Most people don’t manage their income. They bank it and spend it. This is obviously crazy.

Some people do try to manage their income by budgeting. This typically means that you look at what your income is likely to be. You subtract mandatory expenses. Then you make spending decisions based on what’s left.

“Hmmm… I’ve got $2,800 coming in this month. The mortgage is $1,400. The utilities will be around $300. I’ve got to pay $200 for the minimum on my credit cards. That leaves $900. Oh, but I forgot the car payment. That’s another $250. So I’ve got $650 left. That should be okay.”

 But what about that grinding noise the dishwasher is making? Or the $200 you promised you’d lend to your brother? And wait! Isn’t your anniversary next Tuesday?

Making rough mental calculations is not a smart way to manage your money. If you do it very conservatively, you may keep up with expenses. But it’s unlikely you’ll ever have money left over for saving and investing. Which means you’ll have very little chance of increasing your wealth.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Creating a realistic budget should take only about an hour the first time you do it. Then a half-hour or so each month to keep it up to date.

How to Set Up a Realistic Monthly Budget

I remember the day that my older boys and I had a breath-holding contest. It was my idea. I had just been trounced by the two of them in an underwater-propulsion contest. (Imagine human torpedoes bouncing off pool walls.)

“Holding our breath? You just want to do something you can win at,” No.2 son Patrick astutely pointed out. (I had apparently abused them with my breath-holding-gold-medal-at-Club-Med story several times.)

“Chicken?” I cleverly replied.

They relented. And I handily won the first round. But my time was only 65 seconds, not Club Med gold level. Two more rounds followed. I maintained a slight lead. Our times were 1:10, 1:25, and 1:30. Then, on the fourth round, something surprising happened. Patrick held his breath for 1:50 and beat us all!

It was an astonishing feat – 25 seconds better than his till-then best.

If you have normal lungs and have no experience holding your breath you can easily do it for up to about a minute. After that, it gets uncomfortable. At about a minute and a half, your lungs feel as if they might explode. Time slows. Each consecutive second lasts longer. Getting to a minute and 50 seconds meant Patrick had to endure an awful lot of pain.

Can you guess what happened next?

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall – Think of it, ALWAYS.”

Mahatma Gandhi

The phrase “end of days” – once so silly to me – whispers from the shadows of my mind.

For so long it was global warming – abstract and years away – and the occasional drought or storm. Now we have hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and forest fires, one after another.

The frightening but mostly remote threat of Islamic terrorism now seems like a secondary concern as our president and his North Korean counterpart threaten each other like angry schoolboys but with nuclear annihilation in the balance.

And that’s not to mention the mass murders within our borders.

We are living in a world where murder and mayhem are commonplace. Where the horror of a real war seems not just possible but imminent. And while we wait hundreds die every day.

Yet most of us must go about our daily routines. I do. But with a slightly different feeling in my gut. An alien emotion. I feel vulnerable.

I suppose it’s how Israelis and Palestinians feel. Notwithstanding the constant threat of terrorism, war, and even annihilation, they find for themselves a new normal. A way to do the things we’ve always done in the USA without fear: working, shopping, eating, and even attending outdoor sporting and musical events.

It’s unlikely that the massacres and acts of terrorism will subside unless we do something different than we’ve done so far. Which has mostly been to spend money stupidly. Stupidity, they say, is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

As for the natural disasters… it’s impossible to say with certainty whether they will continue or abate. But so long as they continue, we can be certain that this shadow of doom will be upon us.

The big threat, of course, is World War III.

Let’s talk about one of my dumbest weaknesses: the fear of asking for help.

It’s dumb but it’s also interesting because it has lots to do with power and politics.

Let’s start with an obvious observation: This phobia is primarily a male thing. Most of the men I know have it. Most women I’ve known don’t even understand it.

Like most men, I don’t even like to ask directions when I’m in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I’d rather drive around aimlessly until I happen to hit on the right way. Asking directions makes me feel submissive. And I don’t like to feel submissive because I live in a world where submitting is a disadvantage.

When you submit, you relinquish power. And power, in the competitive, male-dominated business world, is the most valuable currency.

