Day 546. The promise of credit houses makes is to treat yourself now, pay later. The problem is this promise makes the bank richer and the debtor poorer. What? This is not what your banker told you. No, because your banker has a direct interest to lend you money: to make more money. Nothing’s fundamentally wrong with that or with debt, but depending on what you are purchasing with debt, it will have an effect on you wealth. Want a demonstration? Here’s a simple one.

If you have a car, it’s almost sure you paid it with a credit. If not and paid it in cash, bravo! But for the sake of the demonstration, let’s say you have (or will) paid with a credit. The car of your dreams costs 20,000 dollars (or euros, or pounds, chose your currency). Your financial institution proposes you to purchase it with a 5% interest credit over 6 years. You are lined up to repay 322 dollars per month for 72 months, a total of 23,191 dollars. 6 years later, the value of your car will have drop by close to 65%, and if sold will bring you, let’s say 7,000 dollars. This means this car will have cost you slightly more than 16,000 dollars over 6 years.

Now imagine you set aside 322 dollars per month for 6 years at 2.5% interest annually (less than the 5% for sure, but easily found anywhere). After 72 months, you will have 24,985 dollars interests included (in this case you gave your money to the bank who in exchange pays you interest). With this amount you pay cash your 20,000 dollars car, while having earned close to 5,000 dollars. The question of course is yes, but during 6 years if you needed a car, what did you do? You could have taken public transport, rent a car when needed, or carpool. If you spent less than 16,000 dollars, you have started a virtuous circle that will put you in control and will have your money work for you!

However, beyond the fact that you are now in control, your financial institution will start a different dialogue with you. Yes they paid 2.5% interest on the money you left on your account, but rest assured it will have used this money to lend it to somebody else, generating more than the 2.5% it served you, so net, it has made money and can count on a good customer.

Of course in the example above we should have factored inflation and other factors on car pricing, but even if we complicate the example, the math will stay the same, and it comes to a simple principle: the lender gets richer, the borrower gets poorer. There is one, and only one, exception to this principle and it’s when the loan is contracted to purchase an assets that generates more than it costs. In other words, if your car will allow you to make money, is necessary to make money and the sum you will make covers the price of the repayment, then this debt is a good debt. This is the principle number 2 of the 3 rules I explained in a previous post.

We will see in a following post that this does not apply only to cars or houses, but to other goods, that should always be acquired in cash!

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Day 545. No projects, no plans ever run as expected. You should always expect the unexpected, but not be frozen by the unexpected. It may not happen, however, to avoid really bad surprises, here are 3 simple tips to get ready when the unexpected occur:

1. Change is natural so welcome the unexpected. No need to have regrets, what’s gone’s gone! Be ready to embrace change by being flexible and not surprised.
2. Have plans B ready. When the unexpected strikes, you may need to slightly change directions. Have one or many plans B ready, in all the 3 directions of any project: time, quality and resources. If the unexpected strikes, trigger one of those plans. This may require additional planning, but you won’t regret it.
3. Be a lifetime learner and ensure your team is. When the unexpected strikes, stop, reflect, document and learn. Nothing’s best to learn and grow.

Nobody likes a project that goes in the wrong direction. By embracing those 3 simple principles, you’ll ensure that you can deliver confidently what you forecasted. Not rocket science, just confidence and flexibility.

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Day 544. When I am about to start something or do something new, I am always asked: « Are you ready? » And my answer is invariably: « I don’t know, but I’m going to do it anyway! » If I were to wait to be ready to do something, I would almost do nothing. You can never be ready, but you’ll always have to start. Not ready is an excuse for not doing things that matter, for not producing what you have to, and for turning down in front of your fears.

You only know if you were ready if you try. This means accepting you may not be ready, you may face failure, and you may learn something valuable. Next time you are asked if you are ready, say yes and go for it, who knows, it may work.

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Day 542. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. I am paraphrasing the great Albert Einstein, but this is so true. In a fast changing world, we have no other choices but to embrace change. Trying to resist it is like staying aboard a sinking ship hoping it will stay afloat in the end. Of course change is hard. Change requires we drop activities, behaviors, ideas to start new ones. Change requires we wipe out the status quo.

In the crisis opposing the taxis to Uber in France and in many other places on the planet, we have two systems that collide. It should be a great occasion to rethink the models, to shake old fashioned way to do stuffs, but instead it becomes confrontational, taxis trying to preserve the status quo and their privileges, if any. Competition has always been a driving force to reduce pricing while increasing quality. In France, our paranoid government wants to forbid SFR to purchase Bouygues Telecom to save competition that they recognized behind healthy and a contributing factor for better pricing and quality, while at the same time wants to kill competition in the transportation area by forbidding Uber to operate. Try to understand the logic of those guys stuck in a 19th century mentality.

Taxis have no choices than to slowly disappear if they do not reinvent themselves. I confess I have not taken a taxi in France for years for two reasons: they are awfully expensive (an airport-downtown trip will cost up to three times in Paris what it costs in the US or Dubai for instance), and most of the time the driver is unpleasant. With what happens, I will not be inclined to take a taxi soon.

Of course change is hard, but it is necessary. It’s only by embracing change that we find peace of mind and can smile at what the universe throws at us. As Robin Sharma says: Change is hard at the beginning, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end. Are you ready?