Take Control Of Your Financial Life – You Can’t Rely On Anyone Else!

We see a lot of people whinging on social media and in some news publications about how the government is a disgrace and that they’re not doing enough. We agree that the government are making a pig’s ear out of everything recently, but is it their job to mollycoddle us?

The same people complain that their boss isn’t fair or that rich corporations are somehow dodging taxes. They complain about their wages, their commute, the tax they pay, the cost of a beer. They pretty much moan about everything. Everything but themselves of course.

People can generally be split into two camps – the Doers and the Do Nots.

The Do Nots are the complainers who want everything for free and done for them; and the Doers are those who take control of their futures.  The Doers know that nothing worth having in life comes for free and that you can’t rely on others to improve your life. You must take control to improve your own future.

Today we’re going to look at some of the things that too many people are foolishly relying on getting, and will be whinging about and blaming someone else when they don’t get them. These are all key areas where you can snatch back control and improve your life.

If you are one of these people that expects something for nothing and has a tendency to be easily triggered, we advise you not to read any further! With that said let’s check it out…

Reliance On The State Pension

Too many people put their wellbeing, security, and life in the hands of the state. This is especially true when it comes to retirement. Growing old is not a surprise. If we’re lucky it will happen to all of us.

And yet, millions of people in the UK fail to prepare – instead choosing to be saved by a future government. A government that will not be able to carry this burden.

A lot of people pay taxes throughout their lives and assume that the government must put some of that aside to save for their future state pension. This is not the case at all. Any taxes that you pay goes towards paying for the state pension of current pensioners. There is no state savings pot for you.

State pensions are really just a pyramid scheme on an epic scale. Pyramid schemes only survive for as long as new members can join at the bottom. Sooner or later the whole thing comes crashing down. This will happen in some form to state pensions.  There is no doubt about it.

When pensions were first created in 1909 it was only paid out to some people aged over 70. At the time, only one in four people reached the age of 70 and life expectancy at that age was about a further 9 years.

Nowadays, the age you can take a State Pension is set to rise to 68 from the current 65. But 68 is not high enough –from a “how we gonna pay for this” point of view – as too many people are qualifying for it and drawing from it for too long.

Children born today are expected to live until they’re 90 years old. That’s over 20 years of taking from the system, rather than contributing. The state pension relies on a large worker-to-pensioner ratio, but the problem is that the ratio is forever shrinking.

In 2004, there were approximately 4 working age individuals for every 1 person aged 65 and over. By 2056 this ratio is predicted to fall to about 2:1. Therefore our kids will be asked to pay the living costs of twice as many old people as we do today.

Despite all these problems, people continually moan that the amount paid out is not enough, and the age that you can claim at is too high. FYI, the state pension is currently over £9,000 a year. This won’t get you a lavish lifestyle by any means, but the state should never have been expected to do this in the first place.

State benefits should be an absolute minimum. People have 40-50 years to plan for retirement and need to take action now.

Reliance On Government Handouts

Worryingly, there seems to be a growing dependency on and expectation of government handouts. Ask 10 people what they think the role of the government should be and you will likely get 10 different answers.

We consider the role of the government is to run and manage the parts of the country that the private sector cannot or should not. This includes things such as a military defence, fire and police services, basic healthcare, the transport network, basic education, social services, environmental protection and ensuring everyone has access to utilities – water, gas, electric and broadband.

It’s now taken for granted that the government should be the wage payer of last resort. This was always the case with the benefits system, but has been significantly ramped up during the coronavirus response.

The need for a furlough scheme – whether an arbitrary 80% or 73% – is only there because barely anyone has taken the steps over their working lives to put money aside. It surely must be recognised that the country is so deep in debt that it cannot afford such expensive schemes.

There is a lot of noise that the current job support scheme is not enough, but we ask the question why do so few people not have an emergency fund? Instead, since the last recession many of these people have been splashing the cash on frivolous stuff.

While the exact timing of the Corona pandemic is unexpected, recessions are fairly routine, with history littered with them. The one before 2020 was only in 2009.

For the record we don’t think the government should be force closing any business in the manner they have, but why were the masses not financially prepared? This time it was Covid that sunk their finances, but next time it could be something else entirely such as a personal injury, or a war sending the country into a financial depression.

