Are You Keeping Part of What You Earn?


288-October 15

“Dig a well before you’re thirsty.”—Chinese Proverb


Okay, here’s another of those pages bugging you to save money. So, have you started yet?

Just think for a moment about all the money you have had pass through your fingers during your lifetime. From your first childhood allowance or your first job to your current salary or business gross income. How much is that? Or if that is too overwhelming to contemplate, just look at your gross income for the last ten years. How much is that?

What is left over after all that money has been in your hands? How much did you keep? What is the sum total of all the money you currently possess? At a seminar given by Consumer Credit Counselors, I learned that the life savings of the average fifty-year-old is $2,700. If you have more than that, congratulations! If less, you have some work to do.

During several months in 1999 and 2000, the American savings rate was a negative number. That means we borrowed more than we saved. And in the best economy mankind has ever known!

Start the savings habit now. Open a savings account for any amount of money and start. Then put 10 percent of all you earn into it—throughout the month with each bit of income you get. You will find that the money you need to pay the bills still comes in. It is part of the way you create abundance—by committing to it and then taking action to do it. Live on 90 percent of your income—you do it when things get tough, so why not do it now in order to save for your future?

If you can’t do 10 percent, then do 5 percent or whatever it takes to get you started. Just get started. You’ll like yourself—and your money—when you do.

Then if you get thirsty, you’ll have a well.

Today’s Affirmation: “I invest wisely and well and my money makes money!”

The 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka. A letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times noted that one of Gurdon’s high school teachers, as quoted by the BBC, reported:


Ah, the Naysayers lurk everywhere on a person’s road to success. I think they are really mentors, whose job it is to show you that you must toughen up and make your dream happen in spite of them!