Counting money, lots of money. According to the template
This article does not claim to give you any special knowledge, but it can help you learn something useful about your life. No unnecessary fluff, just to the point.
Four years ago, I took a course that was supposed to help me get rid of negative beliefs about money and expand the boundaries of money management. And it really worked. A lot changed in my attitude towards money. But there was something else. One of the assignments required me to calculate how much money I would earn in my entire life.
And, I'll tell you straight: the result really upset me! It wasn't even close to $1 million per life, that was 70 million rubles at that time. It came out to less than half a million. And the optimistic option with salary growth at that time predicted a little more than $1 million per life.
It was a sobering blow! After that, I made a template for calculations and began to recalculate about once a year. This is especially relevant if there have been changes in income over the past time. A lot has changed since then.
It is not enough to just count. It is important to write down your thoughts about the results obtained, so that you can compare them with your future self.
But in order to know how much you've earned, you should write down all your expenses and income. I have my own table for this, which I've been keeping since 2011 (I can show you a template for it, too, if you want). You should start keeping your own, if you haven't already.
The table of lifetime income has a description of how to fill it out. There are cells for information, there are cells for numbers that need to be replaced with your own, and in the cells with a red font you will get the results. They may not be entirely accurate, but perfect accuracy is not needed here. A general understanding is needed, the order of the numbers. Moreover, the next time you recalculate, the results may change significantly.
Why is this necessary?
I'm sure you have dreams and goals. Buy a car, an apartment, a game console, a new top-end phone, travel the world, fly into space, pay for your children's university, etc. And they all cost money. Make a separate table with them and calculate how much you need to make all this happen. And compare it with what you've managed to do before. Will you be able to do everything before retirement? And in your lifetime? If not, how much do you need to increase your income to make everything happen?
This way you can have a new goal that will allow you to achieve all the others.
All these calculations have helped me a lot in life. Let them help you too.
