The wisdom of Scott Adams

http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=the+natural

"P.S. Yes, I am in a bad mood this week. Why do you ask?" snaps the famous cartoonist.

Sometimes it takes losing your rag to get at a simple statement of the truth:

"The loser worldview is that whoever is causing the problem needs to fix it for you.

"The problem with the loser worldview is that in many cases the only person who CAN fix the problem is you, even if you had nothing to do with causing it. A winner in that situation fixes his own problem. A loser sits indefinitely waiting for others to solve it for him, even knowing that won't happen. [...]

"If others are at fault, and they have the ability and motivation to fix the problem for you, by all means take a run at it. But if the only person who can fix your problem is you, and you choose not to do it because the fault is with others, you have taken the loser path. You literally chose the path you know will fail because of some misguided sense of rightness."

- Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert)

And one way to assess solutions, he says in "The Joy Of Work", is to formulate them as newspaper headlines. For example, if you think what you need to do in your job is use your time more efficiently, the story would be "Cubicle Worker Becomes Billionaire Thanks To Careful Scheduling".

Brilliant.


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The Pa Larkin economy

First edition (pic source)

Another sterling piece this week by Archdruid John Michael Greer. Here he discusses how our lives will change as the cost of non-human energy rises and its availability dwindles. In brief, the superstructure of society will crash.

Like Charles Hugh Smith, he envisages a return to a simpler life, where we ourselves make more of what we consume, and trade surpluses. To be more precise, not a simpler life - peasants have to be multiskilled and crafty to survive - but a simpler form of social organisation. Like Smith, Greer sees education as pricing itself out of the market, and in any case it's becoming irrelevant to the skills we will need in the future.

He also touches on what he calls the fashion of despair among those who simply refuse to begin adapting. If we see the present state of affairs as the Golden Age, then of course change means decline and loss.

But there's another way to see it. The model Greer is proposing is like that of Pa Larkin in H E Bates' life-affirming books. Pa doesn't believe in bothering the taxman and when the Inland Revenue sends a young, pasty-faced investigator to see how he can do so well on apparently no income, Pa marries him to one of his daughters and sets him to work. Bates' theme is love - not just of women, but of life. It's interesting to read the four Larkin sequels and see how in different ways they restate and defend the original, glowing vision of how we could be happy.

And like Pa, some of Greer's acquaintances are operating in the "black economy", because doing things the conventional way is a recipe for victimhood.

Some years ago, we met a man in South Wales whose neighbour hasn't worked for years. The latter said he hated both work (in its modern guise) and shopping, and decided to spend the rest of his life doing neither. He'd made enough in his previous career to buy a house before the mad price explosion, and eats well from what he catches in the fields and garners from hedgerows.

We don't all have to do exactly that. Pa Larkin manages on a mixed strategy of cash dealing (turning over money in any venture that is "wurf while"), subsistence farming (no fresher eggs or more organic chicken than from your own back yard) and piling the family into the van for seasonal crop-picking (he lives in Kent, which used to be known as "the garden of England").

Don't forget to love.

READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Had enough of teaching (or other job)?

Below is an article I wrote for the Times Educational Supplement in 1997. The Teachers' Pension Scheme has altered significantly since then, but I think many of the general points are still valid.
_____________________________________
Can you really afford to quit?

Article Published in The TES on 21 November, 1997 By: Rolf Norfolk

First work out the cost. The job might not seem so bad after all - or there may turn out to be other solutions, says Rolf Norfolk

Are you fed up and dreaming of the days when early retirement was much easier to obtain? If so, first you have to decide whether you really have a problem with your job or if it is just a grumble. If you do have a serious worry, it may help to review the following options and consider whether you are prepared to meet the cost of changing your situation.

1. If your promoted post has become too much for you, ask for a demotion. Think twice about this, as it involves a pay cut and it is hardly a recommendation for re-promotion later. Regardless of current regulatory proposals, a step-down is already provided for in your pension scheme so long as it is in the interest of the efficient running of the school and your new post is with the same employer.

You have two options: first, you can split the pension account, so that service in the higher-paid post is preserved (and increased in line with inflation), and then there is a separate calculation for the new job, based on the lower salary and the remaining period served. At retirement, the two figures are added together. Alternatively, you can carry on paying pension contributions as though the demotion hadn't happened, and have all your service relate to your old salary. The potential drawback is that the notional salary is fixed, not inflation-linked. Such considerations need not worry those close to retirement, since a teacher's pension relates to the best year's income in the final three years; in the past some heads have therefore returned to teaching at the age of 58.

2. If the classroom demands are too much, try teaching part-time. This does not wreck your accrued pension because although your pension depends on not only the exact time you have served but your salary at retirement, if you work part-time the notional salary on which your pension is based is what you would be earning if you were a full-timer. But obviously from then, as a part-timer, you will be adding years and days of service more slowly. New regulations are, however, now going through Parliament to improve pension calculations for part-timers.

3. If your face does not fit, move to another school. Life is too short to put up with managers who don't like you. Or you could retrain for a different sector of the education service.

4. Sell your big house and move down. Or sell your investments. Or remortgage. Use your assets to pay for a very long holiday (or to subsidise part-time or lower-paid employment) before you take your pension as of right at 60. If you can, but aren't willing, you've just found out exactly how bad the problem isn't.

5. Apply for ill-health early retirement. Occupational disability doesn't imply being half-dead. But it's not a dodge, either. You have to pass (or, more accurately, fail) medical tests, and the Government has changed the rules to make this harder. For those who get it, the really tough bit is the financial impact. With the Teachers' Superannuation Scheme, ill-health pensions relate only to actual service (plus possibly a bit extra), so even with 20 years' service you would lose at least two-thirds of your income. While you still can, you should therefore consider permanent health insurance, which pays an extra, tax-free income during incapacity. Alternatively, some critical illness insurances include a lump sum pay-out if you are diagnosed as occupationally unfit.

In recent years one in four teacher retirements has been through illness, but although this is more than in previous decades it is still only about the same as for the general population. Often the root cause is unrelated to working conditions (one client of mine is going deaf); but if you are over-stressed, you should try to solve your problem, not have a chronic illness because of it.

6. For young teachers: create your own early retirement account. If you invest the same as your pension contribution (6 per cent) from ages 22 to 55, you will have enough to sustain you for five years on about 40 per cent of salary, until your pension at 60 (additional voluntary contributions are not likely to be appropriate for this, since they can't be deliberately exhausted in five years). Those anticipating unwaged child-rearing years should save more (say 7 per cent) when they can.

7. Resign half-way through your career. This is drastic. Very few teachers can do this and earn the same money elsewhere. Besides, your job is not threatened by Third World competition or the microchip - not many others can say that. And thinking of retirement, only a minority of the public can hope to retire as early (60 is still relatively young) and as securely-provided for as a teacher.

Are you giving up to do something better, or running away from a problem you have failed to address? If the latter, turn and defeat the monster.

As H G Wells's Mr Polly discovered, if you don't like your life, you can change it.

Rolf Norfolk is an independent financial adviser working in the Midlands. He is a former secondary teacher.
This article is not intended as personal advice. Anyone interested in the points raised should consult a financial adviser.