Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am 52 and far from where I want to be. I did not start investing until I was 26 years old though. We did not buy a home till I was 45 years old. After 7 years the home has increased in value from a bit over $300,000 to over $540,000 I am guessing. Between my wife and I our savings and investments are doing well. Much more than $300,000 easy. No where near where we want it to be. If we count the home and our investments we have over $550,000 so far. The problem with that is we have to live somewhere and choose to live in our home. Our plan is to have the home paid off in just over 11 years. We will then be debt free. The problem with home values is that they can go up or down. Not as fluid as a crypto currency but still fluid over time. I don't take too much stock in the value of the home, just the amount of the debt we want to pay off.
I know plenty of people that are in much better shape than I am. I know plenty of people that are in worse shape than I am.
Someone mentioned greed of the wealthy. I want to mention that the only people that ever use the word are those that have not built wealth. Why is it bad to be wealthy and good to be poor? I would say that being wealthy is an aspiration all should have. I don't know why anyone would want to be in poor financial shape. Greed to me is when you want what others have and will do anything but honest work to get what they have. The people I know that are wealthy are not greedy at all. They have worked for what they have. On top of that, I don't know any poor people that are offering to hire anyone.
There was a time when a 10th grade high school class did it pretty well too.
They're too busy now teaching the exit exams and... I dunno what else. Whatever satisfies a mountain of educational directives issued by people who haven't been in a classroom since they were 23.
The world would be a better place if all high school students were exposed to serious personal economics and critical thinking classes - serious, not some canned item on the checklist, if even that. Most wouldn't learn a damn thing but would at least have the socket for further learning, formal or osmotic. The very ideas underlying them are foreign to most HS grads. (Best summarized as, "Twelve bucks an hour? OMG, I'm rich!")
Quote:
Savings is EVERYTHING... The rest is about accounting and behavior modification.
Not sure I'd reduce it to that level of simplicity, but yeah. There's more than saving that's worth doing, and the behavior modification is mostly in the hands of consumer-product marketing. Both ends need work, for most people.
Not sure I'd reduce it to that level of simplicity, but yeah.
It's a forum post. Simple statements are better. Even if simplistic.
Those inclined for deeper and wordier will find it. It might even be understood.
Simple:
As Grandma said: You watch the pennies and let the dollars take care of themselves.
And Ben said: A penny saved is a penny earned.
And as relates to my frequent peeve around here: Limit your costs.
Spend the nickle but not the dime. Buy the Chevy not the BMW.
If you won't do this one thing you'll never be able to save (invest) the rest either.
And that is why saving is everything ...as everything else is predicated on it happening.
Quote:
There's more than saving that's worth doing, and the behavior modification is...
Most people need an external structure to effect HOW they go about what they do.
For some that is literally the envelope system like Grandmom used and for others it can
be a single account with elaborate spread sheet of 30 GL headings. Whatever method works.
The hard part is twisting your head around to see your actual reality, to learn and so that you will
actually modify your behavior to do what you KNOW is needed. This is tough. A lot tougher than just saying it.
Just look at all the resistance to the 12/52's posts I make.
Coming up with ways to refute the obvious is a growth industry around here.
But none of them have that mythical $297K or anything close.
As Grandma said: Watch the pennies and the dollars take care of themselves.
And Ben said: A penny saved is a penny earned.
And as relates to my frequent peeve around here: Limit your costs.
.
i learned early on a penny saved may be a penny earned but it will always be a penny without learning to compound it as an investor.it is compounding that takes the pennies we manage to save and creates wealth .
Well... that's a simple way to say fewer people will argue with you if they can put their own interpretation on a statement. But this is going to get reductive.
Quote:
Spend the nickle but not the dime. Buy the Chevy not the BMW.
And apropos of nothing much, that sounds like the start of a Tom Waits song.
I go a lot further in advice for those who want to take personal economics seriously; "save, don't spend" is both a useful imperative and subject to too much interpretation. Even those who think they're hard-headed, unswayable economic veterans can justify a stupid purchase in the blink of an eye. There are more expanded rule sets, no one of which is more complicated than that, that box in judgment a little more and help forestall impulse purchases of poorly judged things.
But yeah. As Tom said, "Save, don't spend. Da da dahh..."
Many will. I've written long and dense posts as well.
Make the simple point and then bat it around some.
Those who can think for themselves will expand off of it well enough.
When the next successive point is broached continue on through.
Rinse and repeat.
But as to the long and dense, let alone the winding and whining,
I'll suggest that a blog (that we can link to) meets that purpose far better.
That or maybe a lecture hall if you can get the rostrum.
Many will. I've written long and dense posts as well.
Could you summarize that for me?
I've written a couple of rants about how if you make something simple, all you'll get is sniping about the things you've left out. If you write in all the details, you get ignored or "TL;DR, dude!" It's no win. Your idea about progressing one small exchange at a time is fine except that the threads tend to get lost amid drift and the completely clueless participants who can't get that they are unclued.
Quote:
But as to the long and dense, let alone the winding and whining, I'll suggest that a blog (that we can link to) meets that purpose far better. That or maybe a lecture hall if you can get the rostrum.
Have stood behind lecterns and sat on stage edges. This is not my only venue; I am just delighted to have found one more long-form, persistent-topic, well-populated and well-moderated discussion forum... you know, like it used to be before... whoops, hit my character limit.
If it is obvious that a sum of money does not exist, how can one evaluate something in money?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/resource.html
● NASA has estimated the mineral wealth of the entire Asteroid Belt could be as much as $700 quintillion, or a seven followed by 20 zeroes. That’s $100 billion for every one of the 7 billion people on Earth!
=\=\=\=
How can you claim measurements that exceed the known total of circulating monies?
Isn’t that INSANE?
What’s really reality: the actual sum of property, goods and services - or - an arbitrary value and sum of money tokens ?
=\=\=\=
If Amancio Ortega, Carlos Slim Helu, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and a consortium of other billionaires walked into the offices of the largest bank on the planet, and asked for a loan of 20 trillion dollar bills with which to fund mining asteroids worth 300 times that value and were more than willing to pay 15% interest, the bank would have to decline.
WHY?
The.Money.Does.Not.Exist.
If the mining on said asteroid was needed to save the planet, the money would be created. Our limits are not based on some endpoint of maximum numbers of USD's. Our limits are based in productivity. If said asteroid project was necessary to save the world, 'all the money in the world' would be exceeded if the project could be accomplished.
But can we even begin to use multiple Earth's worth of resources... short of building that galactic fleet I keep hearing about?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
