Connections to Health - It's all a matter of choice.

THE ISHTA HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTRE

CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

It's all a matter of choice.

The concept that we are all better off than our parents is a very debatable subject. I don't dispute that technology has changed our lives but I don't accept that it is all for the better, far from it.

Our parents had a much better lifestyle than we do even if they didn't have mobile phones, widescreen televisions and iPods.

For a start usually only one of them went to work.

The politics of working women is a minefield I intend to avoid at all costs. My argument is not about whether a woman's place is in the home, my argument is about the issue of choice, and these days very few people have that choice.
Choice and freedom are the same thing.

If a young couple want to buy a property then it is inconceivable that it could be done on a single wage. The woman, or indeed the man, has no choice as to whether they work or not.

In my parent's day that was not the case.

My mother could have worked if she wanted to but she chose to stay at home and look after the family, although she did go back to work when we were all safely in secondary school. These days that choice has been removed. If a young couple does buy a place together they can forget all about having children in the near future, both salaries are required to fund the huge mortgage.

Then there is the issue of what type of property you would like to live in and where you would like to live.

Again, forget any aspirations of a family home with space to bring up two or three kids. Who can afford a "family home" these days?

Most young couples at best can only afford a small apartment, hardly the ideal environment in which to raise 2.4 kids and a dog.

Whilst modern technology enables us to do jobs much easier - washing machines, tumble dryers, and microwave ovens immediately spring to mind; in reality these things have not improved our quality of life.

In the last forty years it is quality time, more than anything, that has been lost, and no amount of technology seems to be changing this.

For me, the other thing that the modern generation suffers from most, and do not seem to even notice, is deplorable customer service. As business has fought to hang on to ever diminishing profits the only way it has been able to compete is by reducing the level of service it provides to its customers. Whatever you buy these days you will be treated like something on the bottom of the supplier's shoe.

Have you tried speaking to your bank recently? Have you tried speaking to your phone supplier recently? Have you tried to return a product that was faulty recently? Have you tried to find anyone who can help you at your local warehouse suppliers recently?
Yes, I know loads of choice when you come to shop, but zero customer service.

And as customers we are making the situation worse. We are driving suppliers to cut costs and reduce customer service by what we are willing to pay.

We may think it clever going to look at the latest digital camera in our local shop and then ordering it online to save ourselves thirty quid. But next time we come to buy something from our local shop, with all its knowledge and years of experience, it simply won't be there to help us.

Ah, you say, but look at the improvements in health care since our parent's day.

I agree that medicine has made incredible advances over the last forty years but can you honestly say that visiting a hospital, any hospital, in England is a better experience than the one your parents received?

These days of course our lives are enhanced and enriched because we have the luxury of the Internet and what a boom that is.

I receive over one hundred spam emails a day and my provider tells me there is nothing they can do about it. I am inundated with porn and offers of Viagra and surely it's only a matter of time before a virus takes the entire system down. Fraud is rife and identity theft and credit card cloning is something our parents never had to cope with.

Then we have computers to speed up our businesses. I run my own business and have no doubt that any time saving benefits are outweighed by the time I spend on IT issues, fixing bugs, upgrading software, upgrading hardware and all the rest of it.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a complete Luddite, and those of you who know me know I'm a bit of a geek on the side. I do appreciate the benefits that the Internet brings but I can assure you it does not improve the quality of my life in the way people claim. I expect the technology to work, often rely on the technology to work, and when it doesn't I get angry and frustrated.
So where am I going with this?

Well it all comes back to financial freedom, indeed freedom at any level, not just financial freedom. Reading through everything I have written so far it is clear that the one thing all these issues have in common is loss of freedom; loss of freedom because there is a loss of choice.

Ultimately freedom is about having choice and that is what is being eroded every single day of our lives.

You may claim that you have more choice than your parents ever did but I would argue that you have lost more than you have gained. The thing you have lost most is time.

Trapped in a motorway jam, stuck in a queue in Sainsburys, trying to speak to a real person about my internet connection, pressing my way through endless menus on a phone call only to be told "Your call is important to us and you are number seventeen in the queue", all adds up to the same thing.

Quality of life in this country has gone rapidly downhill in the last twenty years and that is the primary reason so many people are interested in property overseas.

But this isn't just an episode in "Grumpy Old Men".

What I hope to point out is the fact that if you want to change the quality of your life then you have to take control and do something about it yourself.

I do not believe that you can work your way to a better lifestyle by working harder, working smarter or by working longer. We have been doing that since the phrase was first coined in the 1980's and it hasn't improved our lives at all. We cannot improve our wealth by working more than we do. Both parents are already out working and the kids are being palmed off to child minders, crèches, nannies and nurseries.

To achieve financial freedom you have to have a source of income that does not require you to work any more than you do already and that is why I consider generating a residual income as a route to financial freedom.

I appreciate that it will not get me out of the traffic jams, it will not get me out of the endless bureaucracy we all endure and it will not make BT provide a service that is even close to average.

But it will enable me to work less and have more time off. It will give me time. It will give me choice. It will mean our son can afford a decent house when he gets married and it will mean I start to get back some of the choices that my parents took for granted.
What is a residual income?

A residual income is one which pays you whether you work or not. Royalties are an example of a residual income. You do the work once but you keep on getting paid on that work long after you've finished working. But hang on; don't we have to be able to create something to get royalties?

There is a way for ordinary people to put the power of royalties to work for them without having to write, sing or invent, and further more it doesn't require a large amount of money to begin with either. It does require some time and effort though.

Want to find out more about this form of residual income?
Click here.

If you want more information after that then talk to Allyn or Sue.