See if this sounds familiar to you. Your personal or business finances get tight, you have more bills at the end of the month than you have money to pay for them. And what do you do? You decide its time to cut expenses. You try to save money by eliminating unnecessary bills, those things you can cut back on, and those things you can accept in lesser quantities or lesser quality. Pretty soon you find out, it doesn’t work. All you’ve done is lower your standard of living, but months or even years later you’re in the same position that caused your austere spending to begin with; too many bills and not enough money to pay them. This is the trap faced by many in today’s economic world. And unless something changes nothing will change for you and your family. And if you’re the bread-winner in your home its time to recognize an ugly reality…you’re failing your family.
The solution is easier than you think. But if you’re like me you took the austerity road first before realizing what that simple solution is.
Maybe you’ve done some of this:
Cancel all Newspaper and Magazine subscriptions.
Check.
Cut back your TV cable or Dish service; maybe change service providers.
Check.
Reduce your auto insurance coverage…possibly down to the legal limit of only Liability Coverage.
Check.
Refinance your home mortgage to take advantage of near record low-interest rates.
Check.
Stop buying clothes for yourself and for your children, unless absolutely necessary.
Check.
Sell your car and buy an older cheaper one.
Check.
Eliminate vacations.
Check.
Buy store brand grocery items at a discount store.
Check.
Reduce your thermostat to cut back on heating bills.
Check.
Turn off lights…unplug unused appliances…
Check.
Did you find it’s not enough?
You know why?
It’s not enough because things you don’t have control over but need to spend money on are going up at a faster rate than your income or your austerity measures.
- Health insurance premiums have climbed already, and will climb even higher when Obamacare takes full effect in 2014. Forbes reported this month that rates in California alone could climb as much as 146%.
- Increased employee expenses in industry, as a result of increased health-care costs will drive up the cost of manufactured goods.
- Gas prices are and have been consistently over $3.00 per gallon for the past couple years, and the periodic dips into the $2.00 range and especially the $1.00 range (as happened during the Bush years) are a distant memory. The price of crude oil is over $94-per-barrel. Gas prices are more likely to exceed $4.00-per-gallon and stay there than they are to fall.
- Trucking is still the primary method of moving food in this country, and the increased gas prices will add to food costs.
- Mortgage interest rates have been held down by the Federal Reserve’s low or no interest short-term financing for 4-5 years. But this week
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke suggests that time is coming to an end by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
- Taxes on the local, state, and Federal levels have all increased in the past year and will only go higher in the next four years. President Obama was re-elected promising to raise taxes.
There is more of course. But the point is you and your family have no choice. These things you will pay for and you will have less to spend on other matters. It’s simple math. Even if you can count on a pay raise, which have been few and far between for most workers in recent years, there is no way any employer is going to keep your compensation increasing fast enough to keep up with these known mandatory expenses and their increases.
If you’re like me. Your austerity efforts have proven worthless. And my wife and I make a good living. For the past 20 years our income has placed us in the upper 5-25% of income earners in this country. And, no; we didn’t make the mistake so many other Americans made and buy too much house. Even with 4 years of declining home values we’ve never been upside-down in our mortgage and have always maintained a healthy level of equity.
But for years I always thought we could simply cut back and get ourselves out of the tight conditions in which we found ourselves. Like so many others. It didn’t work. The solution I finally realized was we need to make more money. We need a Plan B income. And so do you.
Take a look at your situation. Where are you going to be in 2 years? In five years? 10? What is going to happen to make things better?
For too long I fooled myself, and patted myself on my back for making an above-average income and being so much better off than most other people. But most other people live lives of quiet desperation. Most people are a lay-off or a single medical emergency from financial ruin. Does this describe you?
Our solution is already working. After loving the health and nutrition and weight-loss products from Advocare, we decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to represent this fine company and its products and help other people realize the benefits we each realized. Our friends who introduced Advocare to us have been representing the company for less than 4 years and no longer work outside their home. They have a growing income of $25-$30-thousand per month. We are paying off debt and will record our highest family income in close to ten years, thanks in part to AdvoCare.
Author Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad, calls the business plan used by Advocare “the perfect business plan”.
I let go of all my prejudices and suspicions about direct-selling businesses and realized AdvoCare was different and better. And my family is repeating the benefits.
Be it AdvoCare or some other vehicle, read the writing on the wall. The only way things change for your family finances, is if something changes. A secondary or Plan B income is the only way to thrive in the world of today. If you want to learn more. Contact me. I can help. And would love to help.
Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.
Click to go to our AdvoCare website.
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- The Economic Debate: Austerity or Stimulus? (modeleu2013.wordpress.com)
- Obesity is a Disease? Only if a lot of Other Human Problems are Disease As Well. (mschuettblahblahblah.com)
- What is a Pyramid Scheme? Too Many Are Ill Informed. (mschuettblahblahblah.com)
- The challenge through AdvoCare (chunkymunkys13.wordpress.com)
- AdvoCare (christieg00.wordpress.com)
- 5 Secrets to Smart Spending (quicken.intuit.com)
- Debt Management: Live Debt-Free (quicken.intuit.com)
- What is Austerity Meant to Achieve? (newleftproject.org)
- Doing the Math on Home Ownership (thesimpledollar.com)
M Schuett blah blah blah 