Misrepresenting the reality of the labour market
Unemployment rises slightly in Catalonia in July, despite the fact that the employment record has been maintained. But can we trust the reliability of the official data? Are there inactive workers who should be counted as unemployed?
Catalonia has registered an upturn in unemployment after five consecutive months of a downward trend. According to data published by the Ministry of Labour, during July, the Catalan labour market added 1,612 more unemployed people (+0.49%) than in June. Despite this slight increase in unemployment, it remains the lowest unemployment figure since the 2008 crisis.
Currently, there are a total of 331,356 unemployed people, but in the last year, the total number of unemployed has been reduced by 10,035 people, 2.94% less. Compared to 2022, there are 103,185 more contracts, which is equivalent to a 2.8% increase. In total, there are 3.75 million workers in Catalonia and an unemployment rate of 8.44%.
The unemployment figures for Spain as a whole also reflect the best figures for 15 years. The Spanish economy continues to create jobs and reduce unemployment for the fifth consecutive month, although the pace slowed in July to below the historical average. The active population increases to 23.8 million people and the number of employed exceeds 21 million, another record high.
Unemployment stood at 11.6%, a fall of 11.7 points, after 365,300 people found work in the second quarter of the year, adding 595,614 people to Social Security since January. On the other hand, the number of unemployed registered at the offices of the public employment services fell by 10,968 people in July, -0.41% compared with the previous month, to a total of 2.68 million.
Inactive workers who are not registered as unemployed
In March 2022, the latest labour reform came into force, one of the main objectives of which was to change the production model, moving from temporary to permanent contracts in order to reduce temporary employment and precariousness. Therefore, work and service contracts disappeared, while the possibility of temporary contracts was restricted to very specific situations that cannot exceed 90 days worked per year.
In exchange, it was proposed that companies should use fixed-term contracts so that people doing seasonal work would not have to worry about whether their contract would be renewed after a period of inactivity and would have the same rights as workers with a permanent contract.
Despite the benefits for employees that this type of contract brings, it has the counterpart that workers who were previously considered unemployed are no longer counted as unemployed. In other words, when an employee with a fixed-term contract enters a period of inactivity, he or she receives unemployment benefits, but is not counted as unemployed, but is considered a “jobseeker with an employment relationship”.
This is a significant number of people who, in Catalonia alone, last year accounted for 5.7% of all workers affiliated with Social Security in Catalonia under this type of contract. If we take figures for the whole of Spain in December 2022 and January of this year, they were equivalent to 443,078 and 660,000 unaccounted jobseekers.
Obviously, the official data do not include the people who are looking for work but who are not registered with the SOC or the SEPE, either because they are self-employed, because they do not make any profit, or because they are part of the underground economy. Nor is it specified how many people work part-time, not because they want to, but because they cannot find another full-time job.
And it is true that these figures are difficult to account for, but more transparency in the data related to discontinuous permanent workers does not require any effort, but the simple will to reduce the divergence between the reality of the labour market and the official rhetoric, an unavoidable necessity if we really want to evaluate the effectiveness of employment policies.
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May Day was historically associated with pagan festivals linked to spring until the Second International established May Day as a labour holiday. It did so in 1889 to commemorate the bloody struggle of American workers for the eight-hour working day.
The fact that International Workers’ Day is celebrated on 1 May has its origins in the American workers’ struggle for a shorter working day, which in the second half of the 19th century often stretched to 16 hours.
As the capitalist system took hold in the large industrial cities of the United States against a backdrop of high unemployment, workers’ working conditions had become increasingly harsh. Faced with this situation, the American Federation of Labor called for a general strike to begin on 1 May 1886 to demand the eight-hour workday.
Workers’ repression
On 3 May, the protests in Chicago turned violent when the police acted extremely harshly against the workers as they demonstrated. The next day, a rally held in the city’s Haymarket Square turned bloody during police intervention. A bomb exploded among the ranks of the uniformed officers, although historians are unclear whether they or the workers were the target, killing seven policemen. The officers then opened fire on the demonstrators, killing several and injuring hundreds.
As a result, a trial was held and eight men were convicted for the action. Four of them ended up on the gallows, although no evidence was presented linking them to the bombing. Nor was the international campaign to save their lives of any use. The words of August Spies, one of the condemned men, just before his execution were prescient: “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today”.
