The Yuppie Guide to Conquering the Universe
The title says it all and I know, I know, it’s incredibly ambitious. As yuppies (young underpaid professionals) it takes a certain amount of ambition to get to where you ultimately want to be. I’m sure most of you are wondering what “conquering the universe” means, and we’ll explore that in this series of articles. You see, I’ve interviewed a couple of young NOT-underpaid professionals and I’ve learned a thing or two about their world domination plans.
Conquering the universe and world domination has different meanings for different people; for me those two ideas mean freedom. Freedom from wage slavery and the corpo environment. I don’t really hate corpo, per se; it’s just that I don’t think it’s fair that the people who do the most work get the least pay. Other people’s world domination schemes might include winning the lottery, buying a house by the beach and starting a family – all world domination plans are okay (except the real world domination schemes involving overthrowing governments) and the real question is, how do you get from sitting in your cube at the office to sipping piña coladas at your beach house?
Why do I need a World Domination Plan? I’m perfectly happy in my cube.
My friend, who right now we’ll call Millionaire (she’s 28, her net worth is around 3.5 million pesos and she didn’t inherit from a rich uncle), taught me an important lesson when I first interviewed her. She asked me how much the company I used to work for paid me, and since she just turned my self-confidence into a rotting pile of refuse, I answered her meekly. Then she asked, “How often does your salary increase and by how much?” To which I replied, “Uh, once a year. 5 percent increase.”
She smiled at that and continued to interview me instead of the other way around. “How much is yearly inflation?” Then it dawned on me, Shit. Inflation was 12% as far as I knew and I realized what she was trying to tell me. With inflation at 12%, my 5% salary increase gets trumped every year.
I won’t mince my words, my first thoughts after the realization was, OH MY GOD, I’M SCREWED. How will I be able to buy an island, travel the world, and retire by the time I’m 40? At that rate, I’ll be working until I’m 65 then live on my measly government pension.
Millionaire explained that aside from the day job, you’ll need to find some other source of income to keep yourself out of the red, unless of course you plan to save your salary by living in a shoebox and eating boiled kamote for the rest of your life. If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I guess this doesn’t apply much to you, but as Millionaire always says, “Money goes away pretty quickly when you aren’t paying attention.”
The Plan
I won’t tell you what you should do, I have enough trouble deciding what I should do; what we’ll do here in YuppieUniverse is to let you know the options out there, both online and offline. It would take a couple of articles and we’ll keep you informed as to what’s out there and what the risks are, among other things you should know.
Be warned though, that most of the things we’ll be laying out will require time, energy, and effort – in short, work. Yes, we know it’s the ugly W word, but we’re sorry to say that you won’t gain anything by doing nothing.
Did you like this post? Let us know.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Margaret