Financial security is a big deal to me because I really struggled when I started working. As stupid as it sounds, I tried to maintain the lifestyle I enjoyed in my mother’s house. You’d think that being broke halfway through the month on a consistent basis would have made me realise something was wrong. Not a chance! But I was living in a country that was falling apart, with record inflation and a dodgy economy. That was the problem, not me.
I then moved to a country with a very healthy economy and guess what happened? My financial situation got worse! Yes, there were some extenuating circumstances, but my handling of money just made things worse! I had to let go of a lot of stupid assumptions and learn to be smart about money. It has been a slow and painful process (why does instant gratification have to hurt so much in the long run?), but stuff like this helps. It’s from John Scalzi’s blog Whatever. Check it out:
“Why am I offering this entirely unsolicited advice about money to new writers? Because it very often appears to me that regardless of how smart and clever and interesting and fun my fellow writers are on every other imaginable subject, when it comes to money — and specifically their own money — writers have as much sense as chimps on crack. It’s not just writers — all creative people seem to have the “incredibly stupid with money” gene set for maximum expression — but since most of creative people I know are writers, they’re the nexus of money stupidity I have the most experience with. It makes me sad and also embarrasses the crap out of me; people as smart as writers are ought to know better.” – read on