Recognition of the workers’ struggle
The Second International established 1 May as a labour holiday in 1889, giving rise to today’s International Workers’ Day. Paradoxically, the United States, the country where the events took place, wanted to dissociate this date from the workers’ movements. That is why President Grover Cleveland had Labour Day celebrated in September.
Prior to the Chicago events, May Day in the United States and parts of Europe was a date marked to celebrate the exuberance of spring in rural areas. The origin of this holiday can be traced to ancient Roman practices of celebrating spring flowering.
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Do we live in a meritocracy, where effort is rewarded? Does the social lift really work? Numerous studies question whether people’s socio-economic success depends on their merits or whether it is predetermined by the privileges granted by their place of birth or social class.
The saying that the future is in our own hands, which we have heard so often from our elders, is in question. At least if we do not belong to a wealthy family. An Esade study shows that equality of opportunity in Spain is a fallacy: it is 24 times easier to end up in the top 1% of the population if you come from one of the families with the highest income than if you belong to one of those with the lowest.
The situation in Catalonia is much better than in Andalusia or the Canary Islands, as it offers the highest level of absolute and relative intergenerational mobility in the sample, with rates similar to Scandinavia. But, even so, the social lift is clearly out of kilter.
A contested model
After leaving behind feudal society, which was made up of rigid estates, bourgeois society, based on theoretical equality before the law, was supposed to allow people from the lower classes to progress socially if they worked hard enough. Traditionally, education was the main way for the lower and middle classes to move up the ladder. However, more and more experts point out that education no longer guarantees anything and that meritocracy does not exist.
The idea that effort takes precedence over privilege in our society is fundamental to legitimising Western liberal political and economic systems. To maintain the established social order, most individuals must believe they can get ahead if they try hard enough.
However, as Harvard Law Professor Michael Sandel warns, “the first problem with meritocracy is that opportunities are not really equal for everyone“. In fact, in the so-called Ivy League universities, which include eight of the most prestigious in the United States, there are more students who belong to the top 1% of the country’s wealthiest families than to the bottom 60%.
Daniel Sanabria Lucena, Professor of Psychology at the University of Granada, adds that in reality “the best predictor of academic performance and later professional success is not cognitive performance, it is the socio-cultural context, that your parents have money.
The adventure of entrepreneurship
The success stories of young entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, who founded Apple in his garage, have become popular. However, these are not representative cases, but highly unusual, stories that only happen to one person in a million. Moreover, in many of these cases, there are determinants of success that go beyond merit and personal effort.
Research has shown that the most common characteristic among entrepreneurs is access to capital, either through family or contacts that facilitate financial stability. Rather than a genetic inclination, it is often money and a safety net that enables entrepreneurs to take risks.
In fact, famous research by economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald indicates that personality measurements and psychological test scores do little to predict who will run their own business. In reality, “it’s the start-up capital that matters,” they state emphatically in their study.
In this regard, the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which analyses entrepreneurship around the world, warns that businesses are often started with money from family, friends and colleagues. And it should be noted that many startup founders do not draw a salary for some time, something few people can afford.
The rich of yesterday and today
It seems that the wealth of family dynasties is perpetuated over time much longer than previously thought, as research by Italian economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti suggests. By testing intergenerational mobility and wealth distribution in Florence by comparing records from 1427 with those of 2011, they found that the wealthiest Florentine families still had the same surnames almost 600 years later. And other studies suggest that this is not a phenomenon unique to Tuscany.
Individual effort is no guarantee of success for young people today. A Spanish government report even acknowledges that “being born into a low-income family conditions educational and development opportunities much more than in other European countries”. Poverty is increasingly becoming a cage with no way out for a significant part of the population.
While qualifications and specialised training generally increase employability and average income, most analyses show that those sections of the population that are born into a social position tend to live and die in that position.
Indeed, young people have seen their present ignored and their future mortgaged. In recent years, when it comes to cutting large budget items, education has fared much worse than health and pensions. As a result, the main dynamo of the social lift is squeaking more than ever. And the amount of public debt they will have to pay off in the coming years has skyrocketed.
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Sometimes it is not easy to find the terms “ethics” and “business” together. It is popularly believed that the essence of one eliminates the other and in this we justify the lack of a network of companies that are truly committed to guaranteeing conditions, but society has changed and needs the working environment to change as well. A paradigm shift where company dynamics put in place fairer structures for all, for example, could be one of the ways to change the working environment.
