How to spend the first salary meaningfully?

" A girl in Hangzhou used her first salary to buy a mobile phone for her best friend" rushed into the hot search and caused heated discussions.

Netizens expressed that "this kind of girlfriends is really enviable", " please give me a dozen girlfriends like this". The girl expressed that she wanted to make her best friend happy for a lifetime, and would spoil her no matter what.

Of course, there are also different voices, such as "Why don't you buy it for your parents first?" and so on.

01 Salaries handed over to parents

This reminded me of how the first salary in my life was spent?

My first salary was very low, like only $800. I gave $500 to my mother and kept $300 to buy daily necessities.

At that time, I was young and my thoughts were simple. I just want to earn money and give it to my parents to subsidize the family. I want to help my parents save money for my younger brother to study.

Therefore, my first salary income is basically handed in in full, and the use was very simple. I didn't buy gifts for myself, my family or friends, I didn't do anything earth-shattering, and I didn't have any special meaning.

 

02 Buy a gift for someone you love

Although my younger brother is younger than me, he worked earlier than me.

My younger brother's first job was to work as an assembly line worker in a factory. After working hard for a month, my younger brother was very happy when it came time to get paid. He went to the factory very early that day.

When I went home in the afternoon, I brought back a watch and said it was for me. The dial and strap are both gold, delicate and beautiful, and I have liked gold since then.

The younger brother said that he had visited several watch shops and thought this one was the best.

I was so moved that I was about to cry. I was afraid that he would make a joke, so I suppressed my tears.

Since then, this watch has accompanied me throughout my youth, from going to school to working until now, I still keep it. This should be the most valuable of my assets, at least in my eyes.

 

03 How to spend the first salary

The first salary, no matter how much or how little, is a reward for our hard work when we first enter the workplace. Different people treat their first salary differently.

Some people have understood the difficulty of their parents, and began to learn to live on a budget, save a small part of their salary first, and use the rest to pay some fixed expenses, such as rent, water and electricity bills and so on. Some people will use their first salary to express their gratitude to those who have helped them, such as wrapping a red envelope for their parents, preparing a small gift for their mentor... In fact, it doesn’t matter what you give, what is important is the content contained in it.

There are also people who reward themselves with the first salary and experience the harvest after hard work. There is nothing wrong with this.

Make an appointment with friends for a dinner, buy home the lipstick that you have wanted for a long time, and send yourself a bouquet of flowers, watch a movie with your loved one, record your happiness in the day's account book, and set the next "small goal" by the way..

How does it make sense to get the first salary? There is no standard answer. But no matter how you arrange it, it is recommended to save money, learns to keep accounts, spend rationally, don't spend extravagantly, and leaves some living expenses for yourself while celebrating happily. Because I still have to live for the next month, I will rely on the saved wages.

Do you still remember the first time when you were paid your salary? How much did you spend? Do you have any good memories? 

Read Also:

Things you should never do

Things you should never do

 

Things you should never do

1.    Sleep with your confidant.

2.    Marry your lover.

3.    Treat every colleague as a friend.

4.    Go to a friend's company to work.

5.     Reveal your real thoughts in front of the boss.

6.    Trust the boss's promise.

7.    Cannot hide emotions.

8.    Talk loudly on the mobile phone in a crowd.

9.    Get used to making excuses for yourself.

8 sentences that make you mature at least 5 years old

1.    If you don't like your current job, either quit your job or shut up.

2.    Learn to endure loneliness.

3.    Don't be as fragile as glass, be a person with a strong heart.

4.    Control your mouth, know what to say and what not to.

5.    Know how to create opportunities.

6.    If the phone does not ring, you should make a call.

7.    Don't marry hastily.

8.     Write down the things you want to do in your life, put the list in your wallet, and take it out often.

Habits of successful people

1.    Smile.

2.    Simple lifestyle

3.    Do not borrow money from friends.

4.    Say good things about others behind their backs.

5.    Just smile when you hear someone say bad things about others.

6.    Don't let people know all about your past.

7.    Respect people who don't like you.

8.    Be ruthless to things but affectionate to people.

9.    Do more self-criticism.

10.  Cheer for others.

11.  Be grateful.

12.  Learn to listen.

13.  Start with ‘we’ when speaking.

14.  Talk less.

15.  Like yourself.

 

