The Industrial Revolution smothered the trades. Quality it seemed could never compete with the efficiency and reasonable prices of the assembly line. Bad news for artists, bad news for entrepreneurs and eventually/inevitably it would be bad news for consumers as well.
Surprisingly, even in the lows of this heavy recession, salvation of these simple ways has found an unlikely (if by now a predictable) champion: the internet.
The web has dramatically lowered business entry-barriers, to the point that you can create a reasonable hobby business in 20 minutes a week. Sites like Etsy and Dawanda (comparison info here) take care of the business side. You need only worry about the craft and then the marketing. My friend Kathryn has set up a sweet little greeting cards business while she works full-time as a nurse and as she prepares for a new baby!
Quality and artistry are fighting back.
Money is an emotional thing for most of us. I’ve met wealthy people who still felt they didn’t have enough and relatively poor people who embarrassed me with their generosity. Certain attitudes toward money seem almost hard-wired into people.
There are few ways you can find out which money personality type you have. There is this article and this one and this one which are all interesting But the most insightful might be this one, written by psychologist Kathleen Gurney.
Attitudes toward money seem to be influenced by how we grow up (see Born to Rebel ). Brent Kissel (in this article) says that, “our early experiences with money cause us to cling unconsciously to specific strategies to feel secure and happy about our financial decisions.” Fair enough. But I can hear some subtle bias here against risk-adverse types, those who play it safe. Is such a bias fair?
Certainly, I would like all of us to be rich some day soon. And I’m comfortable with my attitude toward money. (We are pretty involved in trying to build some investments and our strategy seems to be working so far. Fingers crossed.) And I think we can all agree that risk taking generally leads to increased wealth. But does this mean that everyone should be taking risks? It seems as soon as we look at it as a Quality of Life question it’s not so straightforward.
Kathleen Gurney has some good advice here. She says that people make the best use of their money when they are aware of how to constructively use their personal assets and work with their own style of money management.
Update: If you’d like to learn more about investing you might try The Motley Fool.