When we talk about ethics in business, we basically concentrate on the ethical “choice” between possible options for a concrete and defined problem. We like to think that when faced with a problem, there are several options, and we can rank them from very unethical to very unethical. Therefore, it all boils down to using ethical criteria, ranking the options, and choosing the most ethical of the possible options. Thinking that this is possible and trying to deal with business ethics in this way gives us peace of mind, but it is a false security. It implicitly leads to the conclusion that all problems have ethical and unethical solutions, and that the simple fact of choosing the right decision criteria will lead us unequivocally to choose options from the group of ethical solutions.
Ethics as an isolated subject
The worst thing comes when we want to do business’ ethics training thinking this way, then the mess can be monumental, as well as the frustration afterwards. And if we look at most business training, ethics is a simple “little pill” that is given outside the core subjects, as if the manager can separate the decisions that need “ethics” from those that do not. In highly technical decisions, this may be possible, but in most decisions the ethical part is inseparable from the unethical part.
But in management training there is a tendency towards a curious specialisation. Ethics courses are held separately and many managers believe that they will receive the basic prescriptions that will enable them to make ethical choices from a range of possible options. The very fact of taking a business ethics course leads to the simple thought that there is an ethical painting page that automatically transforms solutions into ethical solutions. The manager may think that in this specialised training he or she will learn to paint any decision in a rosy colour. In reality it is the way one approaches the problem and the justification behind it, if the options are exhaustive, that the real ethics lie.
Working on empathy also with employees
Thus, ethics is not only to be found in any given choice between several options, but also in the very definition of the existing business problem. And also in which options we consider as a possible solution to the specific problem. For example, let us imagine that we have considered that we have two options: to dismiss or not to dismiss an employee. What we should do is to take a step back and look at what we want to dismiss. We define the problem and we see we have a member of staff who is always late. But we have to go one step further and find out why he is late, and somehow do something to compensate for his lateness. Also the implications of the fact that he is late: does it hurt anyone, does it affect the smooth running of the company? And once the problem has been defined, we should look at the possible options to solve it (not simply to fire or not to fire). It does not seem that dismissal is the only option. A change of working hours, a reprimand, a warning that being late affects productivity, and a long list of other options could also be considered.
It seems quite clear that the ethical component of managerial action is crucial to the whole process: how we define the problem, what possible solutions we propose, and how we choose the most appropriate one. Ethics cannot be reductionist and go straight to the choice. But it must also be transversal and permeate all business management disciplines. Reducing ethics to a mere ethical choice strips the manager’s task bare. It makes the manager less complete and his or her task is not shown in all its importance. It dwarfs him or her and also dwarfs the result of good management: the common good in capital letters.
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The general rise in prices is complicating the finances of many households. It is becoming increasingly difficult to balance the books to make ends meet and even more difficult to dedicate part of our income to savings. In view of this situation, here are eleven tips to improve household finances.
- Apply the 50/30/20 rule. This first piece of advice is very simple. It is about spending 50% of our salary on basic needs (light, water, rent, mortgage, telephone, food, studies, and so on), about 30% of our salary on leisure (out-of-home breakfasts or lunches, holidays, gifts, and so on), and the rest, the remaining 20%, it goes to savings.
- Cancel unnecessary subscriptions. To how many digital platforms are we subscribed? Do we use them all? Should we continue to pay them? What about that subscription to that magazine we never read? All automatic subscriptions must be reviewed, and we must choose whether they are necessary and useful for us to continue paying. Today there are several online content platforms that are legal and free, you just have to look them up on the Internet. And remember that libraries are also a major source of books and also audiovisual content.
- Review your electricity, gas, and phone contracts. We need to look very carefully at the contracts we have with the various electricity and gas companies and the type of contract we have for our mobile and home telephones. This is one of the factors that makes us spend money without being aware of the total expenses at the end of the year, as these are expenses without which we cannot live, but we can indeed reduce them.
- More meals at home. Reducing the number of times we go out to eat or buy take-away food can become a very good source of savings. We must not stop going to restaurants either, but we must reduce meals outside, especially if our family is large; our pocket will appreciate it.
- Reuse. When something gets damaged, see if you can repair it and extend its life before throwing it into the rubbish. Buying second-hand clothes, books, furniture, and even household appliances is also a good saving tool.