15 Tips for Establishing Networks

1.    Learn to empathize

2.    Learn to adapt to the environment

3.    Learn to be generous

4.    Learn to be low-key

5.    Be sweet;

6.    Be polite

7.    Learn to be grateful

8.    Be punctual

9.    Keep promises

10.  Learn to be patient

11.  Have a normal heart

12.  Learn to praise others 

We must understand when we are young

1.    If you are not brave, no one will be strong for you. 

2.    Children without umbrellas must run harder! 

3.    If you chose the path, you have to walk it even though you need to kneel.

4.    I would rather run and be tripped countless times than walk in a comfortable life. smile proudly even if you failed.

Three Regrets in Life

1.    Can't choose , 

2.    don't insist on choosing,

3.    choose constantly

Three major traps in life

1.    carelessness,

2.    gullibility,

3.    greed

Three major tragedies in life

1.    do not learn when you meet good teachers,

2.    do not make friends when you meet good people

3.    do not grasp good opportunities when you meet them

Three great Incompetence in Life

1.    Do not compete with leaders,

2.    Do not compete with colleagues

3.    Do not compete with subordinates for merit. 

Signs of maturity

1.    No matter how sleepy you are in the morning, you will get up and go to work immediately; 

2.    Like to eat home-cooked meals more than restaurants outside;

3.    Watch news than entertainment news; 

4.    Call friends less often; 

5.    There are fewer and fewer people or things that can make you happy;

Read Also:

The coffee that energizes us is actually quietly stealing our energy

The coffee that energizes us is actually quietly stealing our energy

 
We all love coffee. Even if you don't like its taste, you will like the changes that coffee brings to your body: it makes you more focused and full of energy. But how long do the effects of coffee last? The latest research shows that coffee may not only provide people with energy, but will consume energy.

Coffee: The Culprit That Steals Your Energy

Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. If the term is too complicated, you just need to remember that it does not generate new energy for you, but draws and depletes the energy you already have.

Adenosine is a substance secreted in the brain that acts to make people feel sleepy and regulate sleep. The more adenosine in the brain, the sleepier you are.
In addition, adenosine can also help us reduce inflammation in the body, regulate the heartbeat, and help digestion.

Your body likes regular sleep, so the brain releases adenosine on a 24-hour day and night cycle. If you force yourself to stay up late, you will feel more sleepy because your brain releases more adenosine than usual to help you fall asleep at normal times.
After consuming caffeine, the human brain does not stop secreting adenosine, its receptors are only temporarily inhibited. At this time, your state is very delicate: your body feels tired, but you yourself don't feel tired.

Like an over limit credit card, it can no longer be used after the it reaches a certain amount.
Neuroscientist and Stanford professor Andrew Huberman calls it "sleep hunger." But when the limit is met, it finally triggers the phenomenon of "coffee no longer works", that is, coffee burnout.

How to Avoid Coffee Burnout?
Caffeine is a recreational drug that is in use today.
Maybe someday in the future, it will be locked in the back of the cabinet like alcohol and prescription drugs, and minors are prohibited from touching it. But before that day comes, we need to learn to use caffeine healthily.

The first step is to understand caffeine. Here are three little-known facts about coffee:
The half-life of caffeine is five hours. This means that if you drink a cup of coffee five hours before bed, it is equivalent to drinking half a cup of coffee before going to bed.
While coffee keeps you focused and energized, it can also increase your stress.
Adenosine takes time to wear off in the morning. At the same time, many hormones are released when you wake up in the morning.

