SPENDING YOUR WAY TO THE POORHOUSE

You can go broke much quicker than you can get rich, unless you win the lottery or inherit a fortune from your rich uncle.  Rich doesn’t mean wealth.  What do you consider to be rich?  How about wealthy?

If you investigated the topic of becoming wealthy, you’d find that wealth actually is accumulated over a lifetime of saving.  The reason rich people get richer and poor people get poorer is that the rich keep doing what make them rich, and the poor keep doing the things that made them poor.  You can do something about being broke, but it’s not so easy to fix being poor.

You can repair being broke by working hard, saving some of what you earn, repeating the process over and over for a period of time.  You finally won’t be broke anymore, but you may still be poor.  The poor will spend any amount they have, no matter how small or large, preventing them from accumulating wealth.  Try giving a poor person a savings bond, cash or similar thing for their birthday, and see what they do with it.  It’ll all be spent before sundown.  Others will put the bond away for it to grow and will save all or part of the cash.

If you were fairly deep in debt and inherited a large sum of money, would you pay off your debts and save the balance or go out on a spending spree and buy things that will

Continue to leave you in debt.

Forget the lottery or a windfall from your family.  Start now, today, this minute saving some of the money you bring home.  You say you can’t save, that you owe all you earn.  If this is true, you’re poor and broke.  Saving a few dollars is better than none at all.  After you see what a few dollars a week add up to in a few months, you’ll be inspired to save more and buy less.

To properly save, you must start early and save often.  Take advantage of time.  Don’t contribute to your investments every six months or once a year.  Invest regularly, at least once a month, if not once a week.  You must be diligent.  Don’t loosen up and reduce your savings.  You must invest through thick and thin, hard times and good times.  Find a way to pay for unexpected expenses, but keep on track with your savings.

The truth is that you will or will not achieve wealth.  You can find all the excuses in the world for not saving, but to achieve wealth you must get past your problems and excuses and just do it.

The next time you redeem a coupon for a dollar off, put that dollar into a jar, a drawer or your savings account.  Take advantage of it.  You’ll save more than you imagine.  Save all coins, just spend paper money.   When you get paid, and before you pay your bills, pay yourself a few dollars.

Those of us old enough remember the black and white movies in which the Lone Ranger fell into quicksand, only to see Silver (his horse) toss him a rope and pull him from his potential doom.  Even Roy Rogers, Tarzan and others fell into this pit of wet sand that would have pulled them under if not for the horse, a friend, a tree bent over the pit, or other items of rescue appeared to be there at the last moment.

Sometimes, they were up to their noses when rescue came.  The odds are great that you never fell into quicksand, but there’s another type of doom that can pull you under.  That type is financial quicksand.

Most of you may be closer than you think to the quicksand.  You walk around it every day of your lives.  Some of you have fallen into it and were rescued.  Some went under, never to recover.

In 1961, I was in New York and went on a bus tour of the city.  I was especially sad to see skid row where people lay on the sidewalks and in back alleys, without food, a home, or even a dime on them.  The tour guide explained that some of those people were teachers, professional people, and others who had lost everything through financial disaster of some kind.

I’ve always wondered how someone could get to this point in life.  Today I see a multitude of people on the edge of financial disaster.  The quicksand pit is very near, and some of them already have both legs in it.

When money trouble comes, it seems to come in clusters.  The television breaks down, the washer quits, the stove won’t heat, the computer dies, and other things happen at the same time.  You may feel like the end of the world has come.

You can’t bring in a priest to exorcise the debts.