A week has
passed since I've last posted anything, however I have come up with
another twenty or so ideas of things that I want to write about, which is just
about average for me in a week. but I have had a very busy week including
several nights out doing family related things as well as job-related, that I
have not really had the time to do so.
That is how I know that my son made $150 for playing roughly one hour's worth of music last Saturday night. That being a fairly typical amount, with him usually collecting anywhere between $100 and $200 most usually in cash, for playing an hour or two.
I reluctantly came into work yesterday on a day that I had previously planned to take my fifteenth vacation day of this year. I did so I mostly because the shopping center multi-millionaire that I referenced earlier, through his attorney, submitted a petition for a property tax reduction incentive for the shopping center that he is under contract to purchase.
Without boring you to death about these details, I will report that it is part of my job description to analyze the application and to write a staff report detailing it to our Council for a vote at their next meeting.
These reports don't write themselves just like these blog post don't, thus I came into work specifically to work on that yesterday.
The topic of another post years in the making in my head was going to be about three different levels of improving your lot in your work life. I used to think about these three ways quite a bit while walking my dog or lying in bed going to sleep or when driving to work on a Monday morning or any morning for that matter.
It's a fairly simple concept, really, but now that things have changed so much with side hustles and web platforms to make extra money, it's not such a simple thing anymore as just three levels of improving one's lot in one's work life.
Personally, I have not yet had much success in generating additional income online. Most of my income over the years has been derived from a book about my years as a probation officer, aptly titled The PO, that I wrote more like from twenty years ago through fifteen years ago and then posted about eight years ago.
Writing the 800-plus page book was not a passive activity, but collecting money from it years later certainly is.
But the three ways that I had previously thought of improving my own lot in my work life were as follows. First and foremost would be to get a “better” new job, one with a better title and a larger amount of pay. In my case, the prospect for this has seemingly declined over the past several years as less communities in our area employ full-time professional economic development people, and those of them that do tend to pay less than what I currently make.
There are only a handful of prime economic development jobs and the men and few women in those positions tend to cherish them and remain in them until they can collect a full IMRF pension like the one that I am striving for.
The second thing that I often thought about in my place of work was working my way up. In most places of employment, one is able to get promotions and possibly get into management positions. Not so much in my case. I have had the same job title for over thirteen years now, and it is simply not in the cards for me to be promoted at my current place of work.
It's not to say that I don't have a good job, it's just to say that I am in Economic Development and not going to transfer into any of the Planning aspect of things. Had I pursued a degree in urban planning instead of public administration, things might have been different. But there's no use crying over spilled milk.
I am the author of this post; however, it is meant for the reader's enjoyment and possible enlightenment. That said, if you work for a large, mid-sized or even a small organization and are not succeeding in getting a new job elsewhere or you don't want to get a new job elsewhere, my suggestion is for you to concentrate on doing things that you need to do to advance within your own place of work.
If you're in sales, the next natural thing for you to become is a sales manager. If you are a supervisor, the next natural thing might be for you to move up to a regional manager position. Whatever the case may be, unless you are the CEO of a company, which I highly doubt unless it is your own company of one, you most likely have a boss and your boss probably has a boss. You could concentrate on doing whatever it is that you need to do to move up in your place of work and thus increase your own income and continue progressing up the career ladder.
When I peruse the want ads and look at a job description for something similar that I do for either comparable or lower pay than what I currently receive, it understandably does not excite me very much. Becoming the economic development person for another community might be the fresh start that I need mentally, but making $115,000 instead of $110,000 is not really what's going to launch me into a higher socioeconomic status or vastly improve my family’s lives.
I consider this the fourth level now, and something that I desire to achieve more so then getting a new job, a promotion, or making things better in my current position. As much as I want to continue doing well and remaining gainfully employed, and have to remain gainfully employed, the prospect of taking more control of one's own financial life and becoming prosperous through online projects is a more exciting prospect.
I suppose that not being as interested as I once was in getting another Economic Development position could be thought of as settling a bit. I still have the ambition to move up to one last position that I could work on through the end of at least 2025, at which time I will strive for fatFIRE55, but I am not exactly feeling the urgency of it at this time even though I struggle with who my boss is, and the difficult people who I have to work with on the economic development committee, and some extremely difficult, opinionated and ultra conservative members of our council.
For those of
you who have never come across my little obscure blog before, I am a middle-aged
wannabe Mench of a prime age, married for twenty-two years, and the father of two high achieving children, one of whom is in his third year of college as a music major
and the other in her sophomore year of high school.
I am also a Baby Daddy, but
in my case the baby who I am very closely attached to is cream colored, walks
on four legs, she's nine years old yet only a tad over twelve pounds and has been known to eat and destroy things that she shouldn't.
