In honor of Labor Day weekend, Jonathan talks about the evolution of hard work and discipline in a world where technology allows us to offload the labor of saving, and automate good habits for a wealthy future.
Good morning,
This is Jonathan Satovsky of Satovsky Asset Management, Labor Day weekend 2020.
And today’s video blog update is in honor of what it means to labor and develop habits around hard work, rest and recovery, and a sustainable situation.
Undeniably, everyone needs a day of rest. Fortunately, we’ve created a national holiday to honor those that work hard. And what is work?
Work is putting your heart and soul and your passion into doing something whatever the task is. Sweeping floors, mopping, using intellectual capital, creativity to find a way to do something better to improve the quality of the effort for yourself, for your teammates, for your clients, for culture.
If everyone’s doing their part to put their best effort forth, then amazing things happen. So this day of rest, Labor Day, is to honor those that put forth the effort to make businesses, community, culture great each and every day.
As it relates to personal finance one of the things I have talked a lot about is habits, and how difficult it is to develop good conscious habits.
Specifically in relation to saving, and a concept I call, “paying yourself first.“
I once learned this – there is a book called The Wealthy Barber that I read maybe 25 years ago based on the idea that for every penny or every dollar earned, the first 10 cents should go towards paying yourself first.
Now people don’t naturally do that. There are some automatic 401k savings plans and such, which help; but the savings rate is still extraordinarily low, 1 to 3 percent perhaps.
And ideally people should save a dime ( 10 percent ) of every dollar. Without this people are laboring so hard, having not automated this habit. Have systematic savings pulled from your checking or from your savings account.
It seems so simple, yet people tend never to do it. Why is that habit so hard?
Because if you work hard you’re like, “Ugh! I work so hard I just want to enjoy the money.” So people go out and consume and they spend it and they’re like, “Well I don’t want to invest, you know. It’s not a good time to invest; there is a lot of uncertainty.”
People make up excuses for why not to get into a good habit of saving and investing for your future.
I’m guilty myself. It’s much more enjoyable to spend money and to enjoy experiences than to save for your future.
So discipline and habit requires automation; a co-created discipline to be able to get on a path that is sustainable for your future self.
The nature of labor changes because of technology and automation and aging; and we have to create a scenario where the people can be insulated from the demands of forced labor in perpetuity. So that you can get to a position where that you have financial freedom.
There is a concept, “do you know how to eat an elephant?” The answer is, inch by inch is a cinch. And yard by yard is hard.
With that, enjoy your Labor Day weekend and rest and recovery, and start building good habits today for a healthy, wealthy and wise future for everyone involved.
Have a great day.