- Avoid impulsive shopping. One of the main reasons why we do not make good use of our money is compulsive shopping. From now on, when you want something, give yourself time to think about whether you really need it. You will find out that you do not need much of what you want to buy.
- Compare prices. How many times have you bought a mobile phone, for example, and the next day you see an offer for the same product in another shop? That’s not comparing. We must learn to compare everything we buy, including food when we go to the supermarket or when we buy in superstores.
- Use the car less frequently. The car is an expense many people cannot do without, but we can reduce it. If possible, try to share a car or make use of the means of public transport. As far as possible, use a bicycle, and above all, use your legs, for walking is healthy and free.
- Choose a good financial institution. How many credit cards do we have? Do we need to have so many? What commissions does our financial institution charge us? We think it is enough to have a financial institution that supports us because that is where we keep our money, we receive our salary and we are charged all our expenses, as well as where we pay our bills. But we have to check if this financial entity helps us to have a good personal economy, or if, on the contrary, we need a change. Nowadays, there are many financial institutions with tools that help you to control your expenses and at the same time help you to save: let’s choose a good financial institution for our future.
- Adapt to your income. If you earn a certain amount, do not do more than your economy can afford. You do not have to go all out; make responsible use of your money according to your earnings.
- Be far-sighted. We should analyse the evolution of our expenses in recent months to see where our money is going and where we can cut back. Given the current inflationary situation, in some cases, it will be necessary to apply a “war economy” depending on how we foresee the evolution of income and expenses.
- Money does not create happiness, we know this already. But we can transform our money into a tool that can bring peace of mind to our personal economy. Given the current inflationary situation, in some cases, it will be necessary to apply a “war economy” depending on how we foresee the evolution of income and expenses.
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Women hold only 34% of managerial positions in Spain. An insufficient number that has brought to light a new leadership, in female key, which breaks and weakens more and more social barriers.
Spain establishes, by law, that people of the same sex should not exceed 60% in private management positions. It seeks what, in the words of the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, would be a “perfect equality that does not admit power and privilege for some or incapacity for others”. In practice, however, the figure is blurred and this purpose remains a challenge. Since women entered universities in 1910, they have encountered the paradox that, despite having the same education, they cannot access the same positions.
Female leadership: reinvent the future
A working life marked for generations by male bosses and which, little by little, as the figures show, opens the door to the other half of society. And while the difficulty of accessing certain positions remains, family life reconciliation remains a challenge and the pay gap a reality, more and more women are taking the reins of their professional lives and, therefore, of their life. Female leadership brings to light this revolutionary spirit which, far from the patterns hitherto marked, claims that power can also be conscious, transformative, and sustainable.
Entrepreneurship and sorority: leadership takes new forms
Talking about female leadership is often talking about entrepreneurship. The observatory conducted by the company Extraordinaria in 2020 found that 58% of entrepreneur women did it out of necessity. This figure can make us think of circumstances such as the difficulty of promoting within companies, the impact of family life reconciliation or motherhood on working life, or the exclusion from the market that many women of a certain age suffer. The causes are many, and the answer is clear: if they cannot follow the path marked by society, they will make their own path.
This is the case of Gemma Fillol, who has shown from her experience that entrepreneurship becomes leadership. She is currently the CEO of Extraordinaria, the entrepreneurship and feminine leadership network that connects more than 50,000 women in Spain. Based on the figures in the study, she points out that “women work for different reasons than men. In fact, one of the main fears of entrepreneur women is not billing but not being able to handle everything. In the end, it is the here and the now that moves us. At Extraordinaria we observe what these behaviours are and how we can help them. How to create sorority”.
Society remains deeply unequal and Fillol claims access to the same opportunities and rights “from the most absolute difference, because the difference is enriching”. According to her, one tries to lead from a feminine point of view, but the system is masculine, and this causes the clash of these two worlds, two ways of acting and seeing the world. This is why many women who access high positions do so from these male patterns that have traditionally been associated with power.
What are the keys to female leadership?
More cooperation and less competition. More teamwork and less hierarchy. More empathy, collaboration, and intuition, and less passivity, control, and impulsiveness. Many authors have described the characteristics of this leadership, and precisely this need to transform concepts that until now we associated with power: it is the first step to understand that female leadership is not only about a woman assuming a position, but a woman who wants to provide a new vision of working, communicating, and even understanding the company and its goals.
