"Knowledge Even Children Understand, I Only Realized Now"

This article is Lu Canwei's 21st original piece.

Those who know me well might be aware that I am not someone who pays much attention to my financial situation. However, as I have gotten older, I feel it is time to start planning for the future. I downloaded an accounting app and realized that my spending is indeed quite uncontrolled.

By chance, I came across this book. I remember back in 2007 when I was working at a small software company in Dongguan, earning a monthly salary of 3000. Even though my income is much higher now, I still feel unhappy.

Every day, we face various bills, promotions everywhere, and the burden of housing, which fills our minds with questions like "How do we get through the current difficulties?" This, to some extent, only worsens the situation.

Dream Savings Jar.

So we need to write down the reasons we want to become wealthy, probably around 10 wishes. I believe this is not easy for everyone. Here is what I wrote:

1. I hope to improve my English skills to the point where I can understand articles.

2. I hope to have my own car.

3. I hope to own my own house.

4. I hope to have my own time.

5. I hope to have my own career.

6. I hope to communicate and learn from outstanding people.

7. I hope to help my family and myself pay off debts, so that neither of us has to struggle so much.

8. I hope my social media can have enough influence.

9. I hope to have my own hobby.

10. I hope to travel everywhere.

I spent several hours contemplating this matter, and then we need to extract the three most important items from these ten.

1. I hope to have my own career.

2. I hope to help my family and myself pay off debts, so that neither of us has to struggle so much.

3. I hope my social media can have enough influence.

Then we need to look at this list once a day and visualize these wishes, doing imagination exercises daily. We should prepare a dream savings jar; Alipay has a wish savings feature that can help create this dream savings jar.

Whether you can make money is not primarily about having good ideas or being smart, but rather about your level of confidence.

Your level of confidence determines whether you believe in your abilities and in yourself. If you don’t believe you can do it, you won’t take action. If you don’t start doing it, you won’t achieve anything.

Additionally, we need to start keeping a diary, which is called a success diary here. The diary should record your daily achievements. We can’t always be smooth sailing; for example, I lack experience in public speaking. If I were suddenly asked to do it, I would be very nervous and likely mess it up. I believe many people share my thoughts. If we need to alleviate our nervousness through past successes, recording past difficulties that you successfully resolved can help boost your confidence.

How to Make Money

Returning to the topic of making money, everyone is concerned about how to earn it. Here are two important suggestions: First, solve a problem for others, and you can earn a lot of money; second, focus your energy on what you know, can do, and have.

The first point is what we often refer to as finding the user's pain points. In fact, users are quite unfortunate; they have to experience pain for you to make money. The second point is also easy to understand. Understand what you can do. For instance, during this trip to Beijing, a friend has been providing enterprise services, from code frameworks to current projects, all based on enterprises. He has accumulated a lot in this field, and according to him, it has only exploded in the last three months.

Moreover, it is necessary to work in parallel. When you find a way to make money, you need to continue looking for new opportunities. There might be a question here: many people feel they cannot do several things at once. For example, I often find myself only able to focus on one thing at a time, but after trying, I realized it was just a self-imposed barrier.

Speaking of this, I also met some new friends during this trip to Beijing. I found that many people now enjoy a diversified lifestyle and do not like to work in a fixed office. They call themselves "digital nomads," which is quite an interesting term. I made plans with one of them; if after the National Day holiday everyone doesn’t need to stay in one city for long, we will go to Kunming for a while.

Additionally, most of us have not seriously considered how to make money. We don’t even spend an entire afternoon thinking about it.

Often, we see how people around us make money, like someone mastering Douyin traffic marketing, someone else doing knowledge training, or another person using some model to earn money. Then we realize we don’t know how to do any of those things, and that’s where it ends. So many times, you are not them, and they are not you. You don’t need to think about things you can’t do; you just need to find the right opportunities.

Don’t focus your attention on thoughts of not being able to make money; concentrate on thoughts of making money, and you will discover many new opportunities. No matter what, you cannot place all your hopes on a single job; its duration will not be as long as you imagine. Therefore, you need to immediately look for an alternative job.

When things are going smoothly, everyone can make money. Only in adversity can everything be revealed. Isn’t it like internet entrepreneurship? In a favorable wind, even pigs can fly.

The 72-Hour Rule states that when you decide to do something, you must complete it within 72 hours; otherwise, you are very likely to never do it.

This reminds me of the 3-Second Rule my friend taught me: when you see a girl you like, you should approach her and start a conversation within 3 seconds. Because of this, I have many wonderful memories.

The longer you procrastinate, the more uncontrollable factors will arise.

Mistakes We’ve Made

First, people in debt should destroy all credit cards. Often, when we use credit cards, we tend to spend much more than when we use cash.

