Is It More Important To Be Paid Well Or Do A Job You Love And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

Is it better to live for now or to save for future?

I find polarising questions like this quite interesting as clearly there is no right or wrong answer here.

Neither extreme is really healthy no matter what your life is like, as you never know what the future holds.

Finding the balance between living for now and saving for future can be hard to find, and might depend on your personality.

I definitely sometimes have those “yolo” moments (“you only live once”) but I try to ensure that my future self is taken care of as well.

Especially since I can make the biggest impact on my future financial well being while I’m still young and letting the time and compounding work its magic on my money.

At the same time I do want to enjoy my life now, I just make sure it’s not on the expense of my future self!

Is it more important to be paid well or do a job you love?

This may be an unpopular opinion, but to me, money matters.

Money just makes so many things in life so much easier.

This being said, I wouldn’t do something that I totally hate for more money. I just aim to find a profession that pays good money AND that I like to do.

At this stage I’d love a high paying role, but I’d be happy to do it with shorter hours so I could also live my life and enjoy hobbies, and perhaps earn money from them as a side hustle.

Financial independence from employment is the goal, and I think I’m heading towards business ownership on the side.

I’d love to have the flexibility of not working all year, or being able to work from anywhere at times, being able to go home to Finland and not worry how the 9-11h time difference affects my ability to work.

What’s one thing you want to do differently with money this year?

The past few years I have been really focused on paying off debt, saving buffers and an emergency fund, and I rarely enjoyed money or spent on myself.

I became quite fatigued after having the mindset that I couldn’t spend any money on myself, so once we bought our house, I felt I could relax and my spending got out of hand.

So this year I’ve been saying yes to more things that have felt a bit selfish, like a trip to Christchurch to celebrate me turning 30 this year.

But the main thing that I’ve been spending on has been self development. I’ve been buying more books than in long time, and have been purchasing eBooks, courses and such to learn new things.

One of the best ones I paid for is Skillshare, they have so many different classes available by different people. You can learn so much for the price of the yearly subscription!

If you would like to try it, it is free for the first month. If you sign up through the link I provided, I will also get a free month (but only if you do find it valuable enough to pay for the subscription!).

You can find more money questions, and my personal answers here.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!