What Would You Do If You Lost Your Job?

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Bargaineering recently asked: What Would You Do If You Lost Your Job? from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity

Indeed ’tis a knotty problem for most people. But for me, it’s not so difficult. You see, I have my own business, so if I lost my own job, then I’d have to fire myself. At one point, though, I was considering not hiring myself: I was costing too much for the company.

To explain, our business is a small language school in Taipei. We’ve been around for about 7 years in several guises, but since September 2006 we have experienced a sudden slowdown in our business, due to larger numbers of students exiting the program at the older age levels. Naturally, this wasn’t unexpected, but there was weakness in several other segments that didn’t make up for the exit of so many students.

Result: an unhappy proposition as our expenses remained static, but our income dropped by about 10~15% y-on-y (enough to wipe out our profit margin!). Since then, we’ve acted to minimize our cost structure as much as possible by cutting out everything that wasn’t ESSENTIAL to the operation of the business. Out went food subsidies which was cut to 0%, then we cut out non-essential refunds, and so on; but, eventually, though we had to re-organize our staffing structure. Three staff members were either terminated, asked to reconsider their job with us, or reassigned duties. In fact, we had expected two of them to take their job more seriously or take on a new set of duties than they had, but they chose to quit instead.

At one point, though, I was considering firing myself, because my contribution to the business couldn’t be financially rewarded. I thought this would be a good way to offset the expenses, but I was persuaded out of it, as I was a revenue generator for the school.

Throughout the whole period, it was quite unsettling, but I’m glad that we went through it. I don’t know longer term if our business will survive, but we have learner or relearned the importance of financial goals, as well as professional and business goals. Before that, we weren’t as focused on managing our financial assets as we were on the teaching side of things. Now looking back, all of the partners are aware of how much money we frittered away on non-essentials. Kinds of makes us a little queasy.

But then valuable lessons never come cheap.

How my life insurance came in handy: AmericaDirect.com

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When I first met my wife in Taipei, she was a life insurance saleswoman for Aetna Life Insurance. She naturally tried to sell me some life insurance and got me what she thought was a low term life insurance rate for my policy, as she was just learning the trade. The other possible reason for trying to sell me on this is that she just wanted my telephone number!

Of course, I was the somewhat reluctant customer… there’s nothing wrong with me… I’m going to live for ever 29-year-old! To persuade me to buy it, she signed me up and paid the first contribution for me! That was not a little money, but it gave her peace of mind!

Funny thing is: about two years later, after a very hectic and stressful period of my life, my body was physically run down! I got pneumonia, ended up in hospital for 10 days, with a raging fever; and needed fairly powerful medications. This was all in the days before Taiwan’s National Health Insurance. When we went to check out, we paid the bill for that hospitalization, and it wasn’t cheap, something like half a month’s salary, plus I didn’t make any money for about two weeks or thereabouts.

After contacting our then insurance agent (wife was now an English teacher!), we were covered in full almost for the illness. When the check came, it was a might relief! That was handy. Handy, indeed. Next time, I took better care of myself, too!

Nowadays, though, I don’t have to meet someone on a bus just to get good life insurance coverage, I can just find online term life insurance rates and get instant insurance life quotes at the click of a button. However you decide to get life insurance, having appropriate life insurance can really make a big difference when things go bad.

Sponsored Post by AmericaDirect.com.

Stats: Whither Gibraltar?

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125px-Flag of GibraltarWhen my stats were less impressive, esp. on Technorati and Alexa (that was only a few short months ago), I used to comfort myself that the tiny island of Gibraltar and its 27,495 enlightened individuals loved my blog!

Yes, it came in on Alexa at #951 for several weeks in a row! It was the only country or territory in the world where my little blog, like an island in the sea, could rear its head above the crowds of Yahoo!s, Googles and scads of other sites!

While Gibraltar still insists on remaining part of Britain (unlike the Scots!), they didn’t insist on my blog for anything like the 300 years they have been part of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland classed as a British Overseas Territory.

So, I would just like to say “Thanks, Gibraltar!” Do drop by again, whoever of the 27,495 inhabitants of the islands you were! You are always welcome!