automation

Time Well Spent: How to Create Time Dividends
photo shows a wooden sign on a table that says "Relax"

At 228 Main, we like to think about the many ways one might be rich. The primary task here is to work to grow your buckets, especially those long-term buckets that may serve you across many years.

Many of our clients, however, are also rich in another precious resource: time.

Just as a company may pay dividends to shareholders, the best investors seem to have a knack for finding those investments of time that pay dividends. And paying attention to our time could mean big things for our financial goals and wellbeing, after all.

Take a closer look at a day or a week in your life and how the hours go by. Is there a set place or routine for those things that may seem to eat up “too much time,” like bills or errands or banking or emails?

Activities like these can really frazzle a person, but when we zoom out, a lot them of them shouldn’t come as a surprise. These are everyday, regular activities.

Laura Vanderkam’s book Off the Clock explores our many approaches to the time we have—the skillful and less skillful ways we spend it! She’s got a system for reviewing our time:

“When you do an activity, ask yourself two questions: Will I ever do this again? If so, is there some system I could develop or something I could do now that would make future instances faster or easier?”

The good news is that there are plenty of ways that small interventions—just one little step, now!—can pay time dividends for weeks, months, or years into the future.

Some of our favorites include automatic deductions: monthly payments to take care of any outstanding debt, investment contributions, and retirement contributions. (“Set it and forget it” is a phrase you might hear for this strategy, although we prefer a more mindful approach!)

We are also big fans of quarterly reviews. It’s roughly how often we adjust portfolios, but the passing of the seasons is a wonderful excuse to think about the state of our goals and the bigger vision.

What else can you attach to the schedule? Could you leave yourself notes for things you’d like to review on your birthday, at the new year, before or after tax season, the start or end of an academic year?

A company may divvy up its profits to splash them around to shareholders on a regular basis, but as individuals we too might find those ways to get our time to pay us back later. It just takes a little forethought now.

Clients, want to talk about this or anything else? Call or write, anytime.

Investing includes risks, including fluctuating prices and loss of principal.

Dividend payments are not guaranteed and may be reduced or eliminated at any time by the company.

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Play the audio version of this post below:

Time Well Spent: How To Create Time Dividends – 228Main.com Presents: The Best of Leibman Financial Services

This text is available at https://www.228Main.com/.

The Robots Are Coming!

© Can Stock Photo Inc. / bogdanhoda

Some forecast that there will be no jobs in the future, as software and robots and other forms of mechanization take over more and more tasks now performed by actual people. To understand the issue, we need context and background.

Manufacturing output in the US is near record levels, up 30% from the recession levels of 2009. Yet manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at 19 million workers. The total today is around 12 million workers1. One might say ‘The robots are already here.’

While seven million manufacturing jobs were lost, fifty million jobs were added to the total. Manufacturing jobs were not the only ones that disappeared, however. Millions of other jobs became obsolete. File clerks, telephone operators, laborers with shovels, elevator operators, secretaries, and farm workers were displaced by new machines and new methods.

In a dynamic economy, we perpetually do more with less. In the year 1900, 40% of Americans were engaged in producing our food2. When that declined to under 2%, we didn’t end up with 38% unemployment.

There is another way to look at it. Tens of millions of people are now engaged in occupations that did not exist forty years ago, near the peak in manufacturing employment. Similar change happened between 1900 and 1940, and 1940 to 1980. Why would we doubt that 2010 to 2050 would be any different?

A recent report in the European Parliament concluded that “Humankind stands on the threshold of an era when ever more sophisticated robots, bots, androids and other manifestations of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) seem poised to unleash a new industrial revolution, which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched.” This presents more opportunity for society than danger, if history is any guide.

It’s going to be exciting. Please call us or write with questions or concerns.

1,2Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.