by Joe Owens

Created on: January 21, 2009

Not too long ago I heard an ominous sounding commercial on the local AM radio channel on which I receive a 24 hour all sports station. The spot began with what sounded like a weather report but it was interrupted with a fade in of what was intended to be another source wanting to get their message across. What was the message? To feed the pig!

This commercial was part of a program named "Feed the pig.org". According to their commercial, 2007 was the first year that Americans had experienced a negative saving rate. That means we spent more than we saved in that twelve month period. Is that really surprising? Not to me, especially with all the news about the credit crisis and overwhelming personal debt. The commercial is promoting the idea that we need to put aside some money each time we get paid to develop some type of savings plan.

There is an inherent level of responsibility required to save money. It is a trait hardly common in this day's list of personal virtues. Everyone has tilted toward the mentality of instant gratification as well as one of buy now, pay later. Saving, very basically is not cool.

Who can blame people for this feeling? Due to the results of the overwhelming reliance on debt, the government has been manipulating the prime rate downward to try to keep the house of cards facing a vertical direction. As a result, the amount banks pay for interest bearing accounts is so meager that there is no monetary benefit to saving money.

Only those of us with the willingness to avoid the unmanageable debt load are willing to take a long term approach to acquiring items of substantial value when we have the proper amount of cash on hand. This is not a situation of hardship, mind you; simply put it is when you put discipline before your wants to make an intelligent choice.

The marketplace does not like savers. Savers do not feed the system the kind of cash they need rapidly enough to grease the wheels sufficiently. Why do you think every tom, Dick and Harry will offer credit to get you to take things from their inventory today? Because they know the majority will never pay off in time and they will get their money back on the interest payments.

Buying on time for some things is a necessity, like a home or some vehicles. It is utterly ridiculous to expect everyone to always have the cash stashed somewhere to never have to borrow money. However, you can put a bit away each month to reduce your overall expenditure when a big purchase is required.

Fundamentally, the problem comes to this: most people are so use to having everything when they want it that they never learned what it means to save and wit for the right to enjoy their purchase. Most people want their things now and will do whatever is necessary, including accumulating debt to get it. I fear our country, the U.S.A. and the world has a hard lesson to learn about the fallacy of this tactic.

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