We often hear the phrase "the time value of money," but what does that actually mean? Fundamentally, it means that money now is "worth more" than money later. For example, if I were to put $100 in a savings account at 1% interest, I would have $101 (not including compounding) at the end of a year. How can that be? How does money get more valuable?
It doesn't. The money itself, when there is no inflation or deflation, retains its original value. In order for there to be any return to money invested, it must be put to work. The only way money can be put to work is by using it to help transform one thing into another thing that is more valuable.
For example, if I take $100 to buy 100 plain wooden blocks and some paint, then invest my time painting the blocks for decorative purposes, I can sell them for, say, $120. The "extra" $20 is the result of my ingenuity and effort. I take cash, some raw materials, and my time and combine them to create value that did not exist before.
If I have an idea for creating such a product, but do not have enough cash on hand to purchase the plain blocks and paint, I cannot create value. A banker or someone else that lends money might recognize my idea as valuable and offer to lend me the money. Say I borrow $100 and agree to pay the lender $105 at the end of a year. I still make $15 on the enterprise. The bank also made money--$5.
This brings us back to our original example--the 1% return on a savings account. For nothing more than the trouble of depositing money in the bank, it pays me 1% It can do so only because it then takes my money and loans it out for 5% It can do that only because someone is willing and able to take that money and create more than 5% value with it.
Now, who makes the most money? We can figure this out by reasoning that a bank will never make money if it lends it out for less than it pays depositors. So the owner of the savings account necessarily makes less money than the bank. What about the business owner? If he/she makes less than the interest rate paid to the bank, that business is a losing proposition. In other words, the business has to make a 5% return just to break even.
This is of course a drastically simplified description of rates of return. The point is that the business owner has the greatest potential of making money. Note that I said potential. Business ownership entails risk, but it is essential for there to be a return on that $100 at all.
Whenever we invest our money, it provides us a return. Behind that return, there is a business, or multiple businesses, actually doing the work of creating value. If the investment is stable and strong, it can be a good strategy for providing for the future. It will never match the potential of a self-owned business, though, because too many other people take their cut first.
Wouldn't you rather get the biggest cut on at least some of your income? I would, and I'll bet you would too. Don't wait, start learning now.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Why Your Goals Don't Work
Yesterday, I assigned my students a voluntary overnight project. We had discussed goal setting in class and I wanted to impress upon them the importance of writing down and prioritizing their goals. As I generally find in my classes, only a small number did the whole exercise.
I already know why many of my students failed to follow through on this well-established method for getting what we want out of life. It is the same reason many of us fail to follow through. We say we want to achieve great things, but in the end, we would really rather stay in our comfortable cocoon of low-level misery.
We know from well over a thousand studies that goals work--that is, they lead to high performance. If you want to lose weight, make more money, or achieve anything else quantifiable, goals are the way to do it. Yet we all know how easy it is to get distracted while working on a goal. Why is that?
In my view, there are two major reasons we find it difficult to achieve things. The first stems from what I call a "mind-split." On the one hand we want to accomplish what we set out to do. On the other, we are afraid that we just might succeed. If we succeed, we show ourselves and the world that we really are capable. It renders null and void all the excuses we used before, and by implication, the excuses we may want to use in the future.
The second hindrance to goal achievement is having the wrong goals. High performance does not necessarily lead to happiness and personal fulfillment. I see this in "achievement junkies," people who crave the next chunk of conspicuous wealth or yet another trophy in a sport they have grown to despise.
Learning the mechanics of goal setting takes twenty minutes. Learning to set the right goals may take twenty years. As you set out on the great journey that is entrepreneurship, remember that getting what you really want is scary and that getting what you think you want may make you miserable.
I already know why many of my students failed to follow through on this well-established method for getting what we want out of life. It is the same reason many of us fail to follow through. We say we want to achieve great things, but in the end, we would really rather stay in our comfortable cocoon of low-level misery.
