nustada

“But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.” So says the greatest book of all time.

Why not try to weed down to the books that will inspire and enlighten your life, rather that arbitrarily marching through shallow novels. Such a pursuit will only show literary snobbery and a puffing up of knowledge, but will do nothing for your wisdom.

There is less than ten years left for the life of vehicles, if you learn to drive, you probably will go into debt to get a car.

There is an impending fuel crisis, it would be better to learn to rely of bikes and other non oil consuming product to get around.

$1 gas two years ago $2 gas last year $4 dollar gas this year, see a trend?

Don’t get hooked.

Everyone has there own take on this issue. I will only share what I think is worthwhile

When you are a student or you face illness it is almost inevitable to get into debt. Then it is difficult to distinguish between money for recreation, money for living, and money that should be paid back to the corps that helped through the hardship (or stupidity, depends on your case).

I think the real answer is to develop better habits. Even if your interest is in the twenty percent I believe it is better to learn how to keep money than it is to pay it back.

Let me clarify, I am not endorsing not paying your debts back. Instead, I suggest you learn how to invest. This goes against most “experts”, but that is because most experts just crunch numbers, and don’t consider psychology.

What do I mean by invest? Well, in my imagination, saving is putting your money in a place that is safe and will compete with inflation. But investing is a place where there is less guaranty of security, but probability implies a higher return. For example prosper.com, stocks (with professional guidance, and foresight into the coming energy crisis), and real estate are investments that are not secure but get better ROI.

The important thing is the psychology of the matter. You make your payments on your card. But you have an investment portfolio that is growing. What will happen is that portfolio will become a matter of pride, as opposed to the shame of debt. You will be energetic to make your portfolio grow, as opposed of wanting to bury and hide your debt.

One day, you will notice that your portfolio has a higher worth than your cc debts plus the future interest, and you will feel a sense of financial health that is rare.

Also one reason that many people get into deep dept, is once they get into debt, they get hopeless. The debt forces them to pass on sales of what they want, but buy retail of things they need. But if your focus is on a portfolio, you realize that not everything is an expense but there are investments everywhere in life.

For example in my case, once I got a investment mindset, rather than the indebted mindset, I learned to pass up the walmart crap furniture and shop for deals at antique dealerships and added some TLC. Now the furniture that I bought years ago, even though it was against the idea of saving every penny to pay off my loans, is worth enough to pay off the highest debt I ever had.

And before your get the idea that I must make big bucks to do this is wrong. I never had a “job” that paid more the $10 dollars an hour, then I became self employed. Though I am making more now, than I ever have in my life (four months into this year I made more than all of last year), I don’t think I could have been successful being self employed if I didn’t have the KEEP WHAT I MAKE mentality.

I guess this post is too long, but I hope it helped.