I should also add that for at least three
nights this past week, I spent hours reading an old school spy novel by one of my favorite all-time authors, John La Carre, instead of
working on creating new content. In this regard, I was not fulfilling one of my
ongoing goals and resolutions to create more and consume less. But it also
leads me to a possible new Persona that I may just adopt in the coming months,
that of being Your BFF Man.
 |
| I'm a Baby Daddy for a lovely twelve pound girl. |
So consider
this post to be a six-for-one deal. Not even at the lowest price discount store can you find a six-for-one deal like this. so enjoy!
I Spoke With Five Millionaires Yesterday
Many of the
blog post, articles and even some books that I have read detail things that the
authors have learned from speaking with and interviewing millionaires.
As a long-time economic development professional employed in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I meet and speak with millionaires on an ongoing basis, although the topics of our conversations are more about their business interests in the community that employs me than the millions of dollars that they have made and will make.
As a long-time economic development professional employed in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I meet and speak with millionaires on an ongoing basis, although the topics of our conversations are more about their business interests in the community that employs me than the millions of dollars that they have made and will make.
At work
yesterday, on a day that I had originally planned to take a vacation day (more
on that later), I made a series of phone calls and had two meetings
regarding various projects that I have been working on.
By definition, many of the projects that I work on involve millions of dollars due to their nature. Thus, it should not be very surprising when I speak with a millionaire or even a mega-millionaire. There are even two people who do business in our community that have most likely attain billionaire status, but once you make that much money, it's somewhat of a fluid thing regarding what your net worth actually is and who owns what and which LLCs you control and which ones you have business partners or other relatives control. Some of these billionaires might not show themselves as having as many assets as you do were you to review their tax returns.
Like our President, just to cite one example.
By definition, many of the projects that I work on involve millions of dollars due to their nature. Thus, it should not be very surprising when I speak with a millionaire or even a mega-millionaire. There are even two people who do business in our community that have most likely attain billionaire status, but once you make that much money, it's somewhat of a fluid thing regarding what your net worth actually is and who owns what and which LLCs you control and which ones you have business partners or other relatives control. Some of these billionaires might not show themselves as having as many assets as you do were you to review their tax returns.
Like our President, just to cite one example.
But after
making three phone calls yesterday morning and conversing with three
industrialists about properties that they control within our community's largest business park, I realized that I spoke with three people with not only a few
million dollars in the bank but probably tens of millions of dollars.
Since I write this anonymously and also don't want to share private and confidential details that people share with me in my line of work, I will be general about them.
One of them, JB, is the President of the company that originally owned all of the land in our business park. He heads up a fairly large company that has many business interests in mining and land development throughout the greater Chicagoland area. His company has sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of land throughout our community and several others in the area.
Since I write this anonymously and also don't want to share private and confidential details that people share with me in my line of work, I will be general about them.
One of them, JB, is the President of the company that originally owned all of the land in our business park. He heads up a fairly large company that has many business interests in mining and land development throughout the greater Chicagoland area. His company has sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of land throughout our community and several others in the area.
That in
itself wouldn't necessarily make this particular guy a millionaire, since he has only taken over as President a few years ago. However, the way he got the
position and the way he has been growing the company is.
I do not know the circumstances of his birth and have never asked him, however he made a very wise decision, conscious or not, to marry the daughter of the owner of the company that controls all these mining and land interests. His father-in-law is not the founder of the company, but the son of the founder. So technically, the President of this company is married to the granddaughter of the founder and owner of it.
I have not asked him about other siblings of the current owner, but it is safe to assume that being the daughter of the company's current owner and the President of the company is a sure fire way for him to have become a multi-millionaire in his mid-thirties. Good for him. Just as a woman can marry for money, so can a man even though I'm sure that they love each other very much.
I do not know the circumstances of his birth and have never asked him, however he made a very wise decision, conscious or not, to marry the daughter of the owner of the company that controls all these mining and land interests. His father-in-law is not the founder of the company, but the son of the founder. So technically, the President of this company is married to the granddaughter of the founder and owner of it.
I have not asked him about other siblings of the current owner, but it is safe to assume that being the daughter of the company's current owner and the President of the company is a sure fire way for him to have become a multi-millionaire in his mid-thirties. Good for him. Just as a woman can marry for money, so can a man even though I'm sure that they love each other very much.
The second
person that I called to inquire about a four- to six- acre site in the business park is a
developer and real estate investor whose company has built many industrial
buildings, and has invested and purchased many more than that. In case you were
wondering or did not know, selling many parcels of land for businesses to build their buildings and
also building and owning many of them that you rent out to these companies can
be an extremely lucrative business.
This guy's initials are MB, and I know for a fact that he's been a mega millionaire for at least two decades since coming to the Chicago area from New York to partner in an institutional fund that buys, sells and invests in industrial real estate.
This guy's initials are MB, and I know for a fact that he's been a mega millionaire for at least two decades since coming to the Chicago area from New York to partner in an institutional fund that buys, sells and invests in industrial real estate.
