Everyone Starts At The Beginning

Where else? Of course, many want to jump-start immediately to success, but that is unrealistic.

Don’t Compare
It’s so easy to be self-judgmental, but it is self-defeating. At the beginning, just focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Manage expenses and manage expectations. By keeping costs down, you keep more for yourself. By managing my expectations, I can avoid the “poor me” syndrome.

Young Time
I know all about these, because I went through it myself. In my early twenties, in my first jobs, I was cash poor with little savings. Perhaps only a two or three hundred dollars in my bank account. I would marvel at the advertising for CDs with required minimums of $5,000.00, $10,000.00, and others much higher. Who has this kind of money? I would wonder. And at numerous other things at such prices that I would marvel how anyone could afford such things.

Dangers
Comparing my bank account to the costs of things not appropriate to my situation did me no good. My situation, at the time, was one of scarce resources. I was beginning with very little. It would have been better for me to focus more on my increasing my skills and marketability, rather than the cost of luxury items I could not afford. A CD with a minimum I could not fulfill is a luxury item! And that was back when CDs paid a decent interest rate.

Despair?
Certainly there were times I despaired of making progress. There is an endless supply of despair in the world. But it is mostly optional, along with the misery that despair provides.

While despair seems easy to get stuck in (wallowing in might be a better word), and misery has endless infatuation for itself, these are all too counter-productive. It is much better to keep one’s eyes on the goal, and act appropriately within my situation.

As mentioned, the beginning is tough and rough. From the vantage point of the beginning, the goal seems distant, far and almost unattainable. But fear not, one can accomplish and reach goals. Don’t give up.

As For Now
Nowadays, as I am mostly retired, I track my money assiduously, and have done so for a long time. While I have more financial resources than when I was just starting out, there are still an endless supply of things I cannot afford. The interesting thing for me is that most all of them, if not all of them, I no longer have any desire for. I have no desire to compare myself against people who might want those things or even have the financial resources to buy them. (You too can own an Aston Martin, which starts at $152,000. No thanks!)

How I Got Started
Even with dividend investing, it is possible to slide into disappointment. But one can avoid that pit fall: How To Avoid Dividend Investment Disappointment.  It is more important to start than to concern oneself with how big or small one’s assets are. That first share is the most important one of all.

Sure, when I was young with little money, I wanted the comforts that everyone seems to want. We are trained, culturally conditioned, and brainwashed into wanting what we see others’ seemingly want as well. But most of it is an illusion. Most of what others seem to want is a product of their own cultural indoctrination. So none of it is based on what is real.

That is why it is important to keep the focus on myself, my needs and self-development, rather than on the consumerism that is imposed upon us.

How did you handle the inevitable disconnect between what you earned on your first jobs and the advertised consumerised world?

The illustration of Swallow and Camellia is from a polychrome woodblock print and a Meiji era copy (ca. 1900) of an original design (ca. 1771) by Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800), a Japanese painter of the mid-Edo period.

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