With this knowledge, you can improve the frequency of coffee drinking and ensure healthy sleep. Specifically, you can:
Stop drinking coffee ten hours before bedtime to ensure that your body can completely deplete the caffeine before bedtime and prevent it from inhibiting adenosine.
Work off any remaining stress with physical activity. If you feel anxious or tense during the day, try going for a walk or exercising.
Drinking coffee 90 minutes after waking up in the morning will give your adenosine time to wear off before you artificially (caffeine) suppress them.
Coffee is not bad.

For some of us, coffee is a life-enhancing agent that helps us regulate when we spend our energy, thereby helping us take control of our lives.
But it needs to be remembered that coffee is helping people to draw energy, not generate new energy. And all overdrawn things will eventually have to be repaid.
Keep this in mind to really deal with the relationship with caffeine.

Read Also:

After reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" epiphany, I fell into the "rat race trap" for so long

Listen: Podcast

After reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" epiphany, I fell into the "rat race trap" for so long

 

1

In the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad", there is a term called "rat race trap".

The mouse had to run on the wheel in order to eat the cheese in front of him. The faster it goes, the faster the wheels turn. Until the end exhaustion, also can't reach a mouthful of cheese. In fact, if you want to eat cheese, you need to jump up, not run forward.

But the mouse just ran with its head buried in its head, exerting force in the wrong direction, wasting its energy.

Many people are like this mouse, walking forward non-stop, but rarely stop to think. In the busy cycle, they are trapped in the cage of life. After all, the life you want is not accumulated by ineffective efforts. Without deep thinking, all hard work is in vain.

I think such questions have more or less appeared in our minds.

Why do we work overtime until 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, but our colleagues get promoted?

Why do we enrol in many courses and study hard every day but still get little effect?

Why do we pack our schedule so full and we can't grow at all?

Physical effort is just a habitual exercise of muscles, and diligence without thought is actually the greatest laziness.

Efforts without thinking, without structure, without logic, will only lead you into a cycle of fatigue and inefficiency.

Getting rid of low-quality diligence and developing the habit of deep thinking is the first step in life advancement.

2

There is another story in the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad".

There is a village with no water source within a mile radius, and the villagers can only drink the rainwater that falls occasionally.

To solve the water problem, the village selected young men Ed and Bill to be responsible for the water supply, and signed contracts with both of them.

After the contract was completed, Ed couldn't wait to buy two large barrels to carry water from the distant lake for the villagers to use.

However, even if he gets up early and works late every day, it cannot fundamentally solve the water supply problem.

Another young Bill, who disappeared after signing the contract.

Half a year later, he brought back an engineering team and worked hard for a year to establish a complete water supply system.

This method greatly saves labour costs, and the price is much cheaper than Ed.

Soon, the whole village used Bill's water.

In a hurry, Ed called his two sons to carry water even harder, and the price of water dropped even more than before, but in the end he found that he could not compete with Bill at all.

The different circumstances of Bill and Ed reminded me of a story circulating in the Ford Motor Company.

Ford's boss once hired an expert to evaluate the performance of employees.

The expert said after the inspection: "There is a lazy guy who stays in the office all day and wastes your money. Every time I pass by, I see him sitting around with his feet on the table."

The boss laughed when he heard that, "I know this guy is lazy, but he once came up with an idea that saved our company millions of dollars. He put his feet on the table like that when he thought of that idea."

What do these two stories tell us?

Because no matter in life or in the workplace, people often only look at the results, not the process.

Mediocre people always emphasize their own efforts, and then do nothing; while masters do things, they often act after thinking, and speak with results.

Effort is just a "tactic", but developing a global thinking, spreading out the map, and finding the right entry point is the "strategy" that will get twice the result with half the effort.

Therefore, working overtime every day does not make us great people, and working from dawn to dusk does not necessarily make us better.

If a person is not good at thinking, no matter how hard he works, it will be difficult for him to innovate and make breakthroughs.

Only those with sharp vision and advanced mind can be favoured by fate.

What really widens the gap between people is never the degree of effort, but the depth of thinking and the quality of diligence.