The third
millionaire that I spoke with in regard to this particular project may not have
the high mega million dollars net worth status of the first two, but it
is safe to assume that he is at least a millionaire. He is the Executive Vice President of
what I would call a mid-sized, local industrial real estate development
company. His company has built somewhere between a dozen and twenty industrial
buildings in our business park, each of which they built on behalf of an owner or investor, or as what they call a build-to-suit project to meet the
specific needs of a company.
I assume he
is a millionaire because he controls a company with about twenty-five
employees, lives in an area of multimillion-dollar homes and has mentioned two additional homes that he travels to (one in northern Wisconsin and another in Naples, Florida), and I've never seen him
driving in a car that costs less than $100,000 including the brand new
top-of-the-line Tesla that he currently drives.
I realize that living in an in an expensive house and driving a Tesla does not mean that one
is a millionaire, but having known him for the thirteen years that I've worked
in my current place of employment and knowing that he has been building
industrial buildings for years before that, I think it is a fairly safe
assumption.
The fourth
millionaire that I spoke with yesterday has mentioned the fact that he is one
many times. He doesn't really need to say that for me to know it, since he
currently owns eighteen shopping centers and is currently under contract to buy his
nineteenth in the community that I work for. I have been working with this guy on
this project for at least eight months now, and have reached the point to where he
is coming before our city council on a regular basis to request financial
incentives to complete the purchase of the center, and greatly renovate it to attract new tenants.
Not only does MR currently own eighteen shopping centers, but he has owned even more than that over the years, having sold five of them. In one of our many meetings, he told me that he obtained millionaire status at the age of twenty-six, which for him would have been about thirty years ago.
I did tell this man that I respect and admire him and asked about his background and how he became as successful as he is now. He has a great story that starts with purchasing the pizzeria that he worked for soon after immigrating to the country in the early 80's, but that can be a story for another time should I wish to share it.
Not only does MR currently own eighteen shopping centers, but he has owned even more than that over the years, having sold five of them. In one of our many meetings, he told me that he obtained millionaire status at the age of twenty-six, which for him would have been about thirty years ago.
I did tell this man that I respect and admire him and asked about his background and how he became as successful as he is now. He has a great story that starts with purchasing the pizzeria that he worked for soon after immigrating to the country in the early 80's, but that can be a story for another time should I wish to share it.
The fifth and
final millionaire that I spoke with yesterday is working on opening a
restaurant in the downtown of of my town. He is not a multimillionaire due to being a successful restaurateur,
this being his first restaurant ever.
He has owned and operated a successful and lucrative healthcare company for quite a few years, even though he is not a licensed medical professional, himself. Truth be told, he would be better off financially if he had just continued operating his medical practice but, like many people, he has dreamed of opening his own bar and grill for many years.
He, too, is a millionaire, but not to the extent of the three industrialists that I spoke with and the owner of the eighteen shopping centers. When it's all said and done, I think that he will most likely regret taking on this major rehabilitation project of an older dilapidated building in our downtown and reopening a restaurant next to a site where a much bigger and better restaurant will be built within the next year or so.
He has owned and operated a successful and lucrative healthcare company for quite a few years, even though he is not a licensed medical professional, himself. Truth be told, he would be better off financially if he had just continued operating his medical practice but, like many people, he has dreamed of opening his own bar and grill for many years.
He, too, is a millionaire, but not to the extent of the three industrialists that I spoke with and the owner of the eighteen shopping centers. When it's all said and done, I think that he will most likely regret taking on this major rehabilitation project of an older dilapidated building in our downtown and reopening a restaurant next to a site where a much bigger and better restaurant will be built within the next year or so.
The point of
me sharing this isn't just to detail that I speak with millionaires on an
ongoing basis, but over the years I try to take bits and pieces from each of
them. They are generally highly driven people, risk-takers, and in the case of
some of them, simply were born into great wealth or in the case of the president
of the land company, marry into it.
I, too, could
write a long blog post or perhaps even a short eBook about what I have
learned from speaking with numerous millionaires over the years, however, in my case, most of the millionaires that I have spoken with operate primarily in of the real estate
industry.
My brother is becoming a millionaire any year now if he hasn't already and he's an attorney, and I also have an uncle who is a multimillionaire who had been in the finance industry for decades, but I do not know too many others in my personal life. In my work life, I know many.
My brother is becoming a millionaire any year now if he hasn't already and he's an attorney, and I also have an uncle who is a multimillionaire who had been in the finance industry for decades, but I do not know too many others in my personal life. In my work life, I know many.
Making as
Much as My Son
I've
mentioned that my son is an up-and-coming jazz musician in the Chicago area,
and currently in his third year of college at a local liberal arts college in
the Chicago area. As such, he gets gigs here and there. Not regularly, mind
you, but perhaps one or two per month.
