Money doesn’t save itself. In fact, we have learned that money gets away from you quickly if you don’t put it to work. You need an example?
If you have been reading our blog for awhile, you may know that we have a jar in our kitchen. I put it there because my wife kept finding pennies, nickels, quarters and more on the ground when she would go to the grocery store or on a trip. It got to be such a funny thing that she got the boys doing it, too. We don’t use this jar for “loose change.” We actually use it to drop our “found money” in once we come in from a trip to the store or a weekend getaway. She simply made us aware that people throw money away everyday.
People are always asking how much we’ve found “this year” (because we do it every year and we put it in our e-book called “How To Survive Any Financial Crisis” found at www.MiddleClassMoney.com).
It can’t be that much, right?
Last year we wound up with over $60 at the end of the year. The year before that we had found just over $28. At the end of each year, we add up our “change” and put it in a 12 month CD. We have one for each year……year after year and we roll them over. They earn money for us month after month.
So, this year, the money people dropped on the actual ground in 2008 and 2009 is earning money for us month after month. We put this “found money” to work for our family.
How much have do we have in our little kitchen jar this year so far? $46.69.
We highly recommend involving your kids in the importance of family budget, spending, saving, investing and overall money management. In fact, we recommend that you build your strategy with them to overcome our “debt and credit marketing culture” and build savings and wealth regularly. That’s because doing these things with your children does the following:
1. Shows them that saving money regularly is important to you and should be to them.
2. Shows them that investing money regularly is important to you and should be to them.
3. Allows you to brainstorm with everyone in your family on reducing and eliminating debt on a regular basis.
4. Allows you to brainstorm with everyone in your family on building and maintaining an emergency savings fund for today’s economy (by the way, we believe that you should have 15 to 18 months of expenses in your emergency savings fund).
If you don’t believe you can save the kind of money your family knows they need, you should read our past blog entries. It is time for us to find a way to take our culture back from the corporations that market to us all the time on how we should have a “healthy amount of debt.”
Are you ready?
YOU CAN CHOOSE
You can choose to take specific and steady actions to change your life, change the lives of your children and change the future of your family tree. Yes, you have the power yourself.
All the corporations, the private equity companies, crooked politicians and rich people can’t stop you if you really have a systematic plan that starts with regular savings and steady investment along with your regular bills.
If you are willing to take the time with your family to make a plan for reducing and then eliminating debt over time, you can gain more control over your finances and you can teach your children how to become wealthy over time.
If you are willing to make people work for the money you spend with them, you can build savings and then wealth.
These things are within your reach. You just have to start and you have to be encouraged.
You can join our free Facebook group (or have your children do it, too) by searching in the Facebook bar on your “wall” for “Live The Lifestyle Your Family Deserves.” Click on “become a fan.” It’s free and it ties our free blogs into that group.
If you want to give your children the same information we are giving ours, you can purchase the only thing we sell on any of our blogs or groups. It’s called “How To Survive Any Financial Crisis” and you can get it for only $4.95 at www.middleclassmoney.com.
Thank you for reading our blog and good luck!