Most viewed this week, 11th Jan 2021

Are your Personal Finances a Victim of Subscription Creep?

My all-time most viewed

1. 6 Lessons from ‘Greenlights’ by Matthew McConaughey
2. Is Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Work Week Still Relevant for 2021?
3. Use the ‘Know, Feel…

We all know that we are the same person when the clock strikes midnight on the 31st of December each year. Nothing has fundamentally changed about us just because the calendar has. But there’s something magical about the start of a new year that tricks us into believing the next year will be our best ever. We certainly need hope after the year we have just had.

Now that 2020 is finally over, what are your thoughts about 2021?

This is usually the time when we set New Years Resolutions. We resolve to change our habits and become the person we’ve always known that we could be. A new and improved version of ourselves. Just because it’s January, we expect to find the time and motivation for all the things we’ve ever wanted to do. …

How would you feel if you had earned over $1 million in 2020?

The chances of you being in that club are pretty slim. You are in the top 1% of the entire US population if you earned over $538,926.

To be in the top 1% of earners in the UK, you need to be bringing home more than £160,000. If you make more than £650,000 then you’re in the top 0.1%.

Which means that anyone earning $1,362,000 is easily the top 0.1% of populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The inspirational YouTuber Ali Abdaal joined this exclusive club in 2020. …

No one wants to wait for anything.

Everyone wants instant gratification these days.

I am of the generation who can remember a much slower pace of life pre-internet. Having to wait until the shops were open to buy a book or music record. Waiting for your favourite show to be on TV once a week.

My mother and I mainly communicated by written letters when I was at University because neither of us had a landline phone and mobile phones weren’t yet invented. Instant communication wasn’t a thing.

My daughter was born at the start of generation alpha. She is surrounded by the fast pace of life and have-it-all-now culture. …

How much do you love your job? Ok, maybe ‘love’ is too much to expect. How much satisfaction and purpose to you get from your work? Or maybe you have more days when you feel like quitting than sticking it out?

Perhaps you’re a teacher and that’s all you ever wanted to be before the government bureaucracy made your job unbearably tedious. Your job in sales pays well but you don’t believe in the product you are selling so you feel your soul slowly dying every time you cold call a potential new client.

None of us expects to enjoy each and every day at work. We know that’s not real life. We have annoying colleagues and demanding bosses to put up with. Even if you work for yourself, then there will be days when you’d rather just sit on the couch and watch Netflix rather than put in the hours. …

Do you like to think you’re the sort of person who cares about the planet? Someone who does their bit to reduce pollution and waste? I certainly like to think I do (although with a self-confessed large dose of hypocrisy).

In our home, we recycle around 80% of our household waste. I cycle or walk to the local shops for groceries. I try to buy loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packaged. And I limit the amount of single-use plastic that I buy.

On the other hand, I own a car that is not electric (my next one definitely will be). Worse, we are a two car family. And I live in a house that is bigger than our family of three really needs — small by US standards but large for the UK. We could install solar panels on our roof to capture what little sunshine we get in England but haven’t. …

Have you counted up all your subscriptions lately? Maybe you are the sort of person who is on top of your monthly budget and keeps track of every single penny you spend.

Or, more likely, you have a rough idea of how much you spend each month and feel that you have it largely under control. What harm can $8.99 a month on Netflix do to your retirement date after all?

I cancelled my Netflix subscription in 2019. Around the same time that Toni Fitzgerald wrote an article in Forbes on the increasing competition that Netflix faced and the danger that this would lead to subscription fatigue in the entertainment streaming business. …

Success at anything demands a system. This is true for whatever you are aiming to achieve in life. Whether your goal is to run 5 km in under 25 minutes or publish every day on Medium, you’ll get nowhere fast without a solid system that you follow religiously.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” — James Clear

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits understands this well. After years of setting goals that he failed to reach, he realised that success wasn’t a consequence of how realistic the goals were. …