At the age of
twenty, his bank account remains attached to ours. He has not yet opened a
checking account and does not have an ATM card, still operating mostly on a
cash basis or reimbursing the Bank of Mom and Dad for things that he purchases
online. Thus, I typically know how much he makes for these gigs.
Last weekend,
our son was asked to substitute for a professional trumpet player playing in a
ticketed concert in Chicago. As a matter of fact, both of the trumpet players
for this band could not make the gig last Saturday night and somehow the lead
trumpet player in my son's college jazz band was contacted to substitute, it
being a prominent jazz band in the Chicago area. When they also required a
second trumpet, the first trumpet in my son's band naturally asked my son to go
with him as well.
That is how I know that my son made $150 for playing roughly one hour's worth of music last Saturday night. That being a fairly typical amount, with him usually collecting anywhere between $100 and $200 most usually in cash, for playing an hour or two.
Because I
make $53 and some change per hour at my full-time job, I've been joking both at
home and at work that our son makes more money than I do. Even though he may only work a few hours and make a few hundred dollars per month, I
still like saying that. These days, I've been paying about $3,000 per month for
him to attend the school, so even though he's not making a lot of money, I'm
still pleased that he's been earning most of his spending money this school
year on his own.
I reluctantly came into work yesterday on a day that I had previously planned to take my fifteenth vacation day of this year. I did so I mostly because the shopping center multi-millionaire that I referenced earlier, through his attorney, submitted a petition for a property tax reduction incentive for the shopping center that he is under contract to purchase.
Without boring you to death about these details, I will report that it is part of my job description to analyze the application and to write a staff report detailing it to our Council for a vote at their next meeting.
These reports don't write themselves just like these blog post don't, thus I came into work specifically to work on that yesterday.
Something
that my young and inexperienced boss said, however, made my day a little
brighter.
After I had told him earlier in the week about how my son makes more per hour when he works than I do, he told me that I was just about matching my sons hourly wage yesterday.
At first I didn't understand what he meant, but then he remembered that I was collecting double pay yesterday - the pay for being at work like I typically am as well as the pay that I was collecting for having cashed out the vacation day that I would have been enjoying.
After I had told him earlier in the week about how my son makes more per hour when he works than I do, he told me that I was just about matching my sons hourly wage yesterday.
At first I didn't understand what he meant, but then he remembered that I was collecting double pay yesterday - the pay for being at work like I typically am as well as the pay that I was collecting for having cashed out the vacation day that I would have been enjoying.
One of the
things that I always want to improve upon is actually taking the vacation that
is due to me. One of the many blogs that I follow is Project: Time Off, which encourages worker bees like me to take the vacation time allotted to us. It improves our mental health, it makes us more productive employees, and it
generally improves our quality of life.
I'll never remember a day that I spent on the phone with and meeting with five millionaires and in other meetings, and writing a report about a property tax incentive as much as I would a vacation day with my family this coming December in the desert.
I'll never remember a day that I spent on the phone with and meeting with five millionaires and in other meetings, and writing a report about a property tax incentive as much as I would a vacation day with my family this coming December in the desert.
However, as I Pay Myself First with the "extra money" from cashing out one
vacation day, perhaps those funds will prove very useful to me in years to
come.
I don't
really think of it as being double paid this past Friday so much as I think of
it is just collecting an extra $370 or so over the span of a year. Being the sixth vacation day that I cashed out in 2018, it's simply looks as if my pay
will probably hit the $114,000 mark for the year rather than the $110,000 or so
that it would have been had I not cashed out six vacation days and the maximum
amount of sick time that I was able to cash out.
But I like to
think of it the way my boss said it, that I was making $106 per hour yesterday
instead of my normal $53.
Taking it to the Fourth Level
The topic of another post years in the making in my head was going to be about three different levels of improving your lot in your work life. I used to think about these three ways quite a bit while walking my dog or lying in bed going to sleep or when driving to work on a Monday morning or any morning for that matter.
It's a fairly simple concept, really, but now that things have changed so much with side hustles and web platforms to make extra money, it's not such a simple thing anymore as just three levels of improving one's lot in one's work life.
Personally, I have not yet had much success in generating additional income online. Most of my income over the years has been derived from a book about my years as a probation officer, aptly titled The PO, that I wrote more like from twenty years ago through fifteen years ago and then posted about eight years ago.
It sells a
few copies here and there, and readers who are Amazon Prime members, like my
own family is, do not purchase the book but read it without purchasing it,
which results in small payments to yours truly. I receive anywhere from $2 to $40
any given month resulting in somewhere between a hundred and two hundred bucks
in a year in what could truly be considered passive income.
Writing the 800-plus page book was not a passive activity, but collecting money from it years later certainly is.
But the three ways that I had previously thought of improving my own lot in my work life were as follows. First and foremost would be to get a “better” new job, one with a better title and a larger amount of pay. In my case, the prospect for this has seemingly declined over the past several years as less communities in our area employ full-time professional economic development people, and those of them that do tend to pay less than what I currently make.
