Escaping Wage Slavery
Recently I had a grandson complain to me about a customer who paid him
for a pizza all in small change. He said
the person had divided it all into baggies with a dollar in each bag. We took different things away from the same
story. He was frustrated by the
event. To me it showed why so many
people in this country are struggling to survive. That person did all that work to get “one”
pizza. That same money spent at the
grocery store could have bought healthy meals for three or four days for two
people. Of course the person may have
had that stuff and just not wanted to cook.
My grandson should have been happy the person chose to buy a pizza and
thereby help him have a job. The person
who bought it may have just been having a short day, but it shows a sign of a
management problem. He could have
bought a bag of frozen chicken breasts, a five pound bag of potatoes and
several cans of corn and green beans. Maybe he would even have had enough left
to buy a head of lettuce to make a healthy salad. Of course that would have required him to put
forth the effort to prepare and cook his own meal.
The point I am trying to make is that being broke comes from the choices
we make in life. In America the majority
of the people are in debt to someone, the bank, the government or some retailer
who gave them credit or worse yet a credit card. The word credit implies that
you have honor and have a record of paying back that which you borrow. The problem is that in this day and age to
many creditors are more than willing to lend.
They don’t really care if you can pay it back as the system is on their
side. You have placed yourself in
bondage to the lender. That is what
Bible calls being in debt. Another way
of saying it is that, “The borrower is slave to the lender.”
It is far easier to get into slavery to the lender, than to manage your
affairs and stay out of debt. For every
dollar you owe, you have to make two dollars.
You have to make one to pay the creditor and you have to make one for
yourself to live on. This all sounds
very simplistic, but every decision you make affects your long term working
status. Being frugal with your money
today means you have more left for tomorrow.
Therefore you don’t have to work as hard, just to survive.
If you practice at being frugal you will have money left to invest. That does not mean putting it in a bank
either. You may simply have the money to
buy, say a piece of furniture. If you
get it cheap enough you can resell it and make a profit.
Or you may simply get the item at a far
cheaper price than buying it new.
Recently I bought a new car, actually a newer car. The dealer knew I had the money to buy a
brand new one if I chose to. The problem
for him is that I didn’t choose to. When
he asked me why I simply explained to him my ego did not require me to buy a
brand new car that would lose $5,000 to $6,000 dollars in value the minute I
drove it off the lot. I bought a used
one with less than 20,000 miles on it that still had dealers warranty on it. My goal now is to sell it by 80,000 miles so
I can sell it with warranty left on it which will make it sell easier and get
me a better price. The money I get back
out of my equity in the car will make the down payment on my next, almost new
car.
If your ego requires you to buy a brand new
car go for it. My goal is simply to have
a car that I pay as little as possible for.
Some people I know will not make a payment on a car. If they can’t pay cash they don’t want
it. As I have a pension I will make the
payment and know that the warranty will probably take care of any major
maintenance. That is one thing you do
not get when you buy paying cash. Each
of us has to decide which is more important to us.
So why am I writing this. It may take me a couple paragraphs to explain.
Years ago I had a son in law who lived on a $10 and hour salary and took care
of my daughter, and three kids.
He managed to save and buy most of the materials at sales to build a new
house over a period of years. When he did decide to build it he had instant
equity in their new home. They only had
to borrow about $40,000 dollars, he put in the labor himself and they had about
$80,000 dollars equity that made them look real good on paper. Needless to say the payment on the $40,000
was a lot cheaper than it would have been on $120,000. At the same time I was making seven to eight times what he was and struggling to survive. It is about managing what you have, not making more.
Our credit union has a program whereby you can put up you savings as
security for a loan. You can’t spend
that money as long as it is securing the loan, but if you have it in savings
spending it was not the goal to start with.
The benefit of buying a car this way is that the credit union continues
to pay you interest on the money. So in
reality the 3% car loan may really be at only 1%. That makes for a tremendous savings. If that car still has dealer warranty on it,
it is a win, win situation.
The key is making your money work for you instead of you working for
your money. That takes time and planning
to accomplish, but almost anyone can do it.
If you don’t do it you will continue to be a slave to the lender who is
living high on the hog on your dollar by simply practicing what is explained in
this post.
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