Disclaimer:
- I don’t endorse the capitalist class or anyone who source of income comes from exploiting the working class
- I don’t think the solution to not be a wage-slave (wage-slavery) is to make other people your own wage-slave.
Neo-liberalism made a lot of people think of themselves as companies. They think about their image as a company, how to do the right connections, how to spend their time in the most effective way and so on. This is not about it.
This is about finance. As working people we don’t exploit other people’s labour to be able to not work and still have food in our fridge and the only truely emancipation way is to organise and fight back. This is a great effort though, meanwhile we can think in a small utopia. Where we are less dependent of the masters.
For that to work, we need to think in our income as a yearly income (and I know it’s harder or impossible for workers living with low-wages). As a Software Engineer is a bit easier to do that, since at the moment our salaries are still more than enough to live. At this moment:
- I try to have the year budget defined and have enough money to be able to survive if I lose my job
- I try to have second options (of work) almost ready in case something goes wrong with my job
- Your boss is not your family or friend
- I have a solidarity network in case I really need help to survive
I have a 5 years plan (though, I don’t mind changing it) for my finance wellbeing. I try to allocate capital in resources that may free me from selling my working-hours. This is mainly: stocks allocations (as a Software engineer we sometimes get stocks from the companies we work), govermment bonds and EU inflation-linked bonds. The main idea is to have the next year money more or less in my current account and the next 4 years money in investiments. In my small utopia I would only work the hours to complement the remaning 4 years ahead.
In order to have a annual budget you need to know more or less how much is your cost of life. No need to go crazy and control every penny you spend. It’s fine to have a macro view. Using a bank app that tracks it is also enough. For reasons I cannot do that, so I have a spreedsheet.
You also need to have an idea of the montly and yearly profit of your investiments. Although you have 4 more years of money in investiments, the idea is the current year generate enough money for the next year, so you don’t have to touch the investments. You only touch it if you had a bad year and weren’t able to produce enough money for next year budget.