669. We failed to plan, so we planned to fail.

NOTE: This is a personal story. We lived it misery to misery. Not from lack of love but from not determining what’s important. I present it to see if you ladies might be interested in hearing the rest of the story, how we moved from broke to rich in six months without additional income.

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Her Majesty Grace and I mismanaged our finances for over two decades. We were broke almost without interruption, and interruptions lasted for no more than a few days.

OUR EXPERIENCE: For decades we rewarded ourselves for living through misery. We rewarded ourselves for unsuccessfully handling our money, and it guaranteed more of the same. We’ve been here:

• We duplicated poor lessons learned in childhood.
• We lived payday to payday.
• We were broke at every income level.
• We were always out of money before out of month.
• We never had cash for something extra; we always charged it.
• We were never able to save for the long term, just for the short term, and even then we lost track of our original intentions and spent on something else.
• We made many attempts at budgeting but could stick to none.
• We rewarded our miseries by buying new things.
• We made many loans to consolidate credit cards.
• We paid immense amounts of credit card interest.
• We paid many bank charges for checks that bounced
• We tracked expenses but never saw light at end of the tunnel.
• We studied financial, success, and how-to books without discovering how to recover.
• We tried everything without markedly improving our lot in life.
• We diligently ignored the power of prayer.

 OUR MISTAKE: We used the right principle wrongly. We finally found the right combination of efforts to turn the reward principle around to work for what we need instead of what we want.

You’ve heard me say that frustration is the father of invention. Well, I didn’t quit and finally came to believe in this principle: It is not about how much money one has; richness lies with control over it, and control lies with a few principles.

Control sounds elementary, and it was and is. But we lacked the right process around which to structure it. In the late 1970s I found the way, and we’ve been rich ever since—both financially and mindfully. 

301. Newlywed Bonding #9 — Plan Ahead

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Finances—or more accurately, squabbles about indebtedness and spending—stimulate break up more than almost anything else.  

$$$  Plan ahead. Marriage vows express devotion to each other. Unplanned, unnecessary, and surprise spending and indebtedness can easily kill such devotion.

$$$  Plan ahead. The continual practice of spending less than your income reinforces devotion to each other. Teamwork bonds.

$$$  Plan ahead. Long before the wedding date, commitment to marital spending, decision-making, and success ranks as highly as commitment to each other.

$$$  Plan ahead. Budgeting generates good self-discipline to overcome and minimize the effects of bad habits. New habits can put mind over money instead of plastic over mind.

$$$  Plan ahead. If you can’t budget, you can’t plan effectively. There is no special way to do it except YOUR WAY—whatever works to keep spending below income, to make savings a lifetime process.

$$$  Plan ahead. Commit to stop, slow, or compensate for impulse buying, compulsive shopping, and immediate gratification.

$$$  Plan ahead. Reward yourself cheaply for avoiding big or unplanned big spending.

$$$  Plan ahead. Rewards create and reinforce new habits. Reward yourselves frequently for:

·        Staying within budget

·        Not having to pay credit card interest

·        Meeting your saving goals

·        Devoting to each other by not overspending in your domain of responsibility.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 297, 261, 257, 254, 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]

 

 

 

297. Newlywed Bonding #8 — Evil incardnate

Rely on the card and then fail hard. Success at handling money tightly bonds a couple. Failure splits them even faster.

♂$♀  Adolescent decisions can kill good decision-making efforts. For example, newlyweds can’t spend their way into the middle class lifestyle their parents provided for them. Neither can they keep up with peers still living with parents. Try either and couples turn their lifestyle over to creditors.

♂$♀  Outrageous credit card interest rates and debt drag down anyone’s lifestyle. So, wiping out credit card interest payment is the fastest way to move a couple’s lifestyle upward—except for more income, of course.

♂$♀  Dealing with credit cards, good intentions are not nearly enough, not nearly enough, not nearly enough. Determination, firm plans, and loyalty to each other and their budgeting process are required. Both minds must be convinced that credit card interest payments are the financial equivalent of bringing home STDs.

♂$♀  Only one way out: Every couple should stop immediately charging on credit cards except as they set aside the money to pay it off with the next billing. Develop a system of tracking and the habit of paying cards off each month. Promise and deliver on the promise to never incur credit card interest payments, once current debt is paid off.

Empty promises deliver empty nests.

The next post facto is “Plan Ahead” at post 301.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 261, 257, 254, 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]

261. Newlywed Bonding #7 — Look, then leap

Here’s more to help guide newlyweds. These principles, beliefs, attitudes, and convictions can be tailored to fit or rejected by each couple to help fulfill their hopes and dreams. Advice is labeled as such.

♂$♀  Budgeting comes easily if a couple focuses on building a successful mixture of spousal interaction. Lots of imagination, small bits of will power, negotiable cooperation, and frequent confirmation of mutual trust can all be energized through the budgeting process.

♂$♀  Ignore what’s past. Assume decisions already made were sound at the time. Else, you would not have made them. Hindsight sees too many mistakes; those little buggers trigger spousal disputes. Why pay attention to what can haunt, irritate, and demotivate you or generate distrust for spouse or your budgeting process?

♂$♀   Pay yourself first: Save at least 10% off the top for long term savings for home purchase and retirement. Otherwise, late in life you will limp financially before physically. It’s best the other way around.  

♂$♀  At the start of the year, allocate for church giving and short-term savings to cover Christmas and vacation spending. Then, commit to not overspending on the last two items.

♂$♀  This is ADVICE: Determine the level, develop a plan, and purposely live a lifestyle at considerably less than 100 percent of income. Doing it is critical; the percentage goal is less so.

Evil incardnate comes in next post.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 257, 254, 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]

256. Newlywed Bonding #6 — Blessings

Just the term ‘budgeting’ scares some people. Like other processes, however, it can be learned by experimenting and mastered through practice. Newlyweds have four strengths to guide them:

1.     Some income. (It’s usually not enough, so spending control can be critical to avoid great indebtedness just getting settled into marriage.)

2.     Mutual interest to have enough money for a good life together.

3.     Two different and talented minds operating with joint purpose to succeed in marriage. When those minds operate as one in financial matters, wealth grows.

4.     Mental flexibility. A spouse can suppress the urges for impulse buying, compulsive shopping, and instant gratification when they have something bigger to live up to—for example, rewards that flow out of budgeting rules designed to overwhelm such bad habits.

So, as newlywed couple, wherever you’re at, do the best you can with what you’ve got. Think control before spending instead of the reverse.

More follows in future posts.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 256, 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]

254. Newlywed Bonding #5 — Pain that heals

In our land of great wealth, many couples break up over financial troubles. Then, they do it again with someone else. Most just can’t learn what it takes to avoid financial instability and payday rape by creditors.

Some people avoid spending except when necessary. They rely on will power. They don’t succumb to impulses. They suppress whatever need they may have for immediate gratification. They build their lifestyle around necessities with few luxuries. Shopping has no allure. They value functionality over fashion, essentials over convenience, labor- and time-intensive over labor- and time-savers. The rest of us are different.

Here are some principles, beliefs, attitudes, convictions, and lessons that can help newlyweds step off on the right foot.

♂$♀  There will be never enough money until you have so much that ‘enough’ is never thought of.

♂$♀ Control of money will always be more important than amount available.

♂$♀  Control requires a decision process. We call it the pain that heals, or simply ‘budgeting’.

♂$♀  The budgeting process keeps a couple focused on improving their lives. With the force of self-imposed rules, it pushes them to do in the present, what they need for their future.

The list continues in forthcoming posts.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]