i managed to get through until I was 28 until I took up my first full time job, then had to put in an unfortunate 16 year stint of full time work before evolving to my present condition of being much less reliant on wages than in the past.
Watching the unravelling of the British Economy from a thankful distance I must say that I'm glad I am no longer as reliant on paid work as I was for those 20 years.
The combination of the political reaction to the Pandemic and Brexit, both entirely avoidable have resulted in a period of forced underemployment for most, outright unemployment for some, increasing public debt being taken on to deal with this and now supply-chain shocks, all exacerbated by Russia opportunistically keeping the fuel supply taps on low.
All of this results in a declining standard of living as so many people have had to dig into their savings to deal with the Pandemic and now are seeing rising inflation as the prices of basic goods go up.
I can't see how this is going to improve in the near term as countries seek to take advantage of Britain's new weakened trade-position post Brexit - like France is doing ATM with demanding more fishing rights for its trawlers - it's difficult to see how Britain can win this when so much of our trade can be delayed by France at their end of the tunnel.
Anyway, I can't see there being much hope for most people in regular jobs being able carve out a decent life for themselves in this situation - rising prices caused by trade-restrictions and the very likely possibility of tax increases in the future given the probability of stalling economic growth - any increase in wages or Universal credit is likely to get sucked up between those two.
So to my mind there's never been a better time to seek alternative means of getting by other than relying on wages....
There are actually quite a few options - drawing on Jacob Lund Fisker's Early Retirement Extreme - Developing skills and then selling them for money is only one way of surviving, of course in most people's cases this means developing ONE SET of skills, specialising in that and working for 40 hours a week selling that skill.
You basically have 3 other options as below...
| - | Labour | Capital |
|---|---|---|
| Financial | Skills - Wages | Financial Investments |
| Non-Financial | Skills - DIY | Land/ Social capital |
You can invest your capital for a return - plenty of options here, which includes a range of crypto options, of course, but the weakness with this is that it requires money in first place.
But there are couple of non financial options - the first is developing a diverse range of DIY skills so you can better meet your own needs at a base level - cooking over eating out is an obvious example, or growing your own food to take this to the next level.
I'm a huge fan of this, and it's fun!
And then there's other sorts of capital which you don't have to see in financial terms - social capital - networks of friends or trusted third parties who you can skill share with (or call on to harvest your olives), and related to this is land, which can be used to meet a huge variety of your needs, but there again we're back to needing money in the first place.
The advantages of the bottom two is that these aren't subject fluctuations in the wider economic situation - unlike wages and the costs of goods on the free-market these two are with you as a constant, or hopefully an ever-increasing set of skills and contacts - yes of course they may vary too, everything does, but you will probably have more control over them than the global economy whose whims influence your wages!
Anyway, this is just really something that the recent UK budget reminded me of - the weakness of wages, and the fact that there are ways in which we can make ourselves and out standards of living less dependent on a wage.
Of course if you're stuck in the wage-trap, breaking out of it is easer said than done, but the first step is remembering that selling your skills for money is only one possible means of survival, and if those skills can be sold for less and less of a return, you should investigate alternative means of survival asap!
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A wage is good in that it gives you regular income, but it may just never increase much. You need to the guy who invested a few thousand in a memecoin and is not a billionaire!
Self-sufficiency is useful to reduce your dependence on wages. Paying someone else to fix things soon gets expensive. I've done so much DIY over the years that I am more willing to pay others to do it now.
I did just sell a little Polydoge for quite a healthy profit as it goes! Not billions, but a tidy amount.
DIY is hard work and inefficient, but it does save you fiat!
I've learned the best thing to do is find a professional that doesn't mind you working alongside them, then you can learn as you go and benefit from their efficiency too.
The reliance on wages reminds me of something Nassim Taleb wrote. It went along the lines that people have a wage and therefore think themselves secure, however, they are incredibly vulnerable. Two words, "you're fired", can make you incredibly unsecure, especially if you have no savings
That's very well said! I think you're incredibly vulnerable with just a wage to rely on!
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