As Fillol points out, “we seek not only to create sustainable businesses economically, but also in the human sphere. Making a social impact, changing the status quo. The purpose is very clear, companies are being built from somewhere else and this is very revolutionary. The capital is not the most important thing, and the Covid-19 crisis has shown that the companies that have survived are the ones that have made an effort in activating empathy and active listening”.
Precisely this feminine vision in terms of decisive sensitivity and empathy was referred to by ECB President Christine Lagarde in 2008, when she said that “if it had been Lehman Sisters instead of Lehman Brothers, the world would look different”.
From exclusive leadership to participatory leadership
“Resilience, the ability to emerge stronger from an impact, is a characteristic of leadership”, and this is precisely the key for the leaders of the future. Move away from the image of power and possession, and link themselves to contribution and cooperation. A leadership that goes from being within the reach of a few to becoming popular: “For me, a leader is a responsible person committed to their success and the impact they want to leave in this world”.
True female leadership is what generates a positive impact, not just from senior positions, but across the board. From the bottom to the top. As Gemma Fillol concludes, “we all make an impact. Activism can be practised from as close aspects as the children’s school, the stores where you shop, or who you vote for. We should all be conscious people, question everything, and be committed to our deepest longings and the imprint we want to leave on the world. We should all be leaders”.
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The uncertainty that accompanies economic crises can have serious psychological consequences for the people who are suffering from them. Lara de Castro, from the Human Resources team at 11Onze, gives us some advice on how to maintain our emotional well-being in adverse situations.
All crises are followed by a recovery process, but in recent years we seem to be linking crisis after crisis. Just as we were recovering from the impact of the pandemic, we found ourselves facing a disastrous economic and geopolitical situation that could worsen at any moment and culminate in a recession by the end of the year.
The consequences for our emotional well-being were evident during the confinement, and the economic crisis only adds fuel to the fire of the symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression accumulated by a large part of the population. As de Castro points out, “stressful life events can lead to illness for human beings”.
Management to cope with an economic crisis
Focusing on the things we can control
Despite the discomfort we may feel, keeping calm and focusing on the aspects of our personal situation that we can improve is key to avoiding the emotional saturation caused by sustained stress over time.
De Castro urges us to reinvent ourselves, “diversify and grow, both personally and professionally“, without forgetting the importance of a good social network “fundamental to relieve stress on a personal level”, surrounding ourselves with people with whom we feel good.
And although it may seem obvious in the face of an economic crisis, planning our savings can avoid unnecessary stress. As de Castro explains, “we must try not to create absurd needs” and remember that “it is not those who have the most who are richest, but those who need the least”.
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With the costs of flights, hotels and car rental expected to rise significantly in 2023, planning ahead for your business trip has never been more important if you want to ensure you don’t go over your budget.
According to a report by the Global Business Travel Forecast, business travellers will see airfares rise by 8.4%, hotel rates by 8.2%, and car rental charges by 6.8% in 2023. This is in addition to the 2022 increase in air fares of 48.5%, hotel rates of 18.5%, and car rental charges of 7.3%.
Despite the popularity of remote working and video calls, business travel is, in some cases, still necessary in order to increase sales, customer base or revenue. Therefore, pre-planning a trip, so we can reduce unnecessary expenses, becomes imperative. Here are a few tips to save on overall business travel costs and maximize the success and effectiveness of your business meetings:
Source: Bidroom
Advance Planning
You can often save money if you book business flights and hotels months or weeks in advance. Also, consider using travel apps or agencies that you can save on bookings at a package rate.
Set a budget
Set a budget limit for business trips. If the trip exceeds the set limit, have an internal discussion on whether the event or meeting can be done virtually, as business travel requires some level of accountability. Set a per diem for meals and lodging and educate employees on the changes.
Leverage membership loyalty
Working exclusively with certain vendors to plan your business travel can save you money. Encouraging employees to sign up for their loyalty programs will also help. These strategic partnerships can pay off with benefits like select discounts and preferred booking for trips.
Be flexible with dates and times
Leaving a day later or a day earlier could save money on flights as well as room rates. If you’re flexible with dates and can move things around, you can often get great deals you wouldn’t otherwise.