A good resource on this subject is Deborah Tanner. She’s a psychologist who writes about how men and women communicate. Her books have titles like Why What I Said You Didn’t Listen to Because What You Said I Already Said Yesterday. I would be interested to hear what she has to say about asking for help. I’d bet she’d agree with me.

If you are a woman in business, you may not recognize that asking questions about what you’re doing is a double-bladed proposition. On the one hand, it may endear you to the men you work with because they will like the implicit flattery. On the other hand, the asking itself is an indication (to the “male” psyche) that you are at least momentarily willing to play a submissive role.

Put differently, you should recognize that each time you ask a question you may be giving away a little bit of power. If you ask enough questions, you risk giving up the standing you’ve worked so long to achieve.

I am speaking in broad strokes to make a point. There are questions that do not yield power. And there are times when you will give a little (by asking a submissive question) in order to give a man the power he needs. But to ask questions without realizing the effect is to put yourself in an unnecessarily weak position.

I’m working my way through this as I write. It’s not something I’ve already figured out. So bear with me if I move back and forth a bit.

Questioning Your Power… Powering Your Questions

We are talking about power, generally. And about how men deal with it, specifically.

Contrary to what some would have you believe, most men are not brutes that think simply and mostly with their penises. They can be (and usually are, in business situations at least) subtle and sophisticated creatures. This is certainly true when it comes to passing around power. It’s not just about grabbing and pushing. It’s not King of the Mountain.

It is not stretching the truth to say that most men want as much power as they can get. (This could be said of women too, but that’s for another essay.) But because men have long been the primary brokers of power, they have learned that it is difficult, if not impossible, to simply grab power as they go. They realize that they are competing in an arena where thousands, if not millions, of other men are doing the same thing.

When two competitive men meet for the first time, they rarely launch into head butting to see who is dominant. Instead, they engage in a “feeling out” discussion.

They are primarily interested in discovering each other’s strengths and weaknesses in many different areas: raw intelligence, emotional intelligence, analytic skills, speaking ability, charisma, humor, and, of course, money and toys and famous friends.

Like boxers in the first round, men will verbally jab and shift, feinting and parrying, trying to discover who is the better (a) businessman, (b) moneymaker, (c) athlete, (d) intellect, (e) talker, (f) comedian, etc. Their questions will be so casual (almost to the point of being banal) that a woman listening in might think nothing is being communicated at all.

My first real job was as “backseat wiper man” at the Rockville Center Car Wash on Long Island. I was 14 and happy with the $1.25 an hour they paid me. A couple of years later, when I had a summer job as a housepainter’s assistant in swank Hewlett Bay Harbor, I became an “entrepreneur.”

What happened was this. My friend Peter and I were scraping the shingles on a big yellow house when the lady of the house, a Mrs. Bernstein, came out and asked for Armando, our boss. Armando’s routine was to drop us off at the work site at 7:00 a.m. and disappear until 5 or 6 in the evening.

We were left to do the work, with virtually no experience and only Armando’s advice on watering down the paint and “dry rolling” the second coat to guide us. (Dry rolling is when your painter pretends to be giving you a second coat when, in fact, his roller is dry. This allows him to get the job done twice as fast and save a bundle on the cost of paint.)

“I’m onto your boss, Mrs. Bernstein said. “How much does that cheap bastard pay you?” We told her. She harrumphed and disappeared inside. When she came out, she announced, “I just fired that good-for-nothing. But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be here Monday morning. I’ll pay you an extra dollar an hour to finish this job properly.”

The point of this little story is to illustrate how I accidentally started working for myself. (Some other time, I’ll tell you what happened when Armando discovered our duplicity.)

I just fell into it. And I loved it. I although I didn’t stay in the painting business very long, the experience of having my own business became a habit that continued, with a few brief exceptions, for the rest of my life.

The stories that are told about entrepreneurs are about men and women with dreams. People who imagine building and selling better mousetraps, who risk all their money and time to make those dreams come true.

My story is not nearly as dramatic. And that’s probably why it’s seldom told. But it’s not a bad way to begin.

What Peter and I did, unwittingly, was to start a business by “knocking off” the business we worked for.

And this is not a terrible idea. (Well, that depends on how you do it.) In fact, it’s probably the easiest and surest way to become an entrepreneur. And I’ll bet it’s the most common way as well. Way more common than having the dream.