Survival Skills ...

The basic purpose of having martial arts skills is to provide us with a better chance of survival – to provide us with a means of defence if we are attacked. We can though, be attacked on many fronts – emotional, relationship-wise, financial, etc. It is my view that we should take balanced approach to how we live and interact in this world – and get the ‘whole thing right’, not just the fighting part. Inter-personal combat is a metaphor for ‘struggle’ and ‘survival’ – to not learn the larger lessons from our study and practice of ‘struggle’, is to rob ourselves of the true value of deep learning.

A lot of martial artists struggle with the financial aspects of their lives – easy to do when you become over-specialised and unable to see the big picture. If you go and see a financial advisor – you will pay hundreds of dollars to be told the following:
1. Get rid of credit card debt – no investment will give you a greater return than money you will save by cutting out the interest you pay on those things.
2. Start paying into a superannuation fund – at least ten percent of everything you earn. The compounding effect on interest will really start to build after a while.
3. Buy a house, stop paying rent. Get into the game. Property tends to go up – and after a few years, you may even have enough equity in your home to be able to put a deposit down on another. Then you have someone else helping you pay off that one. Repeat.
4. Invest in yourself. Your ability to produce income is an important aspect of financial success that many people ignore.

So that’s pretty much what any good financial advisor will tell you. Be a squirrell – spend all of your spring in preparation for winter. The winter will be bleak so you better prepare well. Sometimes they will change the order of these things around a little bit – sometimes they will spend a lot of time rationalising these various aspects (especially the Superannuation part) with the use of large white-boards and colourful graphs. And it’s all good. But it’s an old model – one that I don’t fully subscribe to.

Next Blog – I’ll explain why ….

JBW