{"id":456,"date":"2011-03-20T10:38:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T17:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/?p=456"},"modified":"2019-05-31T12:00:18","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T19:00:18","slug":"financial-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/financial-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Financial Management<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am quite conservative when it comes to debt. \u00a0Prior to the recession I was told that I was &#8216;anti-American&#8217; because I refuse to get in debt to buy things. \u00a0Now that the bottom fell out people tell me I was smart to do so. My approach is to save until I have enough money to buy what I want then pay cash. \u00a0This means that I do not get in debt. \u00a0Plus, because I keep my money in a money market account, I receive interest instead of paying interest to the bank.<\/p>\n<p>My approach is motivated by two factors. \u00a0First, my upbringing. \u00a0I was raised with the expectation that I was to buy what I could afford with the money that I had at the time of purchase. \u00a0In other words, I learned to save, not to spend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Artist as Profession<\/strong><br \/>\nSecond, I am in a profession &#8211;&#8216;artist&#8217; for lack of a better word&#8211; in which income fluctuates greatly. \u00a0In this type of situation, getting in debt can spell serious financial trouble rather quickly. \u00a0Therefore, one of the decisions I made when I started my career was to structure my financial life so as to minimize my financial exposure. \u00a0This has worked very well for me and has protected me from the negative effects of the recession.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I could not predict that a recession would happen. Regardless, this is the approach I recommend to artists when it come to financial planning. I also recommend it to anyone who wants to minimize their financial exposure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conservative debt management work<\/strong>s<br \/>\nI am quite conservative when it comes to debt. \u00a0Prior to the recession I was told that I was &#8216;anti-American&#8217; because I refuse to get in debt to buy things. \u00a0Now that the bottom fell out people tell me I was smart to do so. My approach is to save until I have enough money to buy what I want then pay cash. \u00a0This means that I do not get in debt. \u00a0Plus, because I keep my money in a money market account, I receive interest instead of paying interest to the bank.\u00a0My approach is motivated by two factors. \u00a0First, my upbringing. \u00a0I was raised with the expectation that I was to buy what I could afford with the money that I had at the time of purchase.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Learn to save, not to spend<\/strong><br \/>\nIn other words, I learned to save, not to spend.\u00a0Second, I am in a profession &#8211;&#8216;artist&#8217; for lack of a better word&#8211; in which income fluctuates greatly. \u00a0In this type of situation, getting in debt can spell serious financial trouble rather quickly. \u00a0Therefore, one of the decisions I made when I started my career was to structure my financial life so as to minimize my financial exposure. \u00a0This has worked very well for me and has protected me from the negative effects of the recession.\u00a0Of course I could not predict that a recession would happen. Regardless, this is the approach I recommend to artists when it come to financial planning. I also recommend it to anyone who wants to minimize their financial exposure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Live below your means<\/strong><br \/>\nIn addition to not going into debt, one needs to live below their means. Just because one can afford something, even if they can pay cash, does not mean they should buy it. I have found this to be true for all things&#8230;. except of course, cameras and lenses&#8230;.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>If you don&#8217;t live below your means you spend everything that you make. This means being unable to save money and therefore being unable to get ahead and plan for the future.<\/div>\n<p>Alain Briot<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beautiful-landscape.com \">http:\/\/www.beautiful-landscape.com <\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Subscribe to Reflections:<\/strong><\/p>\n<form style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc; padding: 3px; text-align: center;\" action=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify\" method=\"post\">Enter your email address:<br \/>\n<input style=\"width: 140px;\" name=\"email\" type=\"text\" \/> <input name=\"uri\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"beautiful-landscape\/DEsG\" \/> <input name=\"loc\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"en_US\" \/> <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Subscribe\" \/>Delivered by <a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FeedBurner<\/a><\/form>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Financial Management I am quite conservative when it comes to debt. \u00a0Prior to the recession I was told that I was &#8216;anti-American&#8217; because I refuse to get in debt to buy things. \u00a0Now that the bottom fell out people tell me I was smart to do so. My approach is to save until I have&hellip;<a href=\"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/financial-management\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Financial management<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[27,43,28,29,26,32,35,33,38,52,37,47,40,48,39,30,36,44,31,34,42,50,41,49,46,51],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","tag-alain-briot","tag-antelope-canyon","tag-art-2","tag-canon","tag-composition","tag-digital-photography","tag-fine-art","tag-fine-art-photography","tag-grand-canyon","tag-landscape-photography","tag-landscapes","tag-leica","tag-lightroom","tag-marketing-2","tag-navajoland","tag-nikon","tag-painting","tag-personal-style","tag-phase-one","tag-photography","tag-photography-ebook","tag-photography-workshop","tag-photoshop","tag-selling-photographs","tag-sony","tag-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16780,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/16780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beautiful-landscape.com\/Reflections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}