Wednesday, September 20

Matti's First Law on Income

I think this is exactly the forum where to publish my First Law on Income:

No matter how much money you make, at the end of the month your balance is always zero.

1st Corollary: Unexpected income is always neutralized by unexpected expenses.

Practical corollary: If you thought you could save some money this month, at the end of the month you will notice that you have no money left to save.

7 comments:

Andrés said...

Hi Mati,
Can I add a possible counter argument?

If you have incurred in some debt the previous month, expected income won't suffice to balance your account.

carolina said...

oh god!!!
then this is not exclusive fact that happen to girls! :-P
ok this might be a silly relieved of my situation ;-)

however, this law can be really call as an universal one, which doesn't know borders, or genders, cultures, status, location, etc.
amazing!

matti said...

Anders [sic], you've correctly identified a flaw in the law: it really does not work with negative income.

Justus said...

Scientists have their own kinds of scientific needs because we spend the first ten or fifteen years of our professional lives working for peanuts. I recently read a good article (Young Scientists Need Firm Plan to Make Up for a Late Start) about personal finance for scientists:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5792/1454

One of their better suggestions is that one one gets a raise, your lifestyle shouldn't go up, but you should invest the extra in savings. Right.

Justus said...

Correction: "economic", not "scientific" in first sentence;

Andrés said...

Matti [sic][sic],

Gotta run and ask for my money back from the Finnish course. If I don't learn any Finnish, I will at least save some pennies at the end of the month.

matti said...

Justus, how the hell did that article make it into the Science magazine? I'm puzzled.