Consider Location
Compare locations when planning a company-wide outing, like a retreat or an off-site team building event. When attending events, book a hotel outside large cities and take public transport. Airport hotels or hotels in the city centre tend to be more costly.
Pre-set appointments & follow-up
Before attending events, reach out to event attendees or presenters that you want to meet. Gather information about the client’s wants and needs to maximize your time together. Set goals for each client meeting, whether it be the initial meeting, presenting benefits or closing a deal. A week before the meeting, reach out again to confirm the appointment.
Selecting a hotel for a business meeting
If your company is hosting an event or meeting, researching hotels is important to find the perfect meeting space. There are a lot of differences among meeting rooms in hotels — each location will have different features, amenities and support. For example, audiovisual equipment may or may not be included. Make sure to look at reviews to ensure service meets your standards and visit the place beforehand if possible. Don’t forget to ask if the hotel offers any special packages or perks, as many are happy to throw in discounts for large groups.
Source: Bidroom
Here are some business-friendly hotels that we recommend in the following cities:
London
Barcelona
Milan
Milano Verticale | UNA Esperienze
Prague
Strasbourg
Kyriad Strasbourg Nord Palais des Congrès
Bordeaux
Warsaw
Do you love to travel? With 11Onze Viatges you can book accommodation at the best price, without stifling the travel industry.
Money has been a part of our lives since we were young. From the first coins we put in the piggy bank, the money our grandparents gave us on our birthday, our first summer job, the help of our parents to satisfy our first whims… And suddenly, comes the age in which, among many other changes, for the first time we have control over our money. But have we been taught about how to manage our money? Will we be able to become independent, to have enough resources until the end of the month? The answer is yes, it’s up to us to control all of this, and it only takes a little bit of organisation to get the most out of it.
Why do we need money?
The first stereotype about money we have to break is comparing ourselves to others. Calculating what we have or earn myself compared to other people around us is neither objective nor realistic. Everyone is born and raised in certain conditions and many of them are out of our control or influence. If you’re studying and you’re just starting to figure out what your life will be like, take the pressure off yourself, because nothing is written, and the important thing is not where you start from but where you are going to arrive. So, the first thing to do is to analyse the current situation and determine our medium-term goal. Living at home with our parents and focusing on our studies will not be the same as having the willingness to become independent, although to achieve this we have to invest part of our time working. Determining this will lead us to the next question: how much money do I need to live?
At this point, we need to start playing with our finances and differentiate between fixed and variable expenses, just as companies do. Fixed expenses are there every month whether we want it or not, such as the rent of the flat, the gym, the transport card, or a Spotify subscription. Variable expenses are those whose amount can vary from one month to another depending on our needs. For example, although food is essential, we do not spend the same one month and the next, and this is precisely one of the points where we can cut on expenses. By this we do not mean stopping eating or only buying the cheapest products on the market, regardless of their quality. Rather, we mean the opposite: focus on responsible consumption.
How can I reduce my monthly spending?
One only has to look at the current environment to see that consumer trends, that is, the type of purchase that most of the society makes, are changing, and more and more people seek local products, more quality, and less quantity, instead of buying in large industrialised superstores. These small changes allow us to make conscious purchases, prioritizing only the products we need and taking care of our health and economy at the same time. An example that we can apply to our daily lives could be to drink water in reusable containers (glass or metal bottles) and thus avoid the daily purchase of water bottles, replacing them with larger bottles that are cheaper and last longer.
We can do the same at the time of purchase, carrying our bag to avoid buying plastic bags. Another useful trick can be to organize our weekly menu to know what we will eat each day and therefore planning beforehand what we need to buy. Nothing more and nothing less. When it comes to hygiene products, we can opt for family packages, that imply more quantity for less money, or alternatives such as soap bars or menstrual cups that, in addition to being cheap, do not generate waste. There are also bulk stores where you can buy only the amount you need, whether for groceries or cleaning products. Research your area and look for the option that best suits your pocket, always remembering that what has always been done, or what most people do, is not always the best option for you.
With regard to transport, it is also necessary to look for this balance and consider alternatives to private transport, which means a higher cost if we add petrol, taxes, insurance and car repairs. Public transportation or cycling are two inexpensive options that can help us control our spending while caring for the environment. Even when going out we can cut expenses if we act conscientiously. Booking in advance, taking advantage of offers and discounts, or establishing the amount we want to spend before the night starts will help us keep some control. If the latter part is the most difficult, a trick can be to carry only the amount we want to spend. That way, there will be no room to go over budget and this will allow us to better manage the nights out , without spending a single more euro than we planned.
