Create more value, save more money

While you may have to work hard to create value, it isn’t your hard work that attracts money: it’s the value.
I used to have a boss who would tell his workforce it was not nearly
enough to just try; you had to show results for your
efforts.

He would give the analogy of a hunter who had to bring back game from the forest to feed his family. “It is not enough that the hunter tries and gets nothing. Would his family go hungry?” my erstwhile boss would ask.

Results, not efforts
With this analogy, he drove home the point: it is the results that matter, not the effort put in. Of course, in most cases, result often tally with efforts in the sense that they are related. However, like Dr. Michael LeBoeuf notes, while it is true that hard work or efforts do create value, it is not hard work that attracts money but the value so created.

The effort or the hard work is no more than the means you use to create the desirable final result, the end, which is the value.

Value in others’ lives
You must put yourself in such a position that you create and add value to other people’s lives and then, just like with the case of cause and effect, which are inseparable, value will flow back to you in multiple folds.

So what is value? The Webster’s Dictionary defines value as follows: Worth, that which renders anything useful or estimable.

So when you make a thing become more worthy or more useful, you have added value to that thing. Note that it isn’t the efforts put in to make the item of more worth but the very act of making the thing more valuable.

Nobody really cares about the labour pains, but everybody wants to see the baby. Working hard without creating perceived value is as futile as a car spinning its wheels in mud.

Both employee and self-employed!
As an employee, you create perceived value by demonstrating to your employer that your loyalty, dedication, reliability and output are worth more than the amount on your pay cheque.

As a businessman or self-employed person, you create perceived value by giving your customers the best deal for their money, as it’s perceived!

People would travel all the way to the popular Mile 12 market in Lagos, Nigeria, because they believe they are getting the best value since prices of foodstuffs are relatively lower there.

Some people would do anything to eat out at eateries because they believe they are getting good quality food. That is perceived value. And that is why money keeps flowing in that direction. Perceived value has been created.

So, instead of just working harder, work smarter; increase the market value of your time. When it comes to earning money, the harder you work, the more tired you get but the more value you create, the richer you get.

The next step to take in escaping the time/money trap after creating more value and earning more from your time is to save more.

Save more too
I have always agreed with the postulation that, in order to escape the poverty cycle, you should save at least 10 per cent of your total savings. The more you can save, the better.

However, I want us to examine Dr. LeBoeuf’s assertion about the requisite savings rate required to break the poverty cycle.

Listen to him: “The more you save, the sooner you’re out of the time/money trap. If you’re serious about reaching the winner’s circle early, you will probably have to save at least 30 to 50 per cent of your income!”

As a believer in and practitioner of the principle of savings, I have always saved roughly 40 per cent of my total income and here, LeBoeuf says the requisite is 30 to 50 per cent and I wish to give his postulation come consideration.

Windfalls into savings
He explains: “The way to do that painlessly is to funnel future windfalls and salary increases into savings. Most people make the mistake of spending raises and windfalls on new luxuries. Once tasted, those luxuries have a way of becoming necessities, and the vicious cycle of earning to spend continues.” So if you want the best advice about attaining financial independence in just two phrases, here it is; create more value, save more money.