3 Ways to Prevent Earning Money from Ruining an Experience

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Many people, myself included, worry that making money from a hobby will ruin the experience. It doesn’t. Not if you do it right.

1. Set time limits

Don’t make it a full-time job, at least not initially. When it was entirely for fun, and might have cost you money, how much time did you spend? Start there. If you’re successful, there will be pressure to devote more, but you can stay as casual as you wish. You can ease into longer commitments, on a trial basis, to make sure it won’t break the engagement. 

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Capping Investment Value

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Diversification is an abstract concept, it can be easy to understand why to diversify, but not how. True diversification requires each set to be completely unrelated (no correlation). In other words, if one effort fails, the negative effects do not harm others. This ideal is generally impossible, as all things are linked to some degree, but it is certainly possible to keep the effects of any one catastrophe to one or two groups.

To start, create a simple cap for each investment group, a number small enough that it wouldn’t ruin your life to lose the entire value. Many will argue based on percentages, but that number fluctuates constantly, and doesn’t account for your psychology. For example, you could put no more than $25k into any set. This is the minimum buy-in for many investments, and plenty high for most of us.

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The Ideal Pace for Paying Down your Mortgage

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The answer depends on 3 main factors:

  1. The total debt
    1. This is largely redundant, but the cost of debt changes relative to this value.
  2. The cost of debt
  3. Revenue from the debt
    1. If you couldn’t buy exactly enough for your needs, nor use all of it, all the time, there should be some revenue from your property.
    2. Deduct costs normally covered by rent. Condo fees, for example.

Taking those values, we can project the cost, or earnings, of the investment.

Mort003

As shown in the chart above, there is an equilibrium rate that would offer a steady return, no matter how much debt. As the relative return decreases, the cost of debt decreases equivalently. The two other patterns offer radically different reactions. If earning less than equilibrium, it would best to move rapidly through the steep part of the curve. Conversely, if you earn over equilibrium, make only the regular payments, and focus on other opportunities.

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Check your Critic

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

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Use Strengths to Kickstart Skills

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Many of us want to develop new skills, become more resilient. Starting as a complete newbie is intimidating, often to the point of endless procrastination. When the barriers are too great, what can you do?

Borrow from your current strengths

  • What skills and strengths do you already have?
  • Do any of them intersect, or share commonalities, with the new skill?
  • How can the similarities be used to transfer competence from one skill to the other?
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The 8 Wastes: Introduction

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In quality improvement, we look for 8 common wastes. They are not entirely comprehensive, nor exclusive. The wastes are cues for issues you have ignored or forgotten. I will write comprehensive posts for each waste. For now, here is a brief summary, with examples:

1: Waiting

This is the most obvious, any time people are left waiting. Sure, people could take the opportunity to meditate or check their phones, but they would usually prefer to do something else, somewhere else. This category can also be used to identify idle equipment that could be utilized.

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The surprisingly long list of free activities

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To fight the assumption that I need to spend money to enjoy myself, I drafted a list of essentially free, and generally enjoyable, activities. Depending on your supplies and equipment, some of these options will not be free. Plenty are free for anyone. To avoid a repetitive list, I’ve broken the list into broad categories:

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