3

Chris Bailey, the author of the book "Don't Let Ineffective Efforts Destroy You", was called "probably the most efficient person in the world" by TED. He proposed that there are three elements of high-efficiency life:

Time, energy, focus.

Any efficient life is related to one or more of these elements.

If we don’t have any plans for life and work, and rush all day without any focus, we will lose efficiency due to distraction, and thus fall into the vicious circle of "the busier the poorer".

I think of a survey conducted by Harvard University, targeting a group of young people with similar intelligence, education, and environment.

Studies have found that those who set long-term goals from the beginning have basically become successful people after 25 years;

People with short-term goals also successfully entered the middle class of society;

Those who have no goals are almost at the bottom of society, often unemployed, and rely on social relief to survive.

There is a saying in "University": Make a decision before you move, and you will gain something when you know it.

When a person's goal is clearer, the path to the goal will be clearer.

It is absurd for many people to repeat their busyness day after day, but imagine a different future.

What really makes you stronger is that you can establish a thinking framework and grasp the underlying logic of things.

Learn to manage by objectives and put your energy on the cutting edge in order to maximize your efforts.

Read Also:

Do you own all six types of wealth?

Listen: Podcast

Do you own all six types of wealth?

 

When it comes to wealth, you probably immediately think of money. Money is indeed a type of wealth, but it is not the only form of wealth. Money is only a low-level form of wealth. If you put all your energy on pursuing this low-level form of wealth, you will lose the opportunity to win other forms of wealth.

When it comes to wealth, what do you think of? The top ten richest people in the world? Your relative in Australia has a bigger house, a nicer car, and a cottage on the hill? Or the billionaire CEO of your company? Professional athlete, musician or movie star?

Of course, all of these people are "rich" from a financial standpoint.

But money does not monopolize wealth. The definition of wealth is "a substantial amount of valuable material property or resource", but looking at this definition, money is not listed as the only valuable property or resource.

Which resources you consider valuable is as important as the abundance of the resources themselves. The key is to optimize for the right form of wealth.

Money

Money is the simplest and most obvious form of wealth because it can be quantified.

How much is your annual salary? $100,000.

How much is your house? $500,000.

How much will your child's college tuition cost? $50,000.

How much is your portfolio worth? $250,000.

Forbes magazine keeps track of the world's richest people in real time, so everyone can see how much money the super rich have.

Because monetary wealth is so easy to recognize, it becomes a point of comparison. Money is the only form of wealth that makes you look at your neighbour and say "I'm richer/poorer than him".

Money can become a knee-jerk competition. Just like any other competition, we want to beat our peers. Earn more money. Get more property. Indulge in more fun. Do whatever it takes to win the game.

But there is a point that is often overlooked. At a certain point, money can become an attractive scoreboard, but a poor measure of wealth. Money has diminishing returns.

This makes sense if you stop and think about it. When income is low, extra money can make a huge difference in the way you live. Paying rent will be easier. You will have security. You can also afford to take a vacation or two.

However, as your income continues to increase, you can buy a bigger house, better car, better meals and better clothes, but that's it, you can't do anything new. You're just paying more for a more luxurious rendition of your current lifestyle. If you can pay your bills, spend your money on experiences, and save/invest the rest, then you're doing pretty well. Everything else is icing on the cake.

There's actually a nasty paradox associated with having a lot of wealth:

Some luxuries won't make your life better, but losing them after experiencing them will definitely make your life worse.

Some people put money and wealth first, and are desperate to pursue money and wealth. The biggest problem with this approach is the opportunity cost associated with it. How many hours did it take to increase revenue from $250,000 to $500,000? What about $1 million? What about $10 million? How much do you need to earn? What other forms of wealth would you have to sacrifice to achieve that goal?

Is this really the game you want to win?

Knowledge

Knowledge, like money, is a cumulative form of wealth. However, unlike money, the "knowledge" possessed by people is difficult to compare. A polyglot, a chef, a world-class investor are all knowledgeable, but not in the same form.

