they get.

That is one of the best reasons I can think of to hire a pro to assist in these events!  And that is how I have chosen to use my 40 years of experience for; to help businesses at the best value I can.

I had a great book review by Gina Burgess posted on her site

Check out her site for this and more; she has a great site!