We all need to be prepared, so that we can fight off temporary setbacks, and it starts with having an emergency fund of at least 6 months of living expenses. Help from the state should only ever be sought as a last resort, not in the first instance. Why do so many grown adults depend on the state like a child depends on a parent?

Reliance On Chance

We’ve come across countless people who hate their lives and hate their jobs but do nothing tangible to change this. Instead too many people are relying on chance, such as a lottery win or an unexpected windfall from an unknown relative, to improve their lot.

Other than by a miracle this isn’t going to happen to you. The chance of winning the lottery is 1 in 45 million.

There is also ample evidence showing that many lottery winners blow their fortune because they didn’t learn financial literacy. Believe it or not, statistics show 70% of lottery winners end up broke and a third go on to declare bankruptcy, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education.

The problems they had with money before they had wealth carry over but on a much larger scale.

Reliance On A Boss

Why do so many people put their future in the hands of one person? One person who frankly doesn’t give two hoots about them.

Bosses are people too with their own lives to think about, and most people have enough problems on their plate to worry about yours as well. Sure, some bosses will genuinely care, but not a single one will care about your future and your wellbeing as much as you do. This means you must take control of your future and don’t rely on someone creating it for you.

Time and again people are hoping their boss gives them a pay rise out of the kindness of their hearts.

No! You must take what is yours.

Your boss’s performance and therefore his or her own bonus is probably measured against a department budget. Paying you more or sending you on an expensive training course will result in the department going over budget. Your boss is being incentivised to pay you as little as possible. They don’t have your best interests at heart.

This conflict of interest also affects the work you’re doing. Sooner or later most people get bored to death doing the same task over and over again. Trust us, we’ve been there before.

At this point your boss might dangle a carrot. It might include additional responsibilities or more interesting tasks. Rarely does it involve relinquishing the existing tedious work. Your boss doesn’t want the hassle and expense of having to find someone else to do your work. They will do whatever they can to keep things ticking over. This again is not in your best interest.

You need to stimulate your brain, which means you likely need to progress elsewhere, but only you can make this happen.

Businesses generally break down massive processes into small, tedious, repetitive tasks and assign one person to each. Think of a car production line but it happens in offices as well. If you’re screwing that same screw for the 1 millionth time, you are not developing yourself.

Reliance On The Crowd

By this we mean deferring our major life-decisions to society’s standard playbook.

This is most illustrative in the life path dictated by society. You know the one. You go to school, get good grades, go to University, get a good job, buy a nice car, get married, buy a nice house, fill it with expensive stuff, have children, have an annual holiday, work until old age, and then retire.

Too many people are not engaging their brains and instead just follow the crowd. They believe if other people do it, that means it’s right. Nobody ever stops to question why or whether they even want it.

When you think about it, maybe you don’t want this. Maybe you don’t want to work a crappy job for 50 years; maybe you don’t want to waste £30k on a wedding; maybe you don’t want to be a slave to debt repayments for your entire life.

Following the crowd doesn’t just apply to how society dictates your path, but also impacts every decision you make. For example, from our backgrounds we know that too many people don’t make their own investment decisions. They are looking for that hot stock tip, so they can get rich quick. Analysing the investment themselves is too much like hard work – far easier to follow the crowd.

Reliance On Family

A long time ago, Andy (MU Co-Founder) was talking to a friend of his about retirement planning and was shocked that she wasn’t contributing to her workplace pension, despite the company matching any contributions.

Andy could not understand why she would throw free money away and that she wasn’t preparing for old age.

The reason she didn’t contribute to her pension was nothing to do with her young age. She said that she expected her future family to look after her in her old age.

This is both stupid and selfish because it was passing over responsibility of her life into someone else’s hands. Even if her family did want to help her, they may not have the strong finances to do so. Life will throw a lot of curve balls and it’s very presumptuous of her to think that her family will bail her out. They themselves could die young, develop financial or health problems, move away, may have their own problems, or simply not want to be put in that position.

Our suggestion to you guys watching is to make sure that you take action today to control your own future, by first building that emergency fund and then investing. This is well within your power.

Are you independent or do you rely on the government and other people to get by? What are you doing about this? Let us know in the comments section.

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