Let me tell you a story first, after Warren Buffett once bought a newspaper called the Buffalo Evening News.
After the acquisition, there was fierce competition with another local newspaper, and finally the competitor was overwhelmed, monopolizing the local newspaper, making a lot of money every day.
In its first year without competitors, the Buffalo News made a pre-tax profit of $19 million (which belonged entirely to Berkshire Hathaway, which had already acquired Le Cordon Bleu). By the late '80s, the Buffalo News was making an average annual profit of around $40 million, more than Warren Buffett's total investment in Le Cordon Bleu and Berkshire Hathaway. Le Cordon Bleu can fund the Buffalo News, and the Buffalo News makes Buffett a lot of money.When asked how much he could give his employees, he said:
People who do day-to-day work can't make much of a contribution to the company's profits.
But Buffett shattered the extravagant desire of employees to become equally wealthy. Shortly after the Courier Express closed, Buffett attended a meeting of the newspaper's mid-level leaders at the Buffalo Statler Hotel. At the meeting, someone asked, "How much money can I give to the editors and reporters of the newspaper?"This plea sounded reasonable, as they had both done great things. To everyone's surprise, Buffett replied coldly: "None of the people who do the day-to-day work (editors and reporters) can contribute much to the company's profits." These words stunned everyone, despite Buffett's belief in his cruel but fair capitalist creed. The managers of the Buffalo News have endured humiliation in difficult years, and the employees who were unwilling to share the losses are now unwilling to share the losses, and now they are not willing to share the benefits.At this moment, I realized that there is no way out of a part-time job. You may think that I understand the truth, but the ideal is very plump and the reality is very skinny.
Yes, the reality is that most of us have to take the subway to work in the morning, be busy all day, and then take the subway home in the evening, and be tired at the end of the day.
And so, day after day, year after year, it felt as if you would never make enough money, let alone financial freedom. In order to solve this problem, we must first figure out what determines wages
Is it your ability?
Of course not, because your abilities are hard to measure and your daily work output is hard to quantify.
Our wages are determined by the supply and demand of labor.
In the labor market, if there are countless people like you competing with you for the job, you can't negotiate a good price;If your job is difficult and there is little competition, you may be able to talk about a good one.
As far as daily work is concerned, the threshold is not high, anyone can screw it, and the competition will be fierce.
So let's face it, the pay for daily work is often limited. Most of the time, the daily work is not only not easy, but also requires a lot of time and energy to communicate and achieve the landing.
From morning to night, there is hardly much time to think about and increase other income**.
This continues to lead to a single income and a complete dependence on work for the family's financial situation. Once you encounter the cold winter of the industry, be laid off, or can't find a job at the age of 35, if you still have a mortgage and car loan to pay, it will only make people feel hopeless. We have to find a way to break this vicious cycle. Now there is a very popular word, called side hustle just need. Engaging in a side hustle is one way, such as your hobbies, professional expertise, there must be some information differences that you know but others don't know, and this information difference can be used as a service to make money. Maybe the side hustle is very difficult at the beginning, and you just want to give up after less than three days, but please don't give up, everything is difficult at the beginning. Even if it fails, it is an attempt to rule out a direction that does not make money, and the probability of success in the remaining directions is high. There are no failures, only teachers. Another way is to learn to invest. For example, the simplest investment method, buy the CSI 300 Index**, at an annualized rate of 10%, the current 1 million, no longer invested during the period, 30 years later, it will be 17 million. 30 years, 17 times, the time is extended, and compound interest begins to exert its power. And in the meantime, we may increase our investment, or as our awareness grows, we can also increase our own rate of return, and the return will only be higher. So, my advice for investing is to learn as early as possible.
The road to financial freedom for workers is: to save money by working part-time, to save money by doing side jobs, to learn to invest, to use the money saved to invest, and then to extend the time, let compound interest run, and finally realize the multiplication of assets and the freedom of life.