Early retirement whys: Wasting money come end of financial year

“It’s the end of financial year. It’s time to spend our budget, otherwise we won’t get it next year!”

This oft repeated sentence occurs in both public and private sector jobs.

Larger private sector organisations have budgets for each department, which trickles down to teams, and they don’t want to lose money — even if they don’t really need it. Smaller organisations have bosses who want to write off expenses for tax.

So the answer is always: spend it if you got it. Sometimes the more intrepid deliberately overspend just in hopes of landing a bigger budget next financial year.

And look, there can be legitimate expenses that can be brought forward. And I see no problem with that.

There can be general consumables that can be stocked up. Fine. Order ahead for new equipment. Pre-pay something that will be used already.

I’ve seen this to a greater or lesser extent in all of my jobs.

However, the most galling waste of money is in the public sector, where I’ve been in recent years.

Again, legitimate expenses can be brought forward. But what really grinds my gears is spending money purely for the sake of spending money.

Here people simply want to protect their patch of turf, and not have their budget reduced. But the thing is that they’re spending tax payer money.

Must we really descend down to acting like besuited apes, fighting over scraps?

You know the drill now. It’s another in our series of early retirement whys — the worst of workplaces.

EOFY is upon us!

“Oh you already finished your professional development for the year?” I heard my boss say. “How about another course?”

At least the organisation might get some benefit from that, I suppose. (I mean, I’m retiring early, but other workers could benefit.)

At least that sort of spending is well-intentioned.

But how about the proliferation of meeting junkets that appear between May and June?