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| Economy |
| Living on one income is like losing weight: You need focus |
| 2020-07-23 |
| [Washington Examiner] For the past several months, I've been an avid Dave Ramsey fan. If you know who he is, you either like him or hate him. If you don't know who he is, he essentially teaches people how to get rid of debt and build wealth — something he did himself after filing bankruptcy decades ago. I've listened to him long enough now to know that what he says works. My husband and I even use his EveryDollar budgeting app, which has been a boon for our finances. The experience has made me think about the fact that there are many married-couple families today that would like to live on one income, if only temporarily, but are convinced they can't. Many of these couples made professional and financial decisions prior to having children, including the purchase of a home, on the assumption they'll always have two incomes. That was a mistake — one they were, unfortunately, encouraged to make. This makes the transition to one income more challenging, but not impossible. Just as getting out of debt and building wealth is not predicated on having a large income but upon following a budget, so it is with the choice to live on one income — or even on one-and-a-half incomes. There are instances in which this may be harder to do (i.e. if a couple lives in or near an expensive city, for instance), but even that has a solution: move. COVID-19 is proving in spades that people will move when circumstances demand it. Much of the information on Ramsey's daily, three-hour radio program/podcast mirrors that which you'll find in The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko. "Most people have it all wrong about wealth in America. Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend." Unfortunately, living high is precisely how most people in America choose to live — that's why so few build wealth. Many parents genuinely believe they both have to work, but the reason they do is not because we live in hard times but because today’s generation has grown up with every possible comfort and convenience. They’ve never faced mass war or economic depression. They’ve never had to save their pennies and wait until Christmastime to get that one special thing they want. They’ve never been told they couldn’t buy something because they didn’t have the cash. They’ve never been told to walk or ride their bikes somewhere because there was no available car. They’ve never had to cook from scratch and make do with whatever’s in the pantry (until COVID-19 forced their hand), and they’ve never had to clip coupons. Today’s generation has become so accustomed to an easy life that they have no idea how to live any other way. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 My sister-in-law paid for her younger daughter and son-in-law to go through this course, because nothing less was getting through to them. Reportedly it was indeed life changing. The elder daughter didn’t need to learn those lessons. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-07-23 18:50 |
| #2 Sort of like Samuel Johnson's comment about how being sentenced to hang focuses the mind. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2020-07-23 15:39 |
| #1 COVID-19 is a game changer. There is no going back to "normalcy" (normal by which standard*). And no amount of denial is going to change it. *To me, middle class imitating the habits of the leisure class doesn't seem normal. They are what they are, and we are what we are. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-07-23 02:42 |