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Budgeting
Budgeting and Saving, The Age-Old Dilemma
by Chris Parry (Write for us!)
(Click on the links within the article to get definition of that word)
Since the dawn of mankind, when the ability to acquire food and use tools that could
help man subsist for
those periods of time when resources were sparse was priceless, the question of how to budget and save one's
resources has been preeminent on the minds of human beings. Today, in a world that has become increasingly globalized
and driven by the blundering, juggernaut force of free-marketcapitalism, budgeting and saving one's individual resources
has become an extremely complex and somewhat terrifying endeavor. What's more, it seems that mostly everyone has a
different view on the best way to go about pooling resources for the proverbial rainy day. This is made further
troubling by the fact that most ordinarypeople in North America make only enough money to put small portions of cash
into money-making assurances like mutual funds or other investments. Because of this, people are right to be extremely
wary about where their money is going, and whether or not they can trust whether or not their best interests are being
considered when they hand it over to someone else.
It is complex, but hardly brand new stuff. After all, the essential dilemma of
the necessity of budgeting and saving
goes back to the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, which is no doubt as old as the first storytellers who spun wisdom
around the virginal campfires. We all know the story, or at least the bare bones of it. The foolish, unwise grasshopper,
lavishing in the comfort afforded by the summer and its abundance of resources, fails to plan for the future while
his counterpart, the thrifty, intelligent ant realizes that the winter months will be lean and so saves up materials
for darker days. Come the future, and the winter days of freezing cold and depleted food sources, the grasshopper has
no home and nothing to eat and starves to death in the cold while the ant, having constructed shelter and saved food,
is well fed and warm.
The fable is simple, and yet incredibly true. The failure to budget and save, for the grasshopper, was fatal; and in
most of today's Western countries, where wealth is abundant but mostly at the behest of individual achievement, much
the same is true.
You know how much of this works in the present day situation. Every self-proclaimed expert with a soapbox and an
Economics 101 course under his belt will tell you that if you put away the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee every
day you could return thousands
on interest in just a few years - just think, then, what the daily price of a grande,
low-fat, half-caff, no-foam, Gingerbread Latte could get you! But a self-proclaimed expert is not much compared
to an actual one, and so your best bet is to seek out a financial advisor who can help you plan for your future or
if you prefer to take matters into your own hands, lay out a comprehensive plan for prudent budgeting and setting aside
income and then have the will power to stick to it.
This can lead you towards the financialsecurity that ensures that, to the best of your abilities, you will end
up retiring in comfort like our fictional ant instead of seeing your livelihood dry up before you like the grasshopper.
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