Credit Lust - Employee Perspective on Surviving the Credit Crunch

EMPLOYEE

This section deals with an Employee's view of the credit crunch.

Here are the goals

Retain employment
Retain existing or improve income
Add additional income streams

To achieve the first two of these goals an employee needs to increase his or her value to the employer. The last goal is around building additional income that does not conflict with work responsbilities

My personal approach to this is fivefold:

Professional qualifications (CFA examinations)
Expanding my knowledge of finance and investment
Blogging and writing about finance from a layman's standpoint
Learning about and actually making money online through internet marketing
Building personal and online networks

I think this approach can be generalised

Get a qualification (it is a differentiator)
Become more knowledgable in your field of interest
Write about what you have learnt: as well as consolidating your knowledge, it will help expand your field of influence
Internet marketing can help you capitalise (monetize) the time investment you put into your blog and/or website
Your personal power is in many ways proportional to the number of people you know. It is often said that when it comes to jobs, "it is who you know, not what you know". In my view you need both.

My main argument against this approach was lack of time. Here is how I am trying to deal with my Monday to Friday routine

00:00 - 07:00 Sleep
07:00 - 08:00 Shower, shave, breakfast, check email
08:00 - 08:30 Commute to work
08:30 - 12:30 Work
12:30 - 13:30 Sandwich and reading (news, economy, internet marketing)
13:30 - 17:30 Work
17:30 - 18:30 Contingency
18:30 - 19:30 Gym
19:30 - 20:00 Commute home
20:00 - 21:00 Relax, dinner
21:00 - 23:00 Professional studies
23:00 - 24:00 Blogging and email

In total there are four hours a day devoted towards personal development activities. I can eke out some more reading time, through using audio books or pod casts using an MP3 player or iPod both at the gym and during the commute.

I suppose the life / work balance is not great as it offers only two hours 'home' time with an hour's contingency. However, the idea is that weekend makes up for this where nine hours extra 'life' each day due to no work and no commute.

Blog Posts

Does Fred Goodman deserve a £650,000 a year pension? 1 Mar 2009, 9:46 pm

Maybe, had Sir Fred Goodman retired two years ago when the price of Royal Bank of Scotland share was 705p and RBS was worth £65 billion, then a £650,00 year pension might have be understandable. At that point in time he had led the bank to a successful takeover of National Westminster Bank and pleased [...]

Step aside Prime Minister. The President will save the World 26 Jan 2009, 3:04 pm

Gordon Brown believes he may have saved the world last November with his global anti-recession package but it is time for him to step aside, and play Robin to Obama’s Batman to finish the job. [Sorry Gordon, it is back to being number two, which is where you perform best] Let’s look at Obama’s plan [...]

It’s Official: The UK is in recession (and it’s a deep one) 23 Jan 2009, 1:05 pm

GDP falls steeply by 1.5% With today’s figures indicating that the Gross Domestic Product fell by 1.5% over the last three months coupled with the previous quarter’s drop of 0.6% meant that the UK is finally officially in recession after two quarters of negative growth. Here is the breakdown Construction output – down by 1.1 [...]