Your Career as an Investment Asset
September 2, 2009 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
Often, we don’t think of our careers as investment assets. However, last week I spoke with Stuart Lucas and was interested when he mentioned one of the things to consider when trying to recession-proof your personal finances is your career.
“Think about your career as an investment asset. It’s part of your portfolio,” Lucas told me. Lucas is the chairman of Wealth Strategist Network, LLC. He is putting on a four day personal wealth management course in November at the University of Chicago, and he is the author of the book Wealth.
“Your career can be a diversifier of risk,” Lucas continued. “Think about the correlation between your career and the stock market, for example. If there is a high correlation, you probably already know that you are more likely to be out of work during a recession. And this happens as your investment portfolio plunges. It’s not a good combination.”
On the other hand, there are some careers that are basically recession-proof. “Service providers, and health care professionals, can weather recessions better than many retail workers,” Lucas pointed out. “You still need dentists, even when the recession is on.”
I find this concept fascinating. I never really thought about my career as an investment asset. I mean, I know that I have money coming in for what I do, but I didn’t really think of it in terms of how helpful it is during times of recession. And apparently my current career is a good choice. People still need Web and news content, even now. Since the recession, I’ve gotten more work. As companies look to cut costs, they outsource to freelancers who do not need benefits and who cost loss overall. It’s opened some opportunities for me, and I feel blessed.
What about your career? Is it something that is still needed during a recession?
Image source: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons
The idea makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve had Moshe Milevsky’s Are You a Stock or a Bond? on my reading list for a while now, but I keep not getting to it.
I guess the moral of this story is don’t be a commodity unless you’re made of gold.
Readers interested in this topic would be interested in http://www.careerassetmanagement.com
Fee-only financial planner Michael Haubrich has been speaking about the importance of managing your career as a financial asset for nearly four years. The web site has a wealth of information.
Kudos to Mr. Lucas for making this point.
LOL. :D
I haven’t read it, either. But it does look like a great, interesting read.