Do you live within your means?

I asked this in threads and got promtly ignored. I know why. Its time to pay the piper and no one wants to. We have borrowed and spent our way from wealth to poverty. Didn't take long. I'll ask this here then. From what I've seen with the title of some of these threads, this is every bit as important! I'm sure this one seems dumb to some and may not even make it on the board.

When will we quit blaming and start fessing?
When will we take resposibility for some of this?
Like oh I don't know how bout 50%?

No one held a gun to our head and told us to spend!
Well, I guess one of the deciders did!

Heaven forbid we come up with a plan! Btw, how do you plan on coping now that stuffs hitting the fan? Or are you too late? Were you buying games, movies and cars instead of solar panels, gardens and farms?
Does that mcmansion still seem like a good deal? Guess it beats a tent. Sorry to be sarcastic here, but I am getting frustrated waiting for the country to grow out of its greed, shortsightedness and constant infighting
all the while trying to prop up a former unsustainable way of life.

Do you live within your means or are you one of the millions that
helped create this mess? Why will we not take some responsibilty
for most of the worlds financial crisis?
It would be very grown up of us if we could muster some courage and just do it for the sake of the worlds finances. We may find our dollar attractive again.
We are only ushering a one world money system that much sooner!
We are choosing our own road and its paved with gold.

We elect these people and put up with their nonsense!

Look in the mirror before you blame anyone else!
Just make sure your backyard is clean, know what I mean?
I have to tell myself that everyday and I still struggle with it.
It has taken about a year of heavy desensitizing to be able to see the big picture.(and several years of study before that)
I appologize right here to you all for anything I've ever done to help create this mess. We started in a little fixer upper and worked our way up into a nice home. It didnt happen in one day! But I have bought alot of stuff on credit. I learned the hard way if you borrow, it costs you almost what its worth, just for THAT priviledge. Once I grasped that concept, I realized you can pay yourself that money or pay the bank, up to you!
Sure I had to work hard for alot of years, but hard work wont kill ya. Unless your overweight and out of shape I guess.

The bank makes their money whether you default or not!
They dont care bout you! At all. At all. Well ya I guess they do.
They care bout your signature but not your credit!
Obviously and unfortunately, money is more important than people,
almost every time.

Indeed here this explains it alot better than I could! AND its funny!
Potty talk warning! The music kinda blows though.
www.youtube.com...
Whadya think should we take some responsibilty?
Or will we say, nah it's someone elses problem?(and fault)

Yep I sure do. I am quite good at only buying what is on sale and try not to buy junk I don't need. No credit cards or money owing to anyone, thank God.

Do you live within your means?

The real question should be...

Do i live within the government's means?

But yes..I do live within in my means.



[edit on 2-4-2009 by David9176]

reply to post by suzque66

Thats a cool name! Thank you very much for your post!
Way to go and good for you!
I hope your frugality will rub off on others!!!
Thank you thank you! Take care, carry on, tally ho and all that!


we buy at the dollar store and hit the case sales, etc, too!

[edit on 2-4-2009 by dodadoom]

I do absolutely!!!

I've "had it all" in my lifetime,including great heartache and financial loss.

Totally debt-free and loving it and with every passing day and year,I think the Zen philosophy of "The more you know,the less you need..." is on point!

Health and time are the most valuable "assets" I own currently,I work on having both in abundance! I don't live on the "cheap",I live on the "best value for the money" in everything I do/buy and choose my purchases carefully for longevity and how much use I can get out of everything.

I'd down-size my entire life if if was soley up to me,fewer choices means less stress and quality does matter over quantity.

reply to post by David9176

LOL!
Thanks David! I needed that big ol smile, I get pretty worked up sometimes!
Thanks for ALL your posts.
I consider you all my close compadres! Peace and love and all that!

I've always been debt free and saved at least 20% of my income.

Until all this talk about a AWB anyway. Now I've spent out about half of my savings and have cut my savings rate to 10% trying to make sure I have anything that was on the '94 AWB list and anything that could potentially be on a new AWB list.

Obama has forced me to stimulate the economy. One sector of it anyway.

Our family tries to. We only have the mortgage on the house, and if we can't pay cash, we don't buy it.

We shop for bargains and also have a garden. Yes, we have a nice house a couple of cars and some toys, but we also have lots of land and have room to do anything we'd need to to sustain ourselves.

No car loans, no credit cards and just our mortgage. Life is good.

A_L

reply to post by irishchic

Holy moly! I sure enjoy your posts also! And dont get me started on your avatar!
Reminds me of touring with the rock band!
Anyway, good stuff as always. I too learned the hard way!
Ironically I can say I have it all! I just can't find a place to put it!
I think I heard that from steven wright or somebody!

It can be kind of a game also, to get your kids involved!
They already are into recycling, etc.
Time to get back to nature and learning there are other things in life!
Health is indeed our most important asset!
Because without it, we have nothing else, its all compromised!
Thank you for you informed and always important posts!
Here and elsewhere!
Just wanted to say thanks to ATS for hosting this also!
Oh and your avatar is sexy!~



[edit on 2-4-2009 by dodadoom]

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Wow! 20%! Geez thats great! I am doing good but thats to be proud of!
Indeed it is easy to see we are headed for a different way of life!
It is too bad the many have to suffer for the actions of a few, usually.
Like I say, it took everybody to get us into this hole. I contribute by working for industry and I'm not proud of it. But I try to use my wages to stimulate the economy also!
I spend my money on gardening stuff, food storage, ammo, solar panels, etc. You know, self sustainability type stuff! The nice thing is it is already saving me even more money!
Thanks for your posts! You are a reassurance to many! At least to me.

reply to post by dodadoom


I totally live within my means.
I have no debts and don't do credit.
I try not to use banks if I can help it.