We know from well over a thousand studies that goals work--that is, they lead to high performance. If you want to lose weight, make more money, or achieve anything else quantifiable, goals are the way to do it. Yet we all know how easy it is to get distracted while working on a goal. Why is that?
In my view, there are two major reasons we find it difficult to achieve things. The first stems from what I call a "mind-split." On the one hand we want to accomplish what we set out to do. On the other, we are afraid that we just might succeed. If we succeed, we show ourselves and the world that we really are capable. It renders null and void all the excuses we used before, and by implication, the excuses we may want to use in the future.
The second hindrance to goal achievement is having the wrong goals. High performance does not necessarily lead to happiness and personal fulfillment. I see this in "achievement junkies," people who crave the next chunk of conspicuous wealth or yet another trophy in a sport they have grown to despise.
Learning the mechanics of goal setting takes twenty minutes. Learning to set the right goals may take twenty years. As you set out on the great journey that is entrepreneurship, remember that getting what you really want is scary and that getting what you think you want may make you miserable.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Is This Socialism?
In order to understand the premises of socialism, we need to understand two words: "from" and "to." Specifically, socialists believe that justice is served when societies observe the following rule: From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.
On the face of it, this sounds just. Who would quarrel with the idea that people should get what they need? It is the "from" part that get us into trouble. If life were a matter of us all standing around a pre-existing barrel of goods--food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities--and taking what we needed, one might justify this distribution rule.
Of course, we all know that is not how the things we human beings need come to exist. Except for air, basic necessities have to be created by someone. Socialism presumes it is right to take from the creators and give to others. Is that what our economic system has become?
You bet it has, but not in the way you may think.
The complexity of our economic system has allowed us to take from people who don't exist yet. How can that be? It is called debt. Debt is en extremely useful tool. If someone lends you money to buy something you could not purchase with cash, say a house, many people benefit. You benefit because you are able to use something valuable before you pay for it completely. The seller benefits because he/she can sell to someone who otherwise could not purchase. The lender also makes money.
If we had no system for borrowing and lending money, it would be nearly impossible to own anything like a house or car. Here is the problem. Not only can regular people and private businesses borrow money, so can the government. The difference is that the government borrows from future generations.
One way the government does this is to borrow money literally. It essentially issues IOUs to its citizens. The government can also print money. In the first case, debt can build until the present generation cannot pay it all off. In the second, government spends money it has "printed" and hopes no one notices that the resulting inflation has robbed citizens of buying power.
Either way, the system makes chumps of us. If we live frugally, save our money, and teach our children to do the same, we wind up feeding the government's insatiable appetite for spending at our own expense. At some point, the system has to break down. Either our children and grandchildren will have to pay absurd tax rates or the value of our currency will diminish to zero. Maybe both.
And this brings us back to socialism. If the government tried in the present to take the amount of money it needs to sustain its orgy of spending, citizens would revolt. If they hide their theft by passing it on to its future citizens, we who are right here right now may grumble, but we won't revolt.
Is this how we want to live? If so, let's be honest about it. Socialism advocates taking from the "able" and giving to the "needy." If you believe that, are you willing to look future generations in the eye and tell them that we gave and gave and gave and that by the way, they owe the bill?
I didn't think so.
On the face of it, this sounds just. Who would quarrel with the idea that people should get what they need? It is the "from" part that get us into trouble. If life were a matter of us all standing around a pre-existing barrel of goods--food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities--and taking what we needed, one might justify this distribution rule.
Of course, we all know that is not how the things we human beings need come to exist. Except for air, basic necessities have to be created by someone. Socialism presumes it is right to take from the creators and give to others. Is that what our economic system has become?
You bet it has, but not in the way you may think.
The complexity of our economic system has allowed us to take from people who don't exist yet. How can that be? It is called debt. Debt is en extremely useful tool. If someone lends you money to buy something you could not purchase with cash, say a house, many people benefit. You benefit because you are able to use something valuable before you pay for it completely. The seller benefits because he/she can sell to someone who otherwise could not purchase. The lender also makes money.
