How do you find the pennies?

[Jock Scot]

Dead easy! Just wear one tartan and then you only need to replace your hose once in a while.It helps with your cash flow and stops your kilt attire from shrinking too, if you don't eat!

[Ian.MacAllan]

. . . if you don't eat!

Marvelous, Jock, hilarious even! Many thanks for the laugh.

Seriously, in my experience it has always been possible to live on no more than 2/3 of my income, even at 75 cents per hour. It has not always been pleasant but it has always been possible. There is a three-legged stool metaphor here: earn, save, invest; and of course, work like hell.

There are thousands of books and articles on managing personal finances, most of which contain at least some useful ideas. You have to decide for yourself which ideas will help you. I can offer only the following general guidelines:

1. Be patient. Avoid get-rich-quick schemes; some of them may enrich others, but if you have any ethics or morality they won't enrich you.

2. Borrow to invest when the expectation of gain is attractive, but never borrow to consume. Even extreme emergency consumption needs should be financed from savings, not from borrowing.

3. Live economically, even after your savings can both meet the requirements of point 2 and provide funds for investing.

4. Never let yourself be persuaded that any opportunity is so great ot so fleeting that you must seize it without thorough research. Life will always be full of opportunities, most of which will go wanting for someone with the vision and the resources to capitalize upon them.

5. Charging expenses to a credit card which you pay off in full and on time every month is not borrowing. Anything you do with a credit card that incurs a service charge is borrowing, and it's very expensive borrowing at that.


.