Have you ever heard of the term rat race? The term rat race has been defined in online dictionaries as a massive routine of hectic and competitive activity. Yet, why is it important for one to learn and be aware of what the rat race is?
The rat race is, as what we all know, a stage or cycle in life where, we, like the rat in a particular laboratory experiment, continues to run around the wheel, thinking that there would come a point where we would eventually stop. However, just like the rat in the said experiment, the wheel that we continuously run is a never ending wheel. There is no start and no end in the said race because, just as the wheel does not have any cut or opening, we also cannot get out of this rat race as there is no end to this unending wheel that just continues to rotate as we continue to run around it.
Talking to financial experts, especially the rich, and other businessmen, you would find out that the term rat race is often associated to employment and being an employee. Why is this so? For those of you who are working and earning a living, one major question that you might want to ask yourself is, “Am I really earning for a living or am I living in order for me to earn?” It is but time for you to be able to look and step back and reflect on this particular question before you try to give out any answer.
If you have encountered and read several books that is about financial freedom, you would see and realize that majority of them have been stating that there is a long term problem which every person faces, and this is the need for money. It is true that in order for us to survive, we need to be able to finance our basic needs and there’s no other way for us to be able to purchase our basic needs but by through money. Employment offers us a fixed income based on the offer that we accepted during the time when we officially signed our contract with the company we’re in. However, notice that amidst the continuous inflation of goods, basic needs, and commodities, we do not or seldom get to have salary increases not unless we’re the type of person who easily gets promoted. But then, if we aim to move up the corporate ladder in our company, we find ourselves being bound to work for more than 8 hours.
It now appears that the higher the position we try to reach in the company, the more time we spend in the company working. Yes, we would have a higher salary as we are slowly going up the corporate ladder but then, we are also sacrificing our time. Time that we can spend with our families, for ourselves, to enjoy life, etc. So, is moving up the corporate ladder a solution to your long term problem of financial stability? We believe that this is a question that is up for you to answer as we believe that each people have different opinions about such.
So why has been employment considered as a rat race? Notice that when you land on your first job, you were totally out of debt but then, as time goes on, you are slowly accumulating debt. Apparently, it seems the opposite of what you should be experiencing and this is one of the known truths about people who are working as employees in a company.
Financial gurus, people who have written about increasing financial I.Q. would always say that the first 2-3 months of your salary would be, as what others would call, “smooth sailing.” On the 4th month of your salary, this is when you start to realize that what you’re earning is not enough for your basic needs. This is when you start to accumulate debt as your priority is to be able to buy your basic necessity in order for you to survive. Yet, since your salary is not enough, you start to borrow, use your credit card (if you have one) to purchase your needs which then starts to put you in a situation that you would forever have to run, and run in order to try to uplift your financial condition and pay off debts. However, no matter how much we run, we would find ourselves bound and stuck in the cycle where we earn through our salary, we pay debts (those we have accumulated from the previous 15-30 days), we budget what is left in order to provide for our basic needs, and we find out that what was left was not enough so we borrow money again.
You may not believe what we have just discussed but again, we leave that reality check up to you. All that we aim in this post is to simply point out one fact: Employment is not the venue for achieving your dreams and ambitions. Well, if you’re not going to admit that reality and fact, then just simply ask yourself if you have ever seen or known any employee who has become rich. More often than not, you would see employees retiring at the age of 60 or 65 and yet struggling and worrying about where they are going to get the money to finance their needs until they die.
So we have touched on concepts such as rat race and throughout this discussion, we have tried to show what the rat race is, and in particular, how employment has been classified as the rat race. You now might be asking yourself, so given such situation, how do we counteract and fight it? How can one be able to free themselves from the so-called rat race? We would continue the discussion in several other posts that you can see in this blog.