If we had no system for borrowing and lending money, it would be nearly impossible to own anything like a house or car. Here is the problem. Not only can regular people and private businesses borrow money, so can the government. The difference is that the government borrows from future generations.
One way the government does this is to borrow money literally. It essentially issues IOUs to its citizens. The government can also print money. In the first case, debt can build until the present generation cannot pay it all off. In the second, government spends money it has "printed" and hopes no one notices that the resulting inflation has robbed citizens of buying power.
Either way, the system makes chumps of us. If we live frugally, save our money, and teach our children to do the same, we wind up feeding the government's insatiable appetite for spending at our own expense. At some point, the system has to break down. Either our children and grandchildren will have to pay absurd tax rates or the value of our currency will diminish to zero. Maybe both.
And this brings us back to socialism. If the government tried in the present to take the amount of money it needs to sustain its orgy of spending, citizens would revolt. If they hide their theft by passing it on to its future citizens, we who are right here right now may grumble, but we won't revolt.
Is this how we want to live? If so, let's be honest about it. Socialism advocates taking from the "able" and giving to the "needy." If you believe that, are you willing to look future generations in the eye and tell them that we gave and gave and gave and that by the way, they owe the bill?
I didn't think so.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Candy from Babies
If pure socialism were instituted suddenly in this country, the near-universal descent into grinding poverty would be brutal and quick. Current creators of goods and services would have no reason, moral or economic, to provide anything for sale, knowing it would be confiscated and given to someone deemed more needy. As wishy-washy as we have become, we citizens still wouldn't allow that to happen.
The strategy instead has been stealth. The gradual ramping up of tax rates over decades has acclimated us all to a burden we would have vigorously refused a few decades ago. But, alas, politicians cannot get all the money they want to spend because that strategy has played out. They know that other sources of money have to be tapped. To that end, they steal from future generations. They can do that because those yet to be born cannot object. As the national debt (now 82% of GDP) grows, our ability to pay it back at all nears zero. The question is not if the system will crash, but when.
We got here because we as a people are largely ignorant of how the government steals from us and our children. The smoke-and-mirrors illusion that passes for fiscal management can only be sustained as long as we are gullible enough to fall for it. Every time we let pass without a thundering public outcry the nationalization of an industry (automakers), the bailing out of virtually an entire industry (big banks), and the promise of yet another unaffordable entitlement program (health care), we are partners in crime.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to explain to my two sons why we left them working nine-tenths of every year to pay back with interest money we spent. I don't want to have to tell them that we had a chance to stop the insanity and didn't. I don't want to see a once proud and free country descend into tyranny and poverty because we were lured by the seductive pull of something for nothing.
How about you?
The strategy instead has been stealth. The gradual ramping up of tax rates over decades has acclimated us all to a burden we would have vigorously refused a few decades ago. But, alas, politicians cannot get all the money they want to spend because that strategy has played out. They know that other sources of money have to be tapped. To that end, they steal from future generations. They can do that because those yet to be born cannot object. As the national debt (now 82% of GDP) grows, our ability to pay it back at all nears zero. The question is not if the system will crash, but when.
We got here because we as a people are largely ignorant of how the government steals from us and our children. The smoke-and-mirrors illusion that passes for fiscal management can only be sustained as long as we are gullible enough to fall for it. Every time we let pass without a thundering public outcry the nationalization of an industry (automakers), the bailing out of virtually an entire industry (big banks), and the promise of yet another unaffordable entitlement program (health care), we are partners in crime.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to explain to my two sons why we left them working nine-tenths of every year to pay back with interest money we spent. I don't want to have to tell them that we had a chance to stop the insanity and didn't. I don't want to see a once proud and free country descend into tyranny and poverty because we were lured by the seductive pull of something for nothing.
How about you?
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