#22 - Finance Fridays - Check Your Pension NOW, Coffee Chats, 9-5 Business Plan

*This is not financial advice, just me brainstorming about things related to money. Stocks are extremely volatile - value can go down as well as up. All investments and income streams may be subject to tax.

Contents:

• 💸 Entrepreneurship - How to Turn Your 9-5 Into a Business

• 💹Investing - This video will convince you to max out your pension.

• 🎒Career Advice - 4 Tips for Networking via Coffee Chats with Senior People

💸How to Turn Your 9-5 Into a Business

Inspired by: The One-Person Business Model: How to Productize Yourself 

5 key takeaways if you want to turn your job into a business:

1. Don’t believe your current skills are worth being monetised? No problem. 20 hours of dedicated work is enough to learn a new skill.

2. Need a niche? Be the customer. Focus on what you're interested in or solve the problems in your life. 

3. Build a service, then the product. If you try to automate before you've stress tested the product - it won't be a good product. Start by actually coaching and teaching people then turn your methods into the product. Whether it’s an ebook or online course.

4. Unlock the ability to keep learning. The world continues to change and being a lifelong learner stops you falling behind.

5. Structure your insights into some sort of system. You’ve already accumulated a lifetime’s worth of knowledge, you just haven’t structured it into a product or service.

🎒 4 Tips for Networking via Coffee Chats with Senior People

My mentor wants to network more so I'll be scheduling coffee chats with random people at my company.

This is how to do Coffee Chats well. (Thank you ChatGPT, Reddit and Google Search)

1. Find people you're genuinely interested in. Not just their seniority, their actual job. Your interest or lack of, will show in how you communicate with them.

2. Find a commonality. Did their blog post inspire you? Are they working on a project you're interested in? Hook them in or you’ll just be another beggar in their inbox.

3. Every email/direct message asking for a coffee chat should:

A) Introduce yourself 

B) Flatter them

C) Incentivise them to speak to you.

4. Be specific. No chit chat, be specific. Why do you want to speak to them? For example, I'm saying in my intro emails:

 “my mentor wants me to see how careers develop, to help me consider my next move into line management and your name was suggested”. 

See how being recommended makes you feel special?

💹This video will convince you to max out your pension.

Martin Lewis Busts Pension Myths With His Money Masterclass | This Morning

Martin Lewis does a great job breaking down why pension funds are such a bargain. Mainly this is because your employer has to contribute a minimum of 3% pre-tax to your pension. This is free money and in Martin’s own words, you are literally giving your employer a pay rise by opting out.

For example, your work pension scheme will turn your £100 into £160 or more. But if you were to build your own retirement fund after tax, your £100 will turn into somewhere between £60-£80 of cash after tax.

I've just checked my employer's pension contribution. And for every £100 I put in, I'm getting £300 added to my pension (because they are matching my 3% with 6%).

I can contribute 6% which my company can match up to 9%. So right now I contribute £150 per month, but if I opted out, that’ll be taxed at 40% leaving me with £90 extra every month. 

Or I can increase my contributions and go from £150 to £300 with my company adding an additional £450 which is a total of £750 pre-tax. 

So the question is do I need the £150 after tax or do I prefer an extra £300 in my pension? 

This will depend on 2 factors:

• What will I spend the £150 on?

• How badly is my pension fund managing my money?

Calculating the numbers will be another post in itself but I will check very soon because a simple 1-2% mistake could reduce my long term earnings massively. 

For example, if you are able to get a 6% net return on a £50,000 pension pot for 20 years you will end up with £167,357. Reduce that return to 4%, and you end up £57,801 poorer, with a pot of just £109,556.

✍🏿Quote of the Week 

“The only skill that matters is your ability to gain attention”

―  (TechLead) Tech is dead. I'm done.