Less than 1% of Americans have a Written Budget and Stick to It

No wonder so many people run out of money before they run out of month!  According to Jesse Mecham, the founder of a very affordable personal budgeting software called "You Need a Budget", only about one half of one percent of Americans have a formal written budget and stick to it.

My initial reaction was, how can that be? We have millions of Americans who work with money and finances on a daily basis, run their businesses on a tight budget or even help others with their finances. The truth is that most people have great difficulty sitting down to face their own personal financial realities and see a budget as something that can only restrain them from living life as they wish. Another truth is that most of us do not live life as we wish, so what is the risk of creating a budget?

While it is true that there is discipline and time involved in establishing a budget and building a financial pad, buffer or emergency fund, the time involved is minimal and could easily be found by eliminating one stupid TV show from weekly viewing. This is no big deal since "average" Americans now watch 151 hours of TV per month. It is hard for me to imagine how much financial pain and suffering could be avoided if people would only give up 10% of their TV viewing time (15.1 hours per month) to organize their personal finances and plan for retirement.

Below is the Webinar I did with Jesse Mecham.  If you are interested in using his software, click on the YNAB link above the left corner of the video to get the details. My life is changing as we "speak" because after owning the software for almost 3 years, I am finally using it to take control of my finances. I challenge any of my readers to overcome any fear and reduce financial stress in their life by at least 50% by using this simple tool.

If you are healthy and employed, not knowing where things stand financially probably creates most of the stress in your life. There is a simple way to reduce stress, eliminate arguments over money, educate your children to act responsibly with money etc. and that is to create and live within a budget and show those you love how to do the same. It is a fundamental step on the path to sustained abundance.

        

Progress to report on the Sustained Abundance Website

The full website for Sustained Abundance is well underway. The intial site will be a bit compact, but over the next 3 months will expand to include robust discussions of the paths to abundance in three primary stages. The stages of abundance I see as the sides of a perfect triangle in the Sustained Abundance Logo. They are reflected in the development of true, lasting abundance as:

1. Survival
2. Self Sufficiency
3. Surplus

There are other points along the paths, some intermediate stops and some end goals. Reaching abundance is defined by a personal definition of what abundance is in the first place. In the real world a path to abundance is not linear and is reversible, you can have it and then lose it, fight for survival, reach a point of self-sufficiency or even surplus and lose that too.

The idea behind creating a site is to look at what people do to stay on the path longer, leave it only when they must and return to it full of hope and understanding that there can be a sustainable future, with abundance in many forms.


As a labor of love and a work in progress, I welcome your thoughts, comments and direction in this effort. Please contact me at lance@sustainedabundance.com .

        

Recognizing our General Character and Overcoming it in the Future

From it's inception, America has been built on debt. There never was a nostalgic time when more than just a very few Americans lived below their means and saved for the future because it was the right thing to do. This is a popular myth.
In character, this soon to be "Great Depression" is no exception as leveraged debt in mortgages reached more than 50% of gross income(s) in places like CA and the cost of revolving debt service per household peaked at over 14% of gross income in 2005. Both of those percentages are records. Based on many years of actual results, bankers know that mortgage debt is not sustainable at levels of more than 28% debt to income (DTI) on a 30 year fixed mortgage. What happened was allowed to happen in spite of history and because ...<< MORE >>

Helping More People to Help Themselves

In the simplest way I can say it, my key 2009 goal for Sustained Abundance is to help more people to help themselves.

Sustained Abundance is looking for good people from all walks of life who want to learn more ways to help themselves create a better future. A future that includes more financial security with a better understanding of what it takes to become Self Sufficient.  Self Sufficient means doing the most you can for yourself and those you care about, with a minimum of dependence on government or big corporations.

Creating true abundance means thinking of yourself as a special kind of orporation, "You Inc." that must be nurtured and responsibly grown and managed to the point of reaching your personal vision of Abundance.  Ideally of course that Abundance should be Sustained over time and the methods for building Sustained Abundance should be shared ...<< MORE >>

Baby Boomers Need to Rethink Use of Dual Incomes

As a Baby Boomer born in mid-boom, I now realize what a trap the two income mentality has become in America.

Harvard lawyer Elizabeth Warren has written a great book called, "The Two Income Trap", which is on my must reading list for anyone looking for a better understanding of the current financial environment. Baby Boomers and couples of all generations really need to rethink how they use the two incomes that most earn.

Gradually we have moved to a point where both spouses in most marriages are working. I've heard that more than 70% of married women who can work, are working (at substantial wage parity) to their spouses. The other 30% are at home mostly for childcare or elder care reasons and there are a lucky few where the income of one spouse covers all needs. If the ...<< MORE >>

What it Really Takes to Create Sustained Abundance

An friend emailed me to ask if I am still committed to writing this Blog. I had to think about it for a while before responding because while I am very committed to the principle, I have not been active in the doing. I think this is true of most consumers. In our heart we know that our recent style of living is not sustainable and must be changed.

As an average American consumer affected by many aspects of this downturn, I am actively interested in understanding how it has occurred , what forces were/are beyond my control and what things I've done under my own control that have made it worse for my family.

The real bottom line in all of this is that most average Americans do not have any idea about their personal finances, have no budget or plans for the future (no ...<< MORE >>

If you don't know where you are going, any path you take will get you there...

Abundance means different things to different people. If you are starving, abundance simply means having enough to eat.  As your awareness of abundance increases your life may expand in a material sense or you may choose to focus on more spiritual things. Two different people, with very substantial differences in material posessions can feel that they are surrounded by total abundance.  Some people can never feel abundance, even when surrounded by material things and especially when they have no awareness of a spiritual life.

My goal in creating "Sustained Abundance" is to help people find their own best path to a level of Abundance that is sustainable for their life and transferable to future generations.

Why do we confuse having material things with having abundance?

After the turn of the century in our country (and many others), the ...<< MORE >>