Different people have different ways of acquiring knowledge. Someone learned Spanish by not being afraid to speak it, no matter how bad it was. Someone became a master chef by trying a lot of disgusting recipes. Someone became a great athlete by being a rookie for a long time, trying to make a big business, playing a thousand games of chess, exchanging stories with others... all these can help you accumulate more knowledge.

You gain knowledge for working to develop your skills and expertise, and you earn money for using those skills and expertise to help others.

But knowledge is not just a tool used to create wealth, it is wealth itself.

Gaining knowledge should not be viewed solely as a means to help you achieve other goals. Knowledge is a worthy goal in itself.

Travel to broaden horizon

Time

If money is the most obvious form of wealth, time is its opposite. Time is an asset you can't see. Time has no such things as expensive possessions and a good salary to show off. Time is so indifferent that you hardly notice it.

If monetary wealth is best shown through luxuries, the abundance of time is best shown through nothingness.

Money and wealth are shown to the world on scoreboards, but time is measured in an hourglass that no one can see, not even you. As we earn more and more money, monetary wealth increases but time becomes scarcer. When you are the poorest financially, you are the one with the most time, but when we have the time, we rarely notice.

We realize the value of time only when it is almost running out.

In theory, the currency has unlimited upside. The world's richest man, Elon Musk, is now worth more than $200 billion. But one day, someone (maybe Musk!) could be worth $500 billion, or even $1 trillion. There is nothing you can do about this possibility.

Time is just the opposite. Our time is strictly limited, our money generally increases with age, but our time decreases with age. You can't buy more time, and you never know how much time you have left.

If wealth is measured in increments of time, young people are richer than anyone. Of course it would be great to have $100 billion. But if you're young, how many years are you willing to sacrifice for Bezos' fortune?

Or how about we turn the question around? How much do you think Bezos is willing to give to trade places with someone like me who is 25 years old and will never become a billionaire? Maybe all of them. He has pledged to invest billions of dollars in life extension technology.

We tend to be unaware of the presence of oxygen when it’s plentiful, but when it’s scarce we desperately want more, and our sense of time does the same. Once the money is spent, you can earn it again. When your time runs out, it's game over.

Opportunity cost is everything, how much is your hourglass worth?

Health

Health is the cousin of time. Like time, health is seldom thought of when one is healthy. When we are young, we tend to have a lot of health. So we eat and drink, never exercise, it's okay, you're young. We will rejuvenate quickly no matter what.

For example, in college, no matter how hard you mess with your body, you'll probably be fine.

But decisions have compound effects.

In finance, compound interest is a powerful force. Someone who invests an extra $200 a month may not see a difference in the early years, but after 30 years they could be hundreds of thousands of dollars more than someone else.

The clock keeps ticking.

But the power of compound interest is not limited to finance. In fact, its most valuable application is in health.

Inattentiveness to your health when you are young may not notice any effects early on, but as you get older, taking a laissez-faire approach to your well-being can be disastrous. What you eat starts to matter more and more. Whether or not you exercise starts to matter more and more.

As you age, your complexion darkens, your metabolism slows, and underlying health problems become more serious. At this point, the decisions you've made about your health start to snowball.

Like time, we rarely think about it when we have it. But what about when you lose it? Health will become the only thing you can think about. There is a saying that goes, "A healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one wish."

And that patient rarely gets his wish.

When you're broke but healthy, you have countless options. What's the point if you're rich but bedridden? What's the use of having a billion dollars if you have nothing to enjoy?

Relationship

If you lack relationships, all other forms of wealth become irrelevant. What's the use of asking for the money if there's no one to share it with you? Of course, you can go all the way to darkness on the road of single material enjoyment, but this will not bring you a sense of satisfaction.

The value of time and health depends on your ability to spend time with the people you care about. Otherwise, you're wasting your unscheduled schedule and capable body on frivolous distractions.

It's good to have a lot of knowledge, but it's best to share that knowledge with others. The only difference between a master and a hermit is whether there are students or not.

