A family member calls you and excitedly tells you about a great business they have found. A friend invites you to their house for a get together. An ad attracts your attention. Your desires for a better life for you and your family drives you to investigate home based business opportunities. Multitudes of reasons have you seeking for something more lucrative than your job. That job is eight plus hours a day, forty plus hours a week. You are commuting, you are working hard, and you are loyal. The company rewards your hard work with promotions, more responsibilities, and a raise. You want a new car and you get it but your family’s circumstance is the same and really you only have added one more bill to your family’s finances. You decide to listen to your friends pitch, interesting but it is not for you. Then one day, you realize your boss is enjoying vacation trips abroad, has a new BMW, his children are going to a prestigious college and your big Christmas bonus amounts to seven hundred dollars and a gift certificate to buy a 12 pound turkey. What a blessing because the seven hundreds dollars will pay down one of your credit cards and you can use it to buy some gifts for Christmas. Meanwhile, the owner of the company is taking his family to Maui for Christmas. You begin wondering why you actually work more hours, spend less time with your family and friends, and worry constantly about paying bills.
You decide to take action against your mounting debt. You are going to put your finances under control. You drive to the local book store. Scouring the shelves of books you find a how to get out of debt book. Previewing the book you find the theme of the book is to spend less than you earn. This makes sense to you so you buy the book.
Oh, you cannot wait until your home on your couch to read this how to book. For the next hour and a half you devour each word, each sentence, each paragraph, and each page. Your thoughts are to enact a financial austerity plan with your family. They will understand because they love you and want to see their husband and father stress less and enjoy life more. You call your family together. At the dining room table you, the father and husband of the family, begin to explain the family’s finances. Everyone has a look of concern but the family seems to understand. They all want to help but as you speak, you realize as your family does, the plan is to live beneath the family’s income meaning the activities and things they have grown used to will no longer be available or dropped to a minimum. You and your family acquiesces to your plan but no one really feels good about it because the financial plan makes the family feel like the family is a financial failure compared to their family and friends.
Your austerity plan has been in place for two weeks and there has been progress but some of the old habits have been sneaking back into the family’s routine. Just yesterday you had to use the credit card to buy tires for your wife’s car even though the idea was to save up for expenses instead of using credit. Your youngest son wants and really needs to go to summer football camp with his team if he is going to have any chance of starting or playing more when the fall football games begin. The cost is staggering to your budget so again you will need to use your credit cards.
At work, you are developing a plan to cut man hours, increase productivity, and turn full time positions into part time positions thus cutting costs. By having more part time position the company will not have to pay for benefits such as medical, vacations and contributions to individual retirement plans. Your plan is met with praise from the owner of the company and his CFO (Chief Financial Officer) but the praise and your plan leaves you feeling empty. As you listen to the CFO speak of department budgets your mind wonders about your financial situation and the financial difficulties you about to push on the employees in your department. Your soul tells you something is just not right in your world. Instead of helping your subordinates you are taking away. Even though your business mind tells you this is just business your heart tells you these are peoples’ lives you are changing for the worst. This just is not you.
Your wife and her sisters have not seen or been together for years. They want to have a small three day holiday together with their mother at their mother’s house. You took your wife away from her family and friends over ten years ago to the job you now have on the other side of the country. Her wife has only seen all of her sisters only once in that time. You know you really cannot afford this trip for her but you will make it happen because you love your wife and you do not want to disappoint her. Sadly, but lucky for you her oldest sister told you she will cover your wife’s expenses while she is with them. This makes you feel embarrassed and less than an adequate provider for you wife who tirelessly takes care of you and your kids needs everyday.
Tuesday morning your boss calls you into his office. He has a huge smile on his face. He begins to tell you what a wonderful job you are doing and the benefits you bring to the company as a manager. “Your department’s productivity to cost ratio is the best it has been in thirty years!” he powerfully bellows. “Listen, we feel we are top heavy in management. I feel you can handle two departments at once and do just as good handling two departments as you have the department you are managing now.” “Of course, we will reward you for taking on this new responsibility but the direction we want to take this is to bonus you and some of the other managers we retain at the end of our fiscal year which is February. It will be based on department goals with a sliding percentage starting at twenty five percent of your current salary. So if you hit one hundred percent of both your department goals you will receive twenty five percent of your salary. Let’s see, hmm, you make $65,000 a year so twenty five percent is ah, $16,250 bonus! Now how does that sound?” Your boss excitedly says. You meet his excitement with a huge smile and tons of trepidation. You know this greatly benefits the company, doubles your work load and takes more of your free time away. You know the bonus will hardly cover the amount of time you will need to give up to the company.
Breaking your salary down you know the fifty hours a week you are doing now comes out to $25 an hour. Just three dollars an hour above the average American worker. If you hit all your department goals and receive the bonus of $16,250 your total earnings for the year is $81,250. Figuring you will put an additional ten hours a week into working for the company your hourly wage is only one dollar and four cents more. Taxes will surely eat much of the bonus. You are happy with the possible bonus but you know hitting one hundred percent of all the goals is impossible. You also know the bonus will not help you until the following year and it does nothing for your current financial situation.
Late one night at work you open your Face Book page to read some of your friends’ statuses. While you are reading you notice an ad that has a father walking on the beach carrying his daughter and holding his son’s hand. The picture elicits memories of you doing the very same things with your children when your family was young and you were able to spend time, quality time with your children. The ad harkens, “Do you want time and financial freedom for you and your family?” In your distress for wanting more time with your family and to help with your financial problems you click on the ad. You watch an up beat movie then fill in the submission form hoping with all your heart this maybe an answer to your desires and needs.
A gentleman calls you saying that he is answering your request for additional information… Begin Your Story begins with the Freedom Project!
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I think a lot of people can relate to this. Great post!
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