Back before this whole pandemic thing started, I read about a study where researchers estimated that the average American worker only worked about 45% of the time they are at work.
The rest of the time they are taking bathroom breaks, diddling around on Facebook, gossiping about the new memos on all the TPS reports, making flipbooks, shooting spitwads, unbending paperclips, and finishing that donut they bought earlier that morning.
Today?
A lot of those same people are broke, on unempoyment, and are begging for money from the government.
Maybe some of those people still have jobs. I don’t know if they’re still spending so much time goofing around, but I would guess probably not. People are scrambling right now, trying to make ends meet. And, the pressure is forcing people to hustle and find ways to make more money and make that money stretch.
Which brings up an interesting phenomenon.
Recently, I’ve seen a downtick in “work at home” schemes (probably because everyone is working at home now and seeing how unglorious it is), but an uptick in the number of “change your career and make lots of money” schemes.
One such scheme promises graduates of a 6-week course in financial planning that they’ll be financial experts capable of charging other people money for their hard-won knowledge and weeks of experience “in the biz”.
Truly crazy times.
Anyway, not everything out there is a scam.
I’ve seen some truly amazing attempts by people to make extra money. And, in every case, it involved solving a problem that wasn’t being met by government or by filling in a solution that used to be supplied by a business (a business which had to close because of governor’s orders).
Something to think about if you’re on the ropes.
And for those not on the ropes…
If you haven’t gotten your butt in gear yet, now’s the time to insure your savings while you still can.