Time To Make Outsaving the Joneses a Reality

By Shannon Buggs, The Houston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 2008

Thrift is it in 2008.

Conserving gasoline is cool, now that oil costs nearly $100 a barrel. Eating smaller portions is hip and healthy. Recycling, from plastics to paper clips, respects the Earth and future generations.

Now, the consideration being shown to the environment and our bodies needs to be shown to our savings accounts.

Make this the year you cut back on your consumption of everything and save more money.

Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, outsave them.

Nearly 10 million American households, or 9.2 percent, don't have bank accounts of any kind, according to Federal Reserve data.

Those folks rely on payday lenders, pawnshops, rent-to-own stores, tax-refund lenders and other high-cost, quick-cash lenders to get by each week.

Americans spent more than they earned in both 2005 and 2006 by charging the difference on credit cards.

"One in seven families is dealing with a debt collector," Ray Boshara and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation think tank wrote in a Washington Post commentary. "Children today are more likely to live through their parents' bankruptcy than their parents' divorce," they wrote.

And that likelihood will increase this year.

A recession looms on the economic horizon. A national housing-prices slump is the worst since the Great Depression. Cities across the country had record foreclosures in 2007 and expect to top those totals in 2008.

What are you prepared to change in your life to avoid financial pitfalls?

Answer that question for yourself. It's the baseline for keeping your New Year's resolutions. For example:

• If you've resolved to pay all your bills on time, are you also prepared to open and read your mail every day?
• If you are resolved to eliminate your debts, are you also prepared to stop using your credit cards?
• If you are resolved to live within your means, are you also prepared to tell your friends you can't afford some of your usual activities?
  

Self-sabotage

If you're not ready to break bad habits to reach your ultimate goal, you have decided to fail.

And that just may be where you are right now.

Sometimes we are not emotionally capable of reaching our highest potential. We sabotage ourselves in small and significant ways so we don't have to succeed.

Because keeping up with the Joneses means we're like everyone else. We're comfortable being the average person, even if that means being in debt and not saving enough for retirement or college.

But if you dare to be different, try thrift this year.

Web sites can help

Pick up tips on how to cut back at Mary Hunt's Debt-Proof Living Web site at www.cheapskatemonthly.com.

Another well-known penny-pincher is Clark Howard, and he offers advice at http://clarkhoward.com.

If you stick to your thrifty plans, the Joneses will be envying you in 2009.