Jobs

The biggest risk most people have when it come to building wealth is putting all their eggs in one basket. Having one full-time job supplying you with 100% of your income means you are either doing well or in a crisis.

Wealthy people and large corporations have multiple streams of income and continually work to develop more. Sometime the failures are huge. New Coke might be an example. In my practice I’ve had ideas cost serious money go down the toilet. I’ve also had spectacular successes.

Multiple streams of income are the only way to protect your wealth creation program. The same applies when you reach financial independence and decide to retire. All your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Imagine busting your tail for a decade and having all your money in Enron.

Modern technology and automation is making our lives easier every day. Virtually every task humans do is also done faster, cheaper, better by some automatic process with a silicon chip inside it. These automation processes started showing up a few centuries ago and started changing human life in fundamental ways in the last 100 years. The pace started slow with a steepening incline of progress. Today, we face a challenge never faced by humans before: what to do.

Free time was always a part of human living. It took the Industrial Revolution to transform human stock into expendable machines. In hunter and gatherer days, man would spend large amounts of time idle, pursuing whatever created interest. We can still see a few remaining fragments of art at historical sites. Hunting parties might extend for days or even weeks. Once game was slaughtered and the meats cured, the pantry was full for an extended period of time. Weeks, even month were free to build monuments, create art, and tell stories around the fire.

It is 3:30 in the morning and I just discovered who our next president will be. I had a nice nap earlier, but tend to sleep in fits and starts which is great for quiet writing time in the middle of the night. I’ll probably take another nap later this morning so I will be awake and alert. Back to the election.

The news reports say the Canadian immigration website collapsed from the deluge of visitors. Stock markets are down around the planet, but from what I read it is better than what it was earlier. One newsfeed had pictures of crying Hillary Clinton fans. It seems like the world is ending for people who worked so hard for their candidate.

I am writing this as the tax extension deadline is a week away. Tax returns I delegated to my team are starting to boomerang back to my desk. Some issues are beyond the comprehension of everyone but me. This confuses me. How can I be so much smarter than everyone else? What makes me so special?

The first issue perplexing me is the Indispensable Man theory. It goes like this: I want to earn more money but I am unable to close the money accounts. As you can see it does not work. Avoiding the tough cases holds people back in their career. If the boss does the work you can’t claim credit for the project.

The second issue is that the Indispensable Man is only an illusion. There is no tiny bag of pixie dust hanging at my side I can use to fix any problem showing up. Okay, maybe I do. It’s called an absolute confidence I can figure anything out and get it done. I am not asked to perform brain surgery (and if I was I could do it given enough time to research the subject and consult with other professionals); I am asked to perform a task in my field of study. All the resources available to me are available to all tax professionals. Nothing special in my bag of tricks.

Have you ever wondered what a typical day looks like for the Wealthy Accountant? Like most people, I have a routine that varies as personal matters dictate around a framework I prefer to follow. It is interesting to see how other people work. How they structure their day to get stuff done helps us decide how we want to compose our day.

Before we start I want to point out my typical day isn’t exactly what I do each day. The pattern I follow changes over time as I evolve. As I complete one project or start another, determines a large part of how I organize my time. Tax season is a different schedule than the remainder of the year. Even the seasons affect my work patterns. I tend to stay in bed later in the autumn than during the other seasons.

It breaks my heart when I hear reports of police shooting and killing an unarmed black man. This morning I read a report where a police officer in West Virginia was fired because he did NOT kill a man demanding to be shot, a so-called suicide-by-cop incident. Readers of this blog are aware I live in the county where the trial of Steven Avery took place; the topic of the Making a Murderer documentary on Netflix.

Black people are incensed by the killing of unarmed black men by police; they should be. White people are also killed by police, but there does seem to be a bias toward “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality when black men are involved. For a while it looked like retaliation killings of police officers at random would accelerate. It seems to have died down (or I miss the news reports).

This spring I attended Camp Mustache III in western Washington State. Between our leisurely learning sessions we hiked Mt. Si.  When our hike was over a group of us gathered at the base of the mountain as we started walking back to the Rainbow Lodge where we were staying. I was a guest speaker so people were interested in my personal life, including where I lived.

Millennials, loosely defined as young adults age 18 to 35 as I write this, are everywhere and messing up the machinery. Like a plague of locusts or alien invasion, Millennials are taking over the world with their opinions, ideology, work ethic, worldview, and their value systems. The old school is taking notice and whining about it plenty. Darn kids!

I disagree with my generation when it comes to bitching about Millennials. These young people do things different in some ways, but generally do a great job, even better than my generation in many instances. The slightly older (ahem) crowd needs to remember a few years back when we were the recipients of complaints from The Greatest Generation. We were asked why we were not so great. Pissed us off then, pisses us off now. So why do we pass the same BS to the Millennials?