In today’s Spanish lesson, I will teach you the Future Perfect tense. This tense is also known as the Future Present Perfect. I decided to write this lesson after a reader emailed and me and asked “Anna, how do you say ‘will have’ in Spanish. I want to know how to say things like: I will have eaten before you arrive.”

In the same way that “will have” is used in in English, in Spanish the Future Perfect Tense is used to express actions that will take place in the future before another action.

Before I give you a few examples, I should warn you that this is an advanced topic in Spanish grammar. You will find this topic in the top Spanish grammar books, but I don’t know of any self-study Spanish course on the market that covers this topic. So you may want to pay close attention since there
are limited materials that teach this topic.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Antes de que partamos, habré hecho mi equipaje.
(Before we leave, I will have done my luggage.)

By the way, I hope that you noticed that in Spanish you cannot only “empacar” (pack) your luggage. You can also “hacer” your luggage which means to “do” or “make” your luggage in Spanish. That’s why I used the verb “hacer” in Spanish in this instance.

Luego de tres años, habrá recorrido Europa.
After three years, he will have traveled through Europe.

Para cuando llegues, habré cocinado la cena.
By the time you arrive, I will have cooked dinner.

Habrás leído todo el material para fin del año.
You will have read all the material by the end of the year.

Antes de que estrenen la película, habremos leído el libro.
Before they premiere the movie, we will have read the book.

This concludes today’s lesson on how to conjugate Spanish verbs in Future Present Perfect tense.

To negotiate a salary can be both the most profitable and the most humiliating thing an employee or job seeker can do. If correct knowledge about how negotiations work, an employee can achieve marvelous results. If taken lightly, the negotiation will often end up in frustration and humiliation. Thus, the route of knowledge should definitely be chosen by anyone seriously wanting to negotiate for a high salary. Here are five important tips for the salary negotiator:  

Tips # 1 – always aim for a win-win scenario The basic principle of all negotiations – not only salary negotiations – is that the negotiations will end up in a co-operation between the parties only if the benefits for both of entering into an agreement exceed the costs for doing so. Thus, the salary negotiator must always aim for a win-win scenario when negotiating the salary.  

Tips # 2 – focus on the interests of the employer In order to achieve the sought for win-win situation, the employee or job seeker must focus hard on the employer’s interests and really understand them. The job which salary is negotiated fits in somewhere in the employer’s plans. The employee or job seeker must understand those plans in order to be able to present himself/herself as the solution to them or an important contribution to their achievement.  

Tips # 3 – prepare carefully before negotiating the salary Research shows that the key factor explaining the difference between successful and less successful negotiators is the extent to which preparations are made. There are several important steps to take, among them to find the range within which the salary can be negotiated and to brain storm for arguments that the employee/job seeker should have a salary in the higher end of this range.  

Tips # 4 – adopt a winning attitude To succeed with anything, a winning attitude is of great importance. This applies to athletes and salary negotiators equally. One way to adopt a winning attitude is to write down an ambitious target for the salary negotiation, the reaching of which is thereafter visualized by the employee or job seeker days before the negotiation.  

Tips # 5 – make sure the timing is right The employee or job seeker must wait and try to avoid discussing actual salary figures until the right moment. The employer must “be on the hook” first, being really interested in the employee/job seeker and his/her job there. Only then shall s/he name his price.

Certain pastimes and activities have the power to maintain our consciousness in the present – the here and now. Rock climbing is a dangerous sport – a potentially lethal one – rock climbers live with the threat of death or injury every time they climb. The difficulties they face are objective ones, first and foremost, and the risks they take are calculated ones – rock climbers are not reckless – not living ones at any rate.

Most of the time, we live in a sort of non-time – a remnant of the past moving us to do things based on our memory and its power to haunt the present, or the future, with its ability to confront ourselves and our limitations ahead of action – apprehension.

The rock climber on the face of a cliff or mountain knows only the present; if he removes himself from the here and now of his situation, if he allows himself to be distracted from the task in front of him, he risks falling to his death or certain injury – he cannot allow himself to stray from the present.

The writer, Eckhart Tolle (‘The Power of Now’ and others) tells us that, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.” And if you think about it, that is absolutely true – the things that you did in your youth, you did in the present – not the past; the things you will experience in the future, in ten minutes or ten years time, will be experienced in the present – the present of then!

Now I know that rock climbing is out for most of us, only the young, athletic and the daring may go that way. Other dangerous sports are out for similar reasons, but experiencing the present in the natural intensity of the moment is still very much open to us.

Tolle again tells us that, “To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment.” As someone who writes regularly and often, I can tell you that in the very act of writing – composing sentences, paragraphs – connected paragraphs – essays, stories, novels – whatever, the act of writing frees up the mind, removes encumbrances from the past and the future, planting you and your mind firmly in the present – by the power of concentration needed to write well and write continually.

I find writing something metaphorically like crossing a river using stepping stones – the next stone and the next after that are only visible and reachable once you step on the one before that next stone. Three stones further back and you are unable to jump the distance to that next stone – you can only reach it from the one you are standing on at the moment.
So it is with writing – you create meaning and sense as you write, and as you move further into your writing you find what you want to say. The well known playwright and novelist, Willy Russell, who penned those famous stories made into the successful films, ‘Educating Rita’ and ‘Shirley Valentine’ when asked why he wrote about what he didn’t know, said, “How do I know what I know until I write about it?”

He was not being facetious for once; he was describing the process of discovering what you know whilst writing. The accumulated knowledge – even wisdom’ from a life lived is down there waiting to be tapped. Then, once words start to bring it out, it will flow like oil from a well, gushing with knowledge. For the fact is that Russell was correct; you don’t know what you know until you write – no other medium draws something out of you in quite the same way.

Worthwhile, coherent conversation comes close, but that dependency on your interlocutor deprives you of the personal discovery that comes with writing.

Like rock climbing, writing has one very clear resemblance – few people ever get round to trying it, which is a pity because both activities free the mind from our normal obsession with what has gone and what may come. Now is all there is, in reality; and both scaling precipices and writing confront you with that fact. And, for the brief time you are out there on the north face of the Eiger, or, in my case, in the middle of writing something to be read by others, that presence liberates you from what has a habit of enslaving all of us – worry – stress – regrets – you can’t be worried, stressed, or regretful when you are totally engaged in something that requires you to debunk that which you can well do without.