Did you know that the average American citizen spends 101$ for every 100$ that they earn . No wonder that the personal debt in this country is in the trillions which is a number that we can only imagine. It is also a disappointment that our public school system doesn’t prepare the average citizen to better manage their personal finances. It would be a benefit to all of us if we were introduced to basic economic concepts such as supply and demand and to learn how to regularly balance our check books at an early age.

Consequently, many of us have to learn about financial planning which is all about cash-flow at a later time in life. Cash-flow involves money coming into your account and money going out. You especially want to manage the money going out so that you will have a surplus at the end of each month that you can invest and so that eventually the income from the investments will support you. In order to achieve a monthly surplus, you have to develop a pattern of saving. Saving is where the average American citizen definitely falls on his or her face. We as a nation rank among the worst in the world when it comes to saving. Perhaps, it is because we are such collectors of “stuff”. Maybe it is because we have such an availability of goods that we can’t seem to resist in buying. But, probably the major cause is because we have such an availability of putting off the cost of an item by charging it.

Would you like to know how to cut your living expenses by twenty to thirty percent in thirty seconds?

Then you may need to schedule some plastic surgery. First take out all of your credit cards, put one away for emergencies, and destroy the rest. Studies show that this one maneuver will cut your living expenses by thirty percent over the next twelve months. The reason , as it was discussed in the previous paragraph, is that credit cards provide easy access to purchasing power. If you remove the easy access, you remove the temptation to spend usually on “stuff” that you can do without.

Another important aspect of personal and business planning is to balance your check book on a regular schedule. It is a great loss to the individual personally and to his or her business if their check books are not kept up to date. Some people never learn how to balance their checkbooks and consequently their finances are in a continual state of upheaval. It is wise to reconcile your bank account