Surviving the gig economy
Unemployment has dropped to its lowest level in 28 years! The bad news, wages have barely budged. The so-called "gig economy" has ushered in an age of employment flexibility but with it income variability.
In the old days (pre-2007) most struggling workers lived paycheck to paycheck. Today, nearly half of all workers don't -- it's because their weekly paychecks can vary so much. And some weeks there's no paycheck at all.
This highlights how important it is to treat windfalls or extra cash as something to be put away for lean times. I recently encountered someone who was on vacation who said that he had $5000 in his bank account that he wanted to invest -- at age 40 this was all the money he had! I asked him if he had any debt and he replied that he had more than $20,000 in credit card debt but had no trouble paying the minimum balance! So his $5000 of "investable funds" was generating much less than a 1% return while his credit card was eating up 24% in annual interest! I didn't even know where to start -- lecturing someone on why they couldn't afford to take a vacation might be a starting point -- but told him that he should pay down the high interest debt as soon as possible. This is someone who is headed for disaster.
Please take a look at this and try to get on the right path if you suffer similarly: Gig