Many things come to my mind right now as to what I want to write about. However, one of the most significant issues in my life at the present time is finance, i.e., the method to which we handle our finances. Because I have spent my entire adult life always trying to get ahead of the game and never succeeding, I felt this was a great subject for me to undertake.
You see it is something that we all need to face. If we do not, it will definitely rear its ugly head and face us. Somewhere in the past 30 years, we have all decided that to live on credit was the American Dream. Well, let me tell you there are many folks who have awakened only to realize they are living the American Nightmare. We have thousands of people out of work and losing their homes. It's not so much that they don't have a job anymore, it is the fact that they were living on ‘borrowed time', if you will.
But this goes deeper than just the layer of those unemployed and without a home. It goes to the next level and the next level deep. The children of this unemployed and homeless population are being affected, too. It will also affect these children's children.
It is time for all of us to step up to the plate of responsibility and stop running our lives like an out of control locomotive; one just barreling down the rails of life uncontrollably. We must say NO more to credit cards, and start planning how our money is going to be spent. Dave Ramsey always says, "If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail". This is certainly true with our finances. If we do not plan where we are going to spend our money, then it just seems to grow a mind of its own and ends up in places we had never planned.
Let's look at it another way. If you and your spouse and children were going to take a trip to Colorado next summer what would you do? Would you go through the winter and spring months not thinking about it at all? Would you just jump into the car without any thought about what clothing and items to take? Would you just start driving without consulting a map? No, you would not! You would carefully choose specific clothing and items you wanted to take with you. You would look at an Atlas or go on line and research the best routes to take. So then, why do we go through life not knowing where our money is going or how we are going to accumulate money for our retirement? It just doesn't make any sense! It is our money! We work very hard to acquire it! Then why aren't we being good stewards of it? Why aren't we more discriminating as to how it is spent?
I don't have the answers to these questions; however they do give one pause to ponder. Is it our love of instant gratification that we so liberally release our money to unplanned expenditures? This could be. It could also be that we feel the pot will always be full of money no matter how we go about handling it. Well, I am here to tell you that it is imperative that the American people on a whole get a very quick reality check. We need to get our spending habits under control. Of course, it would be great if our government officials would also get their spending habits under control. But that is a whole other topic!
When we can stand up and say that we have taken control of our finances, it will also reflect back to our children, and our children's children. This is what we need to strive for, because we are the ones who are supposed to be setting the example here. We need to create a campaign to stamp out credit card debt. We need to start telling our money where we want it to go and how we want it to be saved. Only then will the American people be back on solid ground. What a wonderful feeling that will be. It's an "I can put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I have planned for my future and the future of my loved ones" feeling. How comforting is that?
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