Humans are social animals, and relationships are vital to our psyche. We need people who can laugh and cry together. People were able to share their dreams, stories and fears. You can fall in love and suffer the baptism of falling out of love. Can create new memories. You can drive 1000 kilometers on a road trip together, across the east coast of the United States.

Every little thing we do comes back to relationships.

The greatest value of health is that it gives you choice.

A life rich in all other respects but devoid of relationships can be at best empty and at worst depressing. What's the point of having the world if there's no one to share it with? If it means living in one's castle, do you really want to be king of that castle?

Experience

"The purpose of life is to experience something that you will be nostalgic for later."

I generally agree with this view. Life is about a 90-year period of experience defined by various other smaller experiences. We are fortunate to live in a time when experiences are readily available, more accessible than ever.

You can travel anywhere in the world in 24 hours for less than $1,000. From learning a foreign language to learning exotic recipes, you can learn anything on the internet. For the first time ever, we can literally do anything.

If wealth is for consumption, what better way to spend your wealth of money, wealth of time, wealth of knowledge, wealth of health, wealth of relationships than doing cool things with people you care about?

At the end of the day, our experiences are all we have.

Experiences are our chances to cash in other forms of wealth for something memorable.

Some experiences cost money, but the most valuable experiences are not defined by price tags. I don't remember how much it cost to visit Tromsø, Norway. But what about seeing the Northern Lights? Priceless.

An evening spent with cold beer, loud music, a roaring fire and surrounded by friends is priceless.

Going on road trips across the American West with my best friend was priceless.

Of all the trade-offs a person can make, you will never regret exchanging financial wealth for experiential wealth. But what about missing out on experiences because you're "too busy at work"? It's hardly worth it.

As a resource, money is unlimited, but experiences, like time, are finite.

How often do you have dinner with your grandparents? What about going on a ski trip with your best friend? How many times have you had the chance to visit a new country on a whim? What about learning a new skill you've always been interested in?

Communicating with Argentines in their native language is invaluable.

Money is best used to fund the experiences you want. Go try something fun. The kind that lights a fire in your heart.

Imagine if you spent 40 years maximizing your lower forms of wealth (money) at the expense of minimizing some higher form of wealth (experiences), and waited until your twilight years to recapture the experiences you had missed, it is only in vain.

Our goal should be to have a lot of money and a rich life experience.

When you come to the end of your life, would you rather be able to fondly recall the good times you spent with the people you cared about, or would you be satisfied that you didn't "waste time and money" on these "trivial" pursuits ?

Read Also:

You must have peeled an onion, right?

Listen: Podcast

You must have peeled an onion, right?

 

When you peel the "onion" layer by layer, you will find that it has no core.

This is the opposite of the "avocado" personality, the "onion" personality.

As long as there is a little negative feedback from the outside world, it breaks down inside and feels bad.

There is this person, A.

A has always liked fashion. After graduation, she joined an internationally renowned clothing company and was employed in front-line sales.

When relatives and classmates knew that she had become a salesperson, they despise her because it seems degrading for a graduate student to be a salesperson, putting on shoes and trying on clothes for others!"

Some mean classmates deliberately came to the store to let her serve them, taking the opportunity to put her down.

Although her income was good, she couldn't stand the ridicule of others and chose to resign.

Then she went to a government agency and stayed in an administrative position for ten years.

And the colleagues who were "salesperson" like her at the beginning, one became a company executive and the other became a fashion blogger.

Looking at her boring life day after day, she began to regret it:

"If I didn't give up at the beginning and persisted, I don't know what will happen now?"

One is always the protagonist of his own, and he should not always play a supporting role in other people's dramas.

What others think is good may not be suitable for you; what others despise may not necessarily be wrong.

Others can only judge your life, but they will not pay for your sorrows and joys, let alone be responsible for your life. SO you are the one who can decide for yourself.

Read Also:

The really smart people live only 1% of their lives