There are only a handful of prime economic development jobs and the men and few women in those positions tend to cherish them and remain in them until they can collect a full IMRF pension like the one that I am striving for.
My closest
friend in the industry edged me out for the job that I wanted badly about five
years ago and I have remained bitter about it ever since. Another time, I was
passed over for someone about fifteen years my junior with far less experience than I have who agreed to
work for about $20,000 less than the number that I had stated I would take the
position for, an even $100,000.
I was offered
the last two positions that I applied for, but decline both. One because
the longer commute and the extra office hour per day would have added two extra
hours to my average work day and the other one because I simply did not like
the town and the people who I would be working for. Had I known that I was
going to be transferred to another department in July of 2017, I probably would
have taken the job for the town that I didn't like as much.
As the saying
goes, hindsight is 20/20.
The second thing that I often thought about in my place of work was working my way up. In most places of employment, one is able to get promotions and possibly get into management positions. Not so much in my case. I have had the same job title for over thirteen years now, and it is simply not in the cards for me to be promoted at my current place of work.
It's not to say that I don't have a good job, it's just to say that I am in Economic Development and not going to transfer into any of the Planning aspect of things. Had I pursued a degree in urban planning instead of public administration, things might have been different. But there's no use crying over spilled milk.
I am the author of this post; however, it is meant for the reader's enjoyment and possible enlightenment. That said, if you work for a large, mid-sized or even a small organization and are not succeeding in getting a new job elsewhere or you don't want to get a new job elsewhere, my suggestion is for you to concentrate on doing things that you need to do to advance within your own place of work.
If you're in sales, the next natural thing for you to become is a sales manager. If you are a supervisor, the next natural thing might be for you to move up to a regional manager position. Whatever the case may be, unless you are the CEO of a company, which I highly doubt unless it is your own company of one, you most likely have a boss and your boss probably has a boss. You could concentrate on doing whatever it is that you need to do to move up in your place of work and thus increase your own income and continue progressing up the career ladder.
The third
level that I had given a lot of thought to and actually implement is simply
making things better within the position that you already have. If you're going
to start off in a sales position and remain in the same position for twenty
years, you should be improving your own standing, your own reputation, your own
proficiency, performance and professionalism throughout those years. There are countless things that
you can do to make things more tolerable and hopefully even more lucrative in
your current position.
There are many books about improving your outlook and performance at whatever job it is that you do. I should know, having read several of them while I was having a difficult time transitioning from one department to another in the summer of 2017.
There are many books about improving your outlook and performance at whatever job it is that you do. I should know, having read several of them while I was having a difficult time transitioning from one department to another in the summer of 2017.
These days, there's a fourth level and the good news is that this is by far the best one of all.
When I peruse the want ads and look at a job description for something similar that I do for either comparable or lower pay than what I currently receive, it understandably does not excite me very much. Becoming the economic development person for another community might be the fresh start that I need mentally, but making $115,000 instead of $110,000 is not really what's going to launch me into a higher socioeconomic status or vastly improve my family’s lives.
But if I
could make $5,000 next year on my online activities, giving myself the same $5,000
raise without having to start fresh and prove myself from scratch once again, I
would be a much happier Mensch.
I'm sure that
there were people making a decent amount of dough online years ago, but it was
not so prevalent as it is today. Whether it's doing gigs on Fiverr, driving for
Uber, writing eBooks, launching an e-commerce site, doing voice-overs, selling
s*** on Amazon or Ebay or wherever, there are more ways now than ever to
supplement your income or even to create your entire income stream online.
As everyone knows, many of the greatest fortune that are created today are created online.
As everyone knows, many of the greatest fortune that are created today are created online.
I consider this the fourth level now, and something that I desire to achieve more so then getting a new job, a promotion, or making things better in my current position. As much as I want to continue doing well and remaining gainfully employed, and have to remain gainfully employed, the prospect of taking more control of one's own financial life and becoming prosperous through online projects is a more exciting prospect.
I suppose that not being as interested as I once was in getting another Economic Development position could be thought of as settling a bit. I still have the ambition to move up to one last position that I could work on through the end of at least 2025, at which time I will strive for fatFIRE55, but I am not exactly feeling the urgency of it at this time even though I struggle with who my boss is, and the difficult people who I have to work with on the economic development committee, and some extremely difficult, opinionated and ultra conservative members of our council.
A better way
to think of it might be that rather than feeling like I've become complacent,
to think that I have achieved a greater sense of wisdom. I dream of how nice it
would be to continue at my place of work while generating a $5,000 per month
income stream from an e-commerce site and or blog. At this point, I would be satisfied to generate a tenth of that per month.
It would
certainly take a lot of the pressure off my financial standing and my ability
to kiss less ass and kick more of it at my place of work without worrying about
who's second-guessing everything that I think, say, and do.