Monitor your finances from your mobile phone
These are some of the recommendations that will help us keep track of our savings, but the important task is to analyse our particular situation and ask ourselves the following questions: What income do I have? How much should I spend on fixed expenses? What do I have left for leisure? Do I need to save for the future?
Our main advantage is that there are currently applications for almost everything. Controlling our finances has never been so easy. Most banks have been pulling up their socks for years so that the new digital customer experience is intuitive and agile. In a single click, we have at our disposal all the information we want, from the total balance of the account (the money we have), to the expenses we have made with the card, seeing graphically where we are spending most of our money. This will allow us to get an idea of our current situation and where we need to direct future efforts.
Work and save, our two greatest allies to have money
A key tool for managing our savings are digital piggy banks, a secondary account where we will put the money we want to spend on a specific activity. The operation is simple: we have to set a goal, be it a trip or something we want to buy, and from there we calculate how much we would have to deposit each month. We need to find a balance between what we want and our current resources. If we want more money, we will have to work harder. If we can’t work harder, we need to manage it more efficiently. Whatever our situation, taking control of our finances and knowing at all times what is happening in our bank account is a must.
Our last piece of advice is to keep in mind that we never walk alone. We have parents, family, and a lot of people around who can help us understand what all that money has to do with, which is ultimately about understanding how the world works today. Having their support and following their advice is an indispensable pillar for this first contact with the world of finance to be clear and understandable. When we take control of our money, we take control of our lives.
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The confinement in the wake of the pandemic popularised remote working. A trend that has blurred the boundary between the office and our personal lives. Workation is a new form of telecommuting that merges work and holidays.
For anyone who has the option to work remotely, the benefits of taking a workation, the sum of ‘work’ and ‘vacation’, are hard to pass up. Until 2019, the image of working from a laptop with a panoramic view in the background was almost exclusively associated with a digital nomad lifestyle, but, thanks to the sanitary crisis, telecommuting became exponentially more popular.
This new form of remote work is not designed for you to work while on holiday, but to work as if you were on holiday. Setting up our office in a place we would normally only visit when we are on holiday can have many benefits beyond the view.
Workation
You’ll still have all the essentials you were used to in office life and many luxuries you didn’t have
From sturdy workstations built for hours of tapping away on your laptop, access to conference rooms made available when needed, all the way to a strong Wi-Fi connection that won’t quit, many hotels offer a large variety of beautifully designed spaces that you can move through depending on your mood and preferences.
In many ways, hotels served as the original version of coworking spaces, it was common to see people in suits with laptops flipped open while enjoying a meal in the restaurant. Today, you’re more likely to find someone wearing shorts and flip-flops.
You’ll increase your productivity
As digital nomads are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts, it turns out employers also see the benefit in their employees working from abroad. Being able to work in a space tailored to individual needs and preferences, as well as having uninterrupted blocks of time during the day, all means that people are not only more productive and comfortable at work, but they’re also much more willing to occasionally put in extra hours in order to get things done.
Your mental health will thank you
Feeling the winter blues coming on? Getting overwhelmed by work, or finding it tough to keep up with office politics? Maybe you could use a change from the home-to-office routine you’ve become so used to; something to remind you that life is for living, and not just working and commuting.
You’ll relax, without having to take time off work
Many hotels have amenities that, let’s face it—most of us simply just don’t have at work or home. Ditch the communal shower, pool table, and stiff massage chairs in favour of the hotel pool, steam room, and sauna—where you can unwind after a day of hard work, without even going outside. The more you use those precious after-work hours to unwind and recharge, the more you go into your working hours feeling fulfilled, refreshed, and focused.
You’ll discover new places
Exchange predictable commutes for lengthy walks in an unfamiliar city; explore different districts and restaurant recommendations; try your hand at leisure photography; or broaden your horizons by meeting locals and doing a deep dive into your local culture. Become friends with the barista at that coffee shop you frequent daily, or do some research on where to go and what to see from your new location.
Do you love to travel? With 11Onze Viatges you can book accommodation at the best price, without stifling the travel industry.
