Save some of your money...
Ok, now that I have your attention
How do you guys decide what you spend on "fun stuff" and what you "re-invest" in the business. For those of us doing this part time or even full time it sometimes is hard to save money for the business and not spend it on ouselves, I mean afterall it is "our job". So how do you determine how much to save, and how much to spend on "fun stuff"
I think this could be a good topic... discuss
There's no determining, it's how bad you want more money vs. how much you feel like using it. In general it's a good idea to save it up, and pass up lots of small things that'd give you a minute amount of joy so you can spend it on things more useful and funner/better.
Sorry James, I didn't mean to make the post sound like I was looking for a textbook definition. I fully understand the different techniques, and methods to saving, and taking a %, etc.. I`m just curious how the people here at WSP do it, and justify what they do.Originally Posted by James
Hope that's more clear.
Put yourself in a situation so its hard to spend money on the fun stuff instead of the business. I'm constantly investing money back into my sites. When I started out everything went to hosting and domains. Now I'm buying content, better software (such as vBulletin), etc.
My "fun" money tends to go to concerts and little else. Everything else is necessities like food, rent, & gas. I spend the bare minimum on clothes. I don't spend money eating out. (You can buy a lot of eggs for $1!)
That being said, its actually not as difficult, or painful, to watch what you spend as it seems. I've read stories of other entrepreneurs sleeping in their studio apartment's kitchen floor, eating exclusively mac and cheese, etc. Makes me feel pretty damn lucky!
Most of spending is society driven thanks to advertising and marketing -- two things which very much interest meWatch your spending month to month and isolate wherer most of your money is going. Weigh out how much enjoyment you get out of each thing you do. Cut off the spending to things that you don't really enjoy. You might even be spending money doing things you hate just because your friends do them.
Spending wisely isn't easy, but its far from impossible either. The more you re-invest today, the sooner you are going to reach your goals.
Make more money - Read my Web Publishing Blog
Put yourself in a situation so its hard to spend money on the fun stuff instead of the business. I'm constantly investing money back into my sites. When I started out everything went to hosting and domains. Now I'm buying content, better software (such as vBulletin), etc.
My "fun" money tends to go to concerts and little else. Everything else is necessities like food, rent, & gas. I spend the bare minimum on clothes. I don't spend money eating out. (You can buy a lot of eggs for $1!)
That being said, its actually not as difficult, or painful, to watch what you spend as it seems. I've read stories of other entrepreneurs sleeping in their studio apartment's kitchen floor, eating exclusively mac and cheese, etc. Makes me feel pretty damn lucky!
Most of spending is society driven thanks to advertising and marketing -- two things which very much interest me
Spending wisely isn't easy, but its far from impossible either. The more you re-invest today, the sooner you are going to reach your goals.
I think my problem is that I have to expensive of a hobbey! I don't waste my money on "cool" stuff or stuff I want around the house etc, but I`m always dumping money into my buggy or truck it seems. (Front axle in the works thats gonna run upwards of $5500)... That stuff adds up, and each montH I tell myself oh after this you wont need anymore parts, then I bust a part and need something else.
Personaly in 2006 I am going to start taking a % of my earnings and putting that away for savings and taxes.
That's my goal atleast... 20% or 30% not sure yet.
As far as reinvesting goes, I plan to reinvest 100% of what I earn from my websites while I'm starting out. Not sure if I'll keep at 100% but no less than 75% reinvested to ensure growth.
For spending money on fun stuff, I make it a point to find hobbies which involve one or two purchases that will last a while (i.e. a computer or musical instrument) as opposed to hobbies which don't last or become like liabilities with frequent purchases ( i.e. cutter's concert tickets or collections of any kind). My last purchase for myself was a $500 electric keyboard which I use everyday and that was over a year ago. I think the best hobby would be one which is both fun and makes money, though (websites).
I'm probably not a good case for this thread because I'm only 18 and still live at my parents house and am only getting started with web publishing. I also don't have friends or a car so I don't have much to spend on.
I put about 40% of what I earn aside for tax, student loan repayment, national insurance etc. After bills and other living expenses I don't get too much left over each month. So to be honest, at the moment I re-invest almost nothing into my business as it all goes on stuff I enjoy instead. Aside from hosting and domains, I've only bought a few articles and some software. Perhaps a total of about $300 re-invested since I started doing this.
This has to change! In the past I've tended to create a whole site myself, always thinking, why pay someone else to do something that I can do for free? But now I appreciate more and more that time is money. I plan to outsource much more now, with the aim that eventually I'll just come up with the ideas and I'll have the freelancing infrastructure in place ready to put the ideas into action straight away.
I've only just started to reinvest more in my business (meaning paying people to do things for me rather than doing them myself) in the past year or so.
Its more of a time thing though I think than a money thing.
Your car is, hands down, one of the worst places to put your money. This is money that just dissappears. You'll only get back a very small percentage of any mods when you sell it, on top of massive depreciation of the car overall.
In my opinion, your car should not be worth more than a month or two of income. Don't get me wrong, I love cars. But when faced with driving a nice car today and a nice car tommorow vs driving a low-end car today and a lambo tommorow... I'll stick with the low-end car today.
Make more money - Read my Web Publishing Blog
Sorry guys, my car (truck) is not just something "nice" to drive. It's functional, I need it to tow my buggy, and I don't want a clunker breaking down on my 800+ mile to Moab Utah (from CA). Also don't want the buggy breaking down 5 miles into a trail in the middle of no where.
If you are barely scraping by you shouldn't have super nice car, but if you are saving money, and have enough for a nice car I say get one
Right now I do all the work for my sites including hosting. Things I pay for the business monthly are.
-Advertising (around $200)
-Servers (Around $400)
-Security/Admin Servers (very cheap)
So my re-investing currently is simply advertising sites to promote new sites etc, and lately I`ve purchased a couple little scripts and website designs for new sites. Other than that my money goes for fun stuff, and or savings.
It sounds like some of you are in the position I am in, deciding if you want to start paying others to do work for you or keep doing it yourself.
Last edited by Todd W; 11-22-2005 at 11:21 AM.
No need to say sorry. Whats important is that you set goals and you are happy with them. My goal is not to make as much money as possible, but to make as much money as I can and reach the lifestyle goals I want. I'll take a million dollars over a billion if a billion is going to cost me the next 30 years of my life and be unenjoyable.
Make more money - Read my Web Publishing Blog
How about shares day trading? it's faster than earning money online lol! My bf did it few times (he can do it because he works full time on his business) and he refreshed the shares day trading site and made AUD $300 in couple hrs. He's thinking of getting a marginal loan now.
I know someone who still works full time eventhough he already has 2 houses fully paid and $200K in shares because he doesn't want to see his wife all day everyday
Anyways, as far as I know, my boyfriend invests his cash 70-80% back to his business, this will help him to reduce the tax and grow his business . He's a very simple bloke (sometimes I think he's a bit boring hehehe..). He still drives a $10K car (eventhough he'd love to drive a grandpa's style car - mercedes E class) but he said at the moment, there's no rush to get the car and he has nothing to loose, no commitments, etc. So all the cash goes to his websites. The other 20% goes to his cricket and tennis gear. He loves cricket so much that he has top of the range gear and he plays 5 days a week. He told me the other day that how good is it that he's out playing cricket while he still earns money hehehe...BTW, he's a member here, but he hardly writes anything. I start to write a lot because my current work's so boring. My consultancy assignment this time is not as glamourous as the others, its in a small country town (so boring) and I hate it.
im gonna keep investing on my site until I get to 30k a month
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