Pay Attention To Your Signs! (Or else...)

Last weekend I drove to New York to visit some friends and family, as I often do for a nice break. What started out as a potentially fun-filled weekend ended with some not so fun elements, including tons of traffic, a fist fight, coping with Daylight Saving Time, and more. The biggest hurdle of all, though, involved my car.

After leaving a club at 4AM, I offered to drop some friends off to save them the trouble of getting a cab. The problem began when I returned to the awesome parking spot I found down the block and my car was nowhere to be found.

Yep, my car had been towed.

After a quick chat with some people on the street, I called a number they gave me and five minutes later found out where my car was, and how much it was going to cost to get it back.

Needless to say, I wasn't a happy camper, but what could I do? The parking signs were there, however cryptic they might have been, and I didn't read them carefully. There was a lesson to be learned through all of this, though.

Ryan BonaparteJanuary 31, 2014Money, Career, Priorities, People, Passion, Dreams, Change

Your Passions vs. Your Finances

"Follow your passion and you'll be happy!"

That's what a lot of people will suggest. And that's a good suggestion. But it's not a reasonable, thought out course of action.

Besides it being the most vague advice you can give someone, when it comes down to it, there are some very real reasons why that might not be a feasible plan.

You may not want to turn a hobby into a job for fear that it will be corrupted. You may not be good enough with your current skills to be able to charge someone enough to survive on. Or you passion may not have much of an audience at all. If you like making miniature blinds for dollhouses, that's great, but I'm not sure if that's the next big thing. (Though I'm sure you could come up with some way of capitalizing on it.)

The main reason why working your passion can be difficult is and always will be money. And most times, it's because we don't have enough saved up to sustain ourselves while we build something out of nothing.

You can choose not to make a living off of your passions, but don't let your personal finances keep you from following your passions.