Who do you go to work for?

Author Dave Ramsey has coined the best phrase I’ve ever heard about rampant consumerism:

We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.

So with that in mind, let’s consider, who do you go to work for?

There are millions of people who think they work for themselves, but they’re not really, because they don’t consider what they do with the money they’ve earned.

If you have a balance of zero or less in your account at the end of the month, you are not working for you.

Allow me to explain.

Out of your wages you pay, government taxes, household bills, run your car, shop for food and clothes, have a few nights out. But with all those expenses, you’re still not really working for your own benefit.

Over the course of the month, you’ve paid everybody else, but you’ve forgotten to pay the most important person, You.

So, if you have nothing in your bank account, you may think you’re working for you, but, really, you’ve been working to pay everybody else, and you haven’t even paid yourself a penny! Worse still, you could be picking your own pockets by going into debt.

It seems obvious, yet millions of people go to work every day, in jobs they don’t enjoy doing and forget to even pay themselves!

By paying yourself each and every month, gradually, you’ll find you become better off.

By investing those funds, you make money work for you.

In the future, you’ll have a fund that can give you money to spend when you’re no longer able to earn it.

Now, you may challenge my argument and say “what if you die with those savings, you can’t take it all with you, live for the moment”.

That’s all very true. However, the stats show it’s far more likely you’ll live a long and happy life. So it would be a good idea to remember to pay yourself, because when your older, it’s unlikely that you’ll even be able to work, let alone want to.

Next time you’re thinking about buying stuff you don’t need, ask yourself who do you go to work for? Let’s face it, if you can’t remember to pay yourself; who will?