A Human Economic Developer
Speaking of retiring at the end of 2025, I heard a story on NPR while driving to work on Wednesday about the Rise of the Machines.
Barely a day goes by that I do not hear or read a story about robots and AI coming to take jobs away from us humans. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, some 375 million jobs worldwide will vanish by 2030. An Oxford study in 2017 predicted job losses of up to 47% within 50 years. A report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says a startling 1.4 million jobs in the U.S. will be gone in just eight years.
It is a notion that frightens me to some extent and not so much other times. After all, I do not have a simple job like ringing up items at stores, driving a truck, a bank teller or someone who assembles simple items.
The NPR story reports that currently, about seventy-one percent of work is being done by us humans, while the machines lag way behind at a distant twenty-nine percent. But things will change by the year that I want to cease toiling for the Man, in 2025.
That will be the year when the robots catch up. Which is in a bit over six years, not far away.
In just six years, companies say humans will be working the same number of hours as machines and algorithms.
To measure this, the World Economic Forum did something interesting. It took a task, like manual labor in the auto industry, for example, and then looked at how the hours of any given task were divided between humans and robots and how companies expected those hours to be divided in the future.
So an automotive assembly plant, for example, would have robots doing some of the work, and humans working on the line as well. So you would take a car and see how many hours machines put in versus the humans who worked on the car.
By 2025, all over the world, the World Economic Forum predicts an even split.
I had the nerve to broach this topic at a recent meeting with several of my fellow economic development professionals to discuss some joint marketing efforts that we are pursuing.
I joke a lot and mentioned that I hope there would be a market for human economic developers for at least seven more years, at which time I will become a consultant and/or help develop algorithms that can perform the science of what we do, if not the art.
Rather than denying the possibility, my colleagues all stated the years that they have left in the industry. Of us pure economic developers, three of us had less than seven years to go. Of the younger folks in their twenties and thirties, they are hybrid planner/economic developers, thus have a much longer shelf life.
One of my friends (the one with the job that I wanted) told us about a site called willrobotstakemyjob.com, which does not have "economic developer" as a job title. Speaking of the hybrid planner/economic developers, the site listed urban planner as a very safe job, "no worries," with only a thirteen percent chance of being automated.
Considering that I do not think there is a town in the Good Old U.S. of A that would want an algorithm deciding if it is okay for a business or residential development to be built in certain locations and in certain ways, I suspect that the chances of planning positions becoming fully automated may be less than thirteen percent.
Either way, I will continue being a human economic developer until at least 2025, if not longer.
What about your job?
Conditionally Optimistic
Another story that I heard on NPR this week that prompted my further inquiries and reading was about Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer and his theory about being conditionally optimistic.
Although part of this once in a lifetime six-for-one blog post, this one is well worthy of its own.
One of Romer's most influential economic concepts is called “conditional optimism,” which is the opposite of complacency. It’s the idea that if we are proactive about finding solutions to our problems, we can make things better for everyone.
If you think about the fears people had a century ago about mechanization and the way this was going to destroy jobs, the complacent attitude would have been to say, "it'll all work itself out everybody, will be fine."
That would have been the wrong attitude.
What Americans had was a sense of "we've got to do the right thing."
In the Twentieth century there was a movement that said we've got to get everybody up to the level of high school education to be able to do the new kinds of jobs that are coming.
So, if conditional on doing the right thing, in that case a big investment in education, everything can turn out better for everybody. But if you just are complacent, say "it'll work itself out," you're not going to be happy with the outcome.
Likewise, when it comes to our own financial lives, whether it be trying to improve your lot by one of the three aforementioned levels of improving your work life or striving to achieve the fourth level of creating your own additional income streams, or whether you are trying to launch a new business or whatever ventures you are dreaming and scheming of, the one thing that none of us can afford to be is complacent.
Better to be conditionally optimistic, i.e., be generally optimistic about your financial and otherwise future, but with conditions in mind. "I'll be optimistic if I can save two million dollars (or five like Suze Orman suggests)." "I'll be optimistic if I can pay off my house, pay my kids' college and have several steady income-generating streams of revenue."
Not "I hope that I win a billion dollars in the lottery" or "I'll just worry about the future when it comes, but now I should spend whatever I have on the newest iPhone."
There's a big difference between being conditionally optimistic and optimistic for no particular reason.
I'll Be Your BFF
I need some help here, folks.
Even if you just want to reply, "F*** You," at least that's something.
I chose the handle Money Mensch because I have read dozens and dozens of books and thousands of posts and articles about money, I have obsessed and lost many nights of sleep on the topic, and I decided far too late for my own good that I should pursue more of the stuff.
But money isn't everything.
The thing about names, even if they are great ones like Mr. Money Mustache, the Money Millennial, Get Rich Slowly or the Simple Dollar, is that they are all money-centric.
I want to launch a more popular "personal finance" blog for the simple reason that good ones make mucho dinero. Most of the posts are about how much money they make.
