Posts Tagged ‘anything’

I recently decided to quit my job, move to a tropical island, and start my own business. You can read the full story here. While I actually came to this decision quite easily, it required getting rid of the majority of my stuff and relocating my entire life. However, due to my financial situation this was actually quite easy to do and going through this process has really taught me what financial freedom means. There are a lot of books (several of which I have read myself) and sophisticated methods out there to tell you how to get out of debt and become financially free. After successfully creating my own financial freedom, I can honestly say it’s not that difficult. It just takes a good plan and some perseverance.

The Method

The first thing you need to do is honestly evaluate your situation. If you are deep in debt, don’t pretend that things are going well. This won’t help you get out of the situation. Add up your debt and bills and also figure out how much you bring in. You need to figure out how much is going in verse how much is going out.

The goal is to put as much into savings as possible. However, you must first pay off your debt. To pay off your debt, you must first free up some of your funds by reducing your spending. Look at your bills and find what you can go without. It may not always be the large things. Do you drink coffee everyday? That right there can add up to more than $20 a week or more. Also consider things such as cable or satellite TV, reducing your cell phone bill, buying store brands, eating or drinking out less, and of course driving less. These things may seem small, but when added up they can become several hundreds of dollars a month.

The next step is to look at the bigger items that you are purchasing. Whether it is clothes, electronics, DVDs, or anything else you might lay your eyes on. You must learn to realize that you can live without it. It is very difficult at first, but if you can do it for a while it gets much easier. One thing I have found that helps me is think that I have a very limited space and that I will soon be moving. Another is to keep yourself busy with other activities. And of course, don’t tempt yourself by going window shopping.

Now that you have lowered your expenses and freed up some cash, the next step is too put that money to paying off your debt. Start with the highest interest rates and work your way down from there. The quicker you pay it off the more money you save.

Now that you have paid off your debt, you will the original payments you were making each month plus the extra you were paying towards your debt by reducing your bills. This can now all go towards savings. I give my self a spending allowance each month. I take it out at the beginning of each month to make sure that I am not tempted to spend more. At first this amount was my spending allowance only. The food I used for lunch was a separate amount. I then decided that I could cut back my spending to include my lunch in my spending allowance as well. This allowed another $200 a month to go to savings.

The Results

After a year and a half of this program, I was able to save enough money to have a strong amount of savings in one account towards retirement, and also enough money in another account to quite my job and move to a tropical island and start my own business. Figuring the costs of expenses, I will be able to live for more than a year without any income at all without touching the money in the first savings account. I am by no means rich, but it is the first time in my life, where I can really think about what I want to do and not have to worry about paying my next months rent and bills.

I recently sat down to study Japanese (something I have been doing a lot more of lately) and something came to mind as I looked down at my language materials (pictured above). Choosing the right materials and the right method of study is just as important as how hard you study. This statement holds true in just about anything you try to learn. You can get more out of practicing something right 10 times than you can in doing it wrong a thousand times.

When it comes to learning a language, the first thing you should consider is why you are studying and what you want to get out of it. Do you want to be able to communicate on a vacation or do you plan to work in a foreign country. Studying to communicate on a vacation would require that you focus on the spoken and listening aspects of the language and the latter would require that you also learn to read and write. Participation in normal daily conversation would also require a much smaller vocabulary base than someone working in a foreign country. This gap can get even wider when you consider the complex alphabets containing thousands of characters in the Japanese and Chinese system.

Living and working in Japan, the reading and writing skills are important to me. However, since the character set is large and complex, it means that I spend the majority of my time learning them. Spending time learning all the characters and words that are rarely used slows down my ability to obtain oral fluency. There are thousands and thousands of words, but only a small portion make up the majority of most conversations. The same 80/20 rule that applies to work, stating 80 percent of all the results are achieved through 20% of the tasks, also applies to languages. I have listed a few recommendations for getting the most out your language studies.

1. Set a clear goal- Decide what you want to accomplish by studying the language as the materials will change drastically. If oral fluency is your goal then you need to focus on a different skill set than someone who wants to read e-mail with a pen pal.

2. Choose your materials carefully- Keep your goal in mind when choosing how and what you will study. If you want to gain oral fluency, then a formal class and materials structured to learn grammar will not be effective in helping you to reach your goal. Spending time to find the best materials will save you a lot of time later.

3. Choose study methods that meet your life- Everyone learns differently and has a different schedule. For someone with a long commute focusing on oral communication, audio programs in the car will be a way to learn words and gain listening skills. Where as someone studying written language may need to read from a book during their lunch hour. If you are not sure how you learn the best, try different methods and see which one works best for you. I believe combining visual with audio is best, but that may not be possible in all situation (ex. learning while driving).

4. Use technology- Use technology to increase study effectiveness and study where traditional materials wont go. The Iphone or Itouch have a number of language programs and flash card application as does the Nintendo DS. Not only are they small and can be used without a light source, but allow you to focus on the areas you want. You do not have to follow them like a book. These types of technologies also help increase the study time by cutting down on the waste. You can spend much more time studying using an electric dictionary than fumbling through a paper one.

5. Ask for advice- Talk to people who have already mastered the language you want to study. Chances are they can give you some tips that will help you speed up your learning. They can also generally provide a large dose of inspiration.

6. Have fun- Learning a language should be fun. Enjoy the time that you spend learning and try not to get overwhelmed. You will be amazed at how much you can learn if you keep at it.

7. Practice makes perfect- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not using a language because they are afraid to make a mistake. If you don’t use it, you won’t get much better. I tend to learn the best after making a mistake. My mistakes have also created some great laughter.

8. Study continuously- Language is like not like riding a bike. If you don’t use it you will forget it. Use it when ever you have the chance. Luckily, once you learn it, you can re-learn it very quickly.