Financial Freedom?

What is it being ‘profitable’? Continuing from my previous essay in this series of personal finance articles where instead of jumping to give any financial advice (as this for someone else who is qualified and legally certified), the objective of my articles is to try and first understand the similarities between a full business entity, organisation, company, venture, etcetera and a normal living individual, a human-being.

Let us begin from where I had left in the previous post of Financial Freedom? Myth or Reality (Part 2). A profitable business is a business which can utilise the available resources it has on hand and be able to deliver a product or service which is of higher value than its costs. Simply put in a few lines as:

A. Revenue = Income = earned by delivering a product or service (Inflow)

B. Expense = Cost = used to create the product or service (Outflow)

C. Result = A less/or minus B = (Positive = Profitable) & (Negative = non-Profitable)

Now, let us go back to question number 2 in my essay in Part 1 of this series i.e. ‘When is an individual profitable or non-profitable?’

To answer the above question, let us begin by looking and assessing at what we do daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. Majority of the people, get up each morning, shit, brush, take a shower, get dressed, have breakfast and then leave their abode to go to a set location where they do work i.e. render their services in the form of many tasks which are labelled accordingly. Such as, accounting work performed by an accountant, secretarial work performed by a secretary, carpentry work performed by a carpenter, plumbing work performed by a plumber, so on.

And for performing the assigned tasks, at the end, upon completion or at the end of the month, what do we receive, a paycheque. This receipt of paycheque is the same as what we understood above while discussing a business i.e. revenue = income (Inflow). In essence, we the ‘individual’ is nothing other than a ‘business entity’.

So if the above concept of a business and a person is correct and clearly understood, then why is it that day-in and day-out, we, a normal individual will go to any length, for example, skip lunch, keep working late in the evening to complete the tasks, checking emails from others receiving more of the tasks from others and keeps doing this each day, every day with the objective that the business he/she is working for should be profitable.

But when it comes to our own selves, we have lost the lunch time when we could enjoy a meal with ourselves while doing some reading or listening to music or anything what we enjoy.

By staying back in the office late, we have lost the time we could have spent with our loved ones who are waiting for us at home, or we could have invested in ourselves by enrolling in an evening educational class learning a different language or earning a degree, for instance.

I am pretty sure that majority of us know and understand (myself included, sometimes though) what I wrote in the last three paragraphs, however, we already have come up with excuses and explanations for not making time for ourselves, for not investing in ourselves, for not living our lives, for not doing what we dreamt off, for not doing what interests us.

I am also aware that someone might say to the above, that many people DO NOT have a choice as they need the money to feed themselves and their families. Totally, 100% agree to that logic, but my question then is, what did they do to change the situation they were/are in?

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Please share your views and opinions in the comments below. My purpose to expand my horizons by connecting to the people of this world.

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This article is for informational, discussion, reference or reading purposes only. There is no set Financial or Legal Advice. All information may not be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.

Copyright: Kirtan Varasia (2021)