Second, repay loans as little as possible, which is known as installment payments. We always hope to pay off loans quickly so we don’t have to pay interest. However, this leads to a reduced amount of disposable income. When unexpected situations arise, such as something breaking at home or needing new expenses, we can only pay these bills by taking out another loan.

If all your expenses go toward repaying loans, once you finally pay them off, you will still be broke. Therefore, you need to allocate your funds, for example, saving half and using the other half to repay debts.

We cannot give up our dreams because of anyone. There will always be various people who mock you, but there will also be more people who recognize you. Moreover, we can completely earn money by doing what we love.

The Story of the Golden Goose

Once upon a time, there was a young farmer whose daily wish was to collect a goose egg from the goose pen for breakfast. One day, he unexpectedly found a golden egg in the goose pen. At first, he couldn’t believe it was real. He thought someone might be playing a trick on him. To be cautious, he took the golden egg to a goldsmith, who assured him that the egg was made entirely of pure gold. So, the farmer sold the golden egg and held a grand celebration.

The next morning, he woke up early and rushed to the goose pen, and indeed, there was another golden egg. This continued for several days.

However, this farmer was a greedy man. He was very dissatisfied with his goose because it couldn’t explain how it laid golden eggs; otherwise, he might be able to produce golden eggs himself. He angrily thought that this lazy goose should at least lay two golden eggs a day; the current rate was too slow. His anger grew, and finally, he could no longer contain himself and split the goose in half. From that day on, he could no longer get any golden eggs.

The purpose of telling this story is to remind you, "Don’t kill your goose."

The goose represents your money. If you save money, you will earn interest. Interest is equivalent to golden eggs.

So you also need to make your saved money generate interest. If you focus on the pain, you will feel pain. So change the habit of complaining.

Many people think others are lucky, including some friends who talk about how their recent projects have been fortunate enough to attract investment. However, we have known each other for many years, and they have continuously improved, learned, and tried. Luck is actually the result of being well-prepared and working hard.

Additionally, many people feel that if they let others do the work, they can do nothing and still receive the same reward, which seems unfair to them. But in reality, what you do is worth at most half of the reward; the other half comes from your ideas and the courage to implement those ideas (this is the mindset of a qualified businessman; many people underestimate their own value).

Often, when we reach a certain level, we become arrogant and stop learning, which prevents us from progressing. When faced with problems, we tend to avoid them, fearing difficulties, making mistakes, and losing face, which hinders our growth. When you think positively towards your goals, you will not feel fear.

If you didn't do this thing today, you would never know what you are capable of after putting some pressure on yourself. The things a person is most proud of are often those that are the hardest to accomplish. Don't ever forget this.

Investment

How do you determine how much something is worth? It depends on how much you are willing to pay for it.

When all markets are declining, you should not sell. You only incur a loss when you actually sell the stock. If you plan to invest in funds, be prepared to keep your money in for 5 to 10 years. If you can wait that long, then funds are almost a zero-risk investment.

Considerations when selecting funds:

1. The fund should have at least a 10-year history. If it has consistently generated substantial profits over such a long period, we can assume it will perform well in the future.

2. Choose large multinational stock funds. These funds buy stocks around the world to diversify risk, making them very safe.

3. Compare the fund's performance charts. We should observe which funds had the best year-end profits over the past 10 years.

Additionally, there is the 72 rule: simply divide 72 by the annual profit percentage of your investment, and the resulting number is the number of years it will take for your money to double. For example, if your profit percentage is 12%, then it will take just 6 years for your assets to double.

However, there may be long periods of little movement, but suddenly it could drop by 25%, leading to losses. First, the market will rise and fall, so you need to have funds available for investment. If not, you might miss out on significant gains.

It is advisable not to invest all your available funds after a sharp decline, as the market may continue to fall. Also, do not invest all your money in stocks and funds; consider investing in overnight loans, a type of short-term loan provided by banks to securities companies, settled the same day. The return is around 3.5%, and you can access it anytime. (It sounds like Yu'ebao, but the returns may not be as high now.)

Additionally, inflation can also be calculated using the 72 rule. For example, with a 3% inflation rate, your money will only be worth half of what it is now in 24 years. You might consider allocating 20% for overnight loans.

Finally, do not mourn what you have lost, but be grateful for the time you had it.

In conclusion

Often, certain behaviors stem from one's original family, educational background, and social experiences, leading to different outcomes and growth for different people. Reflecting on my experiences over the past decade, many may find it hard to understand my journey, whether it was planned or overly aggressive.

Looking back, it is more about the experiences of brushing past death in the hospital, the suddenly vacant beds, the cries of family members in the middle of the night, and the deep-seated fear of regret imprinted in my subconscious. After all, we will eventually die, so let us make each day valuable.

That's enough for now; I'm off to dance!