I've been giving this very question in the OP title a lot of thought lately but in terms of survival and in the here and now and not too distant future. I don't need to tell anyone here that a storm cloud has been brewing and hovering over us. You may be afloat now but your good credit score and savings aren't going to add up to a hill of beans when all hell breaks loose. For all you "tarts" i just started a thread in the Survival forum in this direction, geared toward finding a more affordable country to live in.
When Going Gets Tart... Tarts Go Expat.

[edit on 2-4-2009 by The All Seeing I]

We do now, yes.

But I must confess that we weren't so conscientious a few years ago. We did buy a smallish house that is well within our means (our mortgage is less than our rent was), but we also have student loans and credit card debt totaling roughly $30,000. For the last two years, we have been pinching every single penny to get that number down. We don't go out to eat, we don't go to movies, we have a lovely garden, we clip coupons and shop the sales, and we've been selling a lot of our stuff. We sold our bedroom furniture and keep our clothes in Rubbermaid containers. That was $500 bucks toward our debt. That big scary number is getting noticeably lower every month, but it's still bad news. A layoff or another crisis would set us back pretty far. But I will say this--we may have debt, but we have never, ever missed a payment on any of it, and we are working hard to fix our mistakes.

[edit on 2-4-2009 by sweetpeanc]

Thank you all for your posts!
And thank you for the hope! It is nice to see my fellow peeps on here "get it"!
Sweetpeanc, I know it sucks to do without all those things. But a larger world awaits! You are to be commended! Keep on, keepin on!
We have also been living within our means for a long time and it pays off.
Only now, we feel somewhat secure. That is a blessing nowdays and I sure
have a lot of jealous friends!
I wont try to answer every post and clutter up good ideas with my nonsense, but know your post is appreciated as well as your point of view!
Thanks again!

Oh, just got called in to work, gotta go, back tonight! Take care! C ya!

[edit on 2-4-2009 by dodadoom]

I don't think that you're going to get too many answers from people who overspent on their credit cards or bought a house with a ridiculous mortgage.

So, I don't live beyond my means. I have very little debt.

I also get about 20 credit card offers/ week in the mail.

we live within our means for the most part, had a car payment, got rid of that (sold it to a friend that took over the payments) the only real debt of any kind we have is the wife's student loans, would love to have them paid off, but that will be a while, have credit cards but dont use them only for emergency stuff, which so far has not come up.
Love to have cash put away, but a little one at home thats not happening any time soon. But are stocking up on misc stuff that we need to get in order.. seeds, ammo, etc.
Slow process but i order 1000 seeds every pay day and try to buy at least one box of ammo every pay day. do what we can.

We try but the past year has been a real struggle having to pay rent and our mortgage and on top of that we had several months without work.

We're paying rent because we can no longer live in our house - the roof collapsed and the buildings insurance won't pay for the roof, internal damage to the property or the contents.

We're both (myself and my husband) self-employed and even though we pay taxes and social security, we're not entitled to claim unemployment benefits when we have periods without work. (We don't get counted on the unemployment statistics for those that don't know that).

We save 10% of everything we earn but long periods without work, last year, means our savings are pretty much all gone now. Still, we're grateful we had savings to see us through but we haven't got a clue what we'll do this year, if work is the same.

Apart from our mortgage we have 1 car on finance.

Has anyone read The Richest Man in Babylon? (Available from Scribd) It contains lots of valuable lessons about money.

Edit for spelling



[edit on 2-4-2009 by Maya00a]

My parents are loaded. I'm not. They pay the bills and give me an allowance of $20 daily. More than enough for my needs. A couple meals a day, and a few bucks in gas. I simply won't allow myself to pay into a system that I know is incredibly corrupt.

No credit cards. No bank accounts. Just a couple of tickets that I practice civil disobedience towards. I don't speed and keep a low profile, so hopefully I can keep my arse out of jail.

great topic i love being debt free i owe no one but the mortgage company, a friend of mine and i was talking yesterday and he said you know you will never be able to get anything if you don't have debt, i about feel in the floor laughing, then i thought by looking at him that this cat was beening seirious as a heartattack. then i told him i said what is the single thing you do every friday, he said i sit down and do my bills, i told him guess what i do on fridays, i take my little girl to the park and enjoy my day not the banks. i've always live by" The Borrower Is Slave To The Lender" and i am no ones slave. STARSSSS AND FLAGS ALL AROUND.
debt free is the way to be. CrawGator406

OP I salute you for asking this question. It's the first time I've seen it on ATS.

For every 100 posters who whine about "the elite", "the rockefellers and rothschilds", "the evil bankers" etc... there is only one person such as you- who stops and thinks about other factors in the financial crisis.

As for your question, yep I live within my means. I'm lucky though... I physically cannot bring my self to take out credit- I know how it works and I would never take out any form of high interest credit other than a mortgage.

The world needs a paradigm shift. People need to start thinking that money is an absolute barrier. People must start living not only within their paycheck, but also start saving for a rainy day.

Thats the difference between the rich and the poor. That's the simple secret to becoming rich... don't spend money on unnecessary crap, and whatever money you save, invest it in money-generating assets.

Two men earnt $100 each. Man A went out and spent his money on a lavish meal, a clothes etc and was left with $20 of debt.
Man B spent within his means, spent frugally and saved profusely. He bought equities and bonds with his savings, which accumulated interest and earned him $20.

Imagine that pattern every day for the rest of their lives. Man A becomes the rich elite, enjoys his wealth. Man B becomes dejected, and starts attacking man A for his success, saying that he must have exploited someone or stolen something to get ahead.