Nothing wrong with that, but my first love, other than my family, is books, not money. So much so that there's a word for my affliction. I also love food quite a bit and currently have at least a thousand food photos between my phone and camera. When I see a great dish photographed a few years ago and never shared or posted, I cannot even recall what it was and where I had it.
I should post about books, food and finance or BFF for short.
When I looked up the term, it is mostly used with girls and women, rarely with men. It figures, considering that I first heard the term years ago from my daughter in reference to the girl who remains one of her two BFFs.
Despite my current handle, and the fact that I purchased the domain MoneyMensch.com several months ago yet have not accessed it yet or developed the site and continue using this free Blogger template, I do not want to limit myself to writing about money.
So I have spent the last week while working, attending an event Wednesday night and attending a concert until fairly late last night, contemplating an altogether new handle. One that would make me appear to be less of a money grubber. If anything, it would behoove me to become more of a money grubber than I am. What I am is a pretty decent saver of what I earn considering that I saved over two hundred grand for my children's college funds and currently Pay Ourselves First including $1,600 this month. I even invested into my Roth IRA twice this month, both on days that the markets plunged.
So I am considering becoming BFF Man. My wife said that BFM (Books Food Money) sounded too close to BM for bowel movement.
As of tonight, the domain remains available.
BFF Guy sounds a bit too colloquial, and I am struggling to come up with a better name.
If I really want a catchy name, I may just turn to my daughter for help although she thinks I am way off with this whole thing. She's probably right.
But the things that interest a middle aged man who loves books, loves interesting food and does not love, but requires, more money and has much to learn and share about personal finance are different than things that interest a popular, high achieving girl in her sophomore year of high school.
Shopify, one of the e-commerce platforms that I study and will likely utilize in e-store that will launch next year, recommends utilizing blogging to boost your sales. What I would rather do is to truly combine my blog with e-commerce. I would not want it to become one of those obnoxious blogs that I refuse to look at with a sales pitch window popping up every few seconds, but would strive to integrate it in a tasteful fashion.
Although the name BFF Man kind of sucks, one of the more successful e-commerce stores that I have read about and purchased an item from is called LDS Man, a business whose founder sold for ten freakin' million earlier this year, putting him in the same league as some of the top industrialists that have been working for decades to make that kind of scratch.
There are many more folks like Yours Truly, who bite and scratch and claw just to retain our middle class status.
Unfortunate, but true.
So says your future BFF Man.
Speaking of retiring at the end of 2025, I heard a story on NPR while driving to work on Wednesday about the Rise of the Machines.
Barely a day goes by that I do not hear or read a story about robots and AI coming to take jobs away from us humans. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, some 375 million jobs worldwide will vanish by 2030. An Oxford study in 2017 predicted job losses of up to 47% within 50 years. A report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says a startling 1.4 million jobs in the U.S. will be gone in just eight years.
It is a notion that frightens me to some extent and not so much other times. After all, I do not have a simple job like ringing up items at stores, driving a truck, a bank teller or someone who assembles simple items.
The NPR story reports that currently, about seventy-one percent of work is being done by us humans, while the machines lag way behind at a distant twenty-nine percent. But things will change by the year that I want to cease toiling for the Man, in 2025.
That will be the year when the robots catch up. Which is in a bit over six years, not far away.
In just six years, companies say humans will be working the same number of hours as machines and algorithms.
To measure this, the World Economic Forum did something interesting. It took a task, like manual labor in the auto industry, for example, and then looked at how the hours of any given task were divided between humans and robots and how companies expected those hours to be divided in the future.
So an automotive assembly plant, for example, would have robots doing some of the work, and humans working on the line as well. So you would take a car and see how many hours machines put in versus the humans who worked on the car.
By 2025, all over the world, the World Economic Forum predicts an even split.
I had the nerve to broach this topic at a recent meeting with several of my fellow economic development professionals to discuss some joint marketing efforts that we are pursuing.
I joke a lot and mentioned that I hope there would be a market for human economic developers for at least seven more years, at which time I will become a consultant and/or help develop algorithms that can perform the science of what we do, if not the art.
Rather than denying the possibility, my colleagues all stated the years that they have left in the industry. Of us pure economic developers, three of us had less than seven years to go. Of the younger folks in their twenties and thirties, they are hybrid planner/economic developers, thus have a much longer shelf life.
One of my friends (the one with the job that I wanted) told us about a site called willrobotstakemyjob.com, which does not have "economic developer" as a job title. Speaking of the hybrid planner/economic developers, the site listed urban planner as a very safe job, "no worries," with only a thirteen percent chance of being automated.
Considering that I do not think there is a town in the Good Old U.S. of A that would want an algorithm deciding if it is okay for a business or residential development to be built in certain locations and in certain ways, I suspect that the chances of planning positions becoming fully automated may be less than thirteen percent.
Either way, I will continue being a human economic developer until at least 2025, if not longer.
What about your job?
Conditionally Optimistic
Another story that I heard on NPR this week that prompted my further inquiries and reading was about Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer and his theory about being conditionally optimistic.
Although part of this once in a lifetime six-for-one blog post, this one is well worthy of its own.
One of Romer's most influential economic concepts is called “conditional optimism,” which is the opposite of complacency. It’s the idea that if we are proactive about finding solutions to our problems, we can make things better for everyone.
If you think about the fears people had a century ago about mechanization and the way this was going to destroy jobs, the complacent attitude would have been to say, "it'll all work itself out everybody, will be fine."
That would have been the wrong attitude.
What Americans had was a sense of "we've got to do the right thing."
In the Twentieth century there was a movement that said we've got to get everybody up to the level of high school education to be able to do the new kinds of jobs that are coming.
So, if conditional on doing the right thing, in that case a big investment in education, everything can turn out better for everybody. But if you just are complacent, say "it'll work itself out," you're not going to be happy with the outcome.
Likewise, when it comes to our own financial lives, whether it be trying to improve your lot by one of the three aforementioned levels of improving your work life or striving to achieve the fourth level of creating your own additional income streams, or whether you are trying to launch a new business or whatever ventures you are dreaming and scheming of, the one thing that none of us can afford to be is complacent.
Better to be conditionally optimistic, i.e., be generally optimistic about your financial and otherwise future, but with conditions in mind. "I'll be optimistic if I can save two million dollars (or five like Suze Orman suggests)." "I'll be optimistic if I can pay off my house, pay my kids' college and have several steady income-generating streams of revenue."
Not "I hope that I win a billion dollars in the lottery" or "I'll just worry about the future when it comes, but now I should spend whatever I have on the newest iPhone."
There's a big difference between being conditionally optimistic and optimistic for no particular reason.
I'll Be Your BFF
I need some help here, folks.
Even if you just want to reply, "F*** You," at least that's something.
I chose the handle Money Mensch because I have read dozens and dozens of books and thousands of posts and articles about money, I have obsessed and lost many nights of sleep on the topic, and I decided far too late for my own good that I should pursue more of the stuff.
But money isn't everything.
The thing about names, even if they are great ones like Mr. Money Mustache, the Money Millennial, Get Rich Slowly or the Simple Dollar, is that they are all money-centric.
I want to launch a more popular "personal finance" blog for the simple reason that good ones make mucho dinero. Most of the posts are about how much money they make.
Nothing wrong with that, but my first love, other than my family, is books, not money. So much so that there's a word for my affliction. I also love food quite a bit and currently have at least a thousand food photos between my phone and camera. When I see a great dish photographed a few years ago and never shared or posted, I cannot even recall what it was and where I had it.
I should post about books, food and finance or BFF for short.
When I looked up the term, it is mostly used with girls and women, rarely with men. It figures, considering that I first heard the term years ago from my daughter in reference to the girl who remains one of her two BFFs.
Despite my current handle, and the fact that I purchased the domain MoneyMensch.com several months ago yet have not accessed it yet or developed the site and continue using this free Blogger template, I do not want to limit myself to writing about money.
So I have spent the last week while working, attending an event Wednesday night and attending a concert until fairly late last night, contemplating an altogether new handle. One that would make me appear to be less of a money grubber. If anything, it would behoove me to become more of a money grubber than I am. What I am is a pretty decent saver of what I earn considering that I saved over two hundred grand for my children's college funds and currently Pay Ourselves First including $1,600 this month. I even invested into my Roth IRA twice this month, both on days that the markets plunged.
So I am considering becoming BFF Man. My wife said that BFM (Books Food Money) sounded too close to BM for bowel movement.
As of tonight, the domain remains available.
BFF Guy sounds a bit too colloquial, and I am struggling to come up with a better name.
If I really want a catchy name, I may just turn to my daughter for help although she thinks I am way off with this whole thing. She's probably right.
But the things that interest a middle aged man who loves books, loves interesting food and does not love, but requires, more money and has much to learn and share about personal finance are different than things that interest a popular, high achieving girl in her sophomore year of high school.
Shopify, one of the e-commerce platforms that I study and will likely utilize in e-store that will launch next year, recommends utilizing blogging to boost your sales. What I would rather do is to truly combine my blog with e-commerce. I would not want it to become one of those obnoxious blogs that I refuse to look at with a sales pitch window popping up every few seconds, but would strive to integrate it in a tasteful fashion.
Although the name BFF Man kind of sucks, one of the more successful e-commerce stores that I have read about and purchased an item from is called LDS Man, a business whose founder sold for ten freakin' million earlier this year, putting him in the same league as some of the top industrialists that have been working for decades to make that kind of scratch.
There are many more folks like Yours Truly, who bite and scratch and claw just to retain our middle class status.
Unfortunate, but true.
So says your future BFF Man.
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