Hi ladies, I’m standing in for Sharon today. But I’m just giving a different point of view on her blog “Teach the Children” posted Monday, September 21, 2010. Sharon’s blog talked about teaching our children about money and managing their finances using envelopes. It is a great system because I used it more than 10 years ago with Tovah and I’m using it now with my granddaughter. But when I thought about it, I used it many years ago for myself (before ATMs and debit cards) to budget and keep track of my cash. And lately I’ve been doing it again. Why? With using a visa check/debit card all the time — my money has a tendency to get away from me. Swipe, swipe! It’s gone!
In so many ways, “Direct Deposit” is great!! But depending on who you are and how good you are at managing money, it sometimes backfires on us. You wake up in the morning and your money is there…off you go. “I think I’ll treat myself to breakfast this morning.” “I’ve been brown bagging it all week, so today I’m going to buy lunch.” “Let’s see I can’t get to the market until tomorrow or the next day, and I really don’t feel like cooking—hum, pizza or Chinese?” So, we’ve already spent $30.00 without blinking an eye. Swipe, swipe — it’s gone!
Paydays are all over the map for people. It is common place for nurses to get paid on Wednesdays, city and government workers on Thursdays, and Friday is a big pay day for many. How often we get paid also varies, some of us get paid every week, some biweekly, others on the 1st and 15th of the month and a huge group in academia gets paid once a month. This translates into, the further apart your payday, the better steward of your money you must strive to be. That’s if you don’t want to be broke before your next pay. ~Smile~
Cash in hand helps us to better see where our money is going. How many of you have overspent using your check/debit card? I’m laughing to myself, because probably a lot of you have raised your hands, or cried out, “I have!” I’m not suggesting you hoard cash in the house and carry a lot on you, but I am suggesting that maybe before you go to the market have a budget and pull the cash out at the ATM first. If you have a day of running errands, calculate how much you will need, and use cash that day. Hanging out with the family or friends, decide what your budget is and take cash only, and when it’s gone it’s gone. Don’t run to the machine for more, or give into the temptation to swipe your card. Stick to your cash budget.
I know that in the mornings our favorite coffee and breakfast haunts have that little machine where you swipe your card and the line moves so much faster. The check card folks (visa) had a commercial on how the lines run so smoothly when you swipe your card and then some dummy comes along and pays cash and messes up the works. The big financial institutes know that by convincing people to swipe, swipe, SWIPE! We spend more, more, MORE! And before the government came down on the banks about how they were giving us money that we didn’t have and charging us astronomical fees to boot, they were racking millions each year on those overdraft fees. How many of you have swiped your card, went over as little as $2.00 and had to pay a $30.00 fee? I’m pretty sure most of you have had that experience at least once. Truth is, we may not have thought about what we were doing every time we swiped, but the financial institutes sure knew what they were doing in encouraging us to swipe.
Paying cash can be twofold. One, it will help us not to overspend and two; we are helping the world still remember how to count money. LOL!! I mean, it is getting pretty bad with some of the cashiers I have run into lately. They can only count what the register tells them, so don’t you dare give them change after they have put in the bills….they just can’t figure it out. ~Smile~
Some of us are begging God right now for an increase in our finances, but the truth be told; we aren’t handling what we have. Learn to be faithful and a good steward over what you have, then expect more.
I know we are living in a world that is trying to go paperless, but I think we still need to see what paper our money is printed on. Capiche!
Love & Hugs
Ponnie
Sharon will be back in 2 weeks with more great "Financial Wisdom" for us"
Tuesday's Blog: Ponnie will be writing all blogs this week and I hope to inspire you as much as the other sisters do. ~Smile~
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