If It’s Free, It’s For Me!

I recently had dinner with a friend who asked my about my old newsletter, If It’s Free, It’s for Me!  For those who don’t know, If It’s Free, It’s for Me! contained information about deals and money saving tips.  My  wanted to know what happened to the e-mails.

To be honest, I stopping spending my time on the newsletter as I didn’t hear back from the people I sent it to, so I assumed it wasn’t being used.  The friend corrected me by telling me that he wanted to receive them again.  With this in mind, I’m going to test it out one more time.  In doing so, I ask the following of you:

1.  Feedback.  I want to know that I’m not wasting my time.  If you like what I write, or the money saving idea, let me know.  If you don’t, let me know.  Like anybody else, I want my efforts to be appreciated.

2.  Each e-mail/post (yes, I’ll be putting these up on a blog now - http://www.frankelventures.com/ifitsfreeitsforme) will contain information about some product or service.  If you find that you want to take advantage of the deal/offer/savings/etc., please use the link I provide.  I don’t charge for this e-mail list, but I am giving up my time.  Using these links allows me to earn some commission and won’t cost you anything.

3.  Tell your friends.  If they want to join the e-mail list, great.  I’d love to have more subscribers.  There’s strength and power in numbers.

With this in mind, I wanted to shed some light on my ideas about deal finding, coupons, cash back, and so on. 

As I’ve learned through my work with Kosher Advantage (www.KosherAdvantage.com), many people don’t like discounts.  They don’t like coupons or showing cards and receive a percentage off their bill.  Somehow, doing this is beneath them.  They feel cheap and embarrassed, the bottom of society.  I believe that these people suffer from a failure of understanding.

Most of us strive to earn as much as we possibly can.  We enter professions with high expected incomes, we yearn for raises and bonuses, hope for promotions, and do what we can to increase our earning potential.  We want to make money.

But a good salary is just part of the puzzle in achieving what we want – not merely financial security but well-being.  We want things – a house, car, luxury goods and services, and freedom to do what we want.  On the surface, these are all attained by, or at the very least correlated with, a job with a good salary.

Let’s take a different approach though.  When talking about salary, we’re really talking about our personal revenues.  Just like any corporation, we also have personal expenses.  We have credits, when our salary is paid, and we have debits, when we pay our rent or buy groceries.  Our achievement of our ends, the house, car, etc. is dependent then upon our revenue being greater than our expenses, just like a corporation aiming to be profitable.  The means towards achieving our ends is often thought of as the salary.

But this thought process eliminates the other side of the equation, the expense side.  To clarify this point, let’s assume that to feel financially secure, you’ll need $X in your bank and investment accounts.  Thus, our personal corporation equation to achieve our goals would look like this:
            Revenue – Expenses > $X
Revenue, the foundation of which is salary, is best increased through raises, promotions, and other job related achievements.  Most people view this as the only way.

What about the expenses side?

If we decrease the expenses, then our revenue side doesn’t need to be as high in order to achieve our goal of $X because our gap (the difference between Revenue and Expenses) will still increase.  We have now created a second way, a second means, of achieving our ends.

If this explanation wasn’t satisfying for you, let me try another approach.  Money is nothing more than a commonly accepted vehicle and facilitator of trade.  I want what you have.  You want what he has, and he wants what she has.  I’ll trade you money for your item.  You can use this money for his item, and he can use it for hers.

Using our personal corporation model again, let’s say that you want to buy Item Z.  Item Z costs $5 which you have.  Amongst your assets are cash and items owned.  By purchasing Item Z for $5, and therefore assigning Item Z a value of $5, you’re merely shifting the same value from your cash to items owned column, but keeping it in the assets.  You have not really lost anything.

Under this model, the key understanding is that cash is a vehicle that we assign value because of what it can attain.  It has no inherent value other than as a trade tool.  The more cash we have though, the more items we can obtain.  If we’re able to obtain the items we desire for less cash, we have reached the same goal.

By now, I’m sure that you can see where I’m going with these concepts.  This newsletter, If It’s Free, It’s for Me! focuses on helping you obtain more while paying less – or essentially giving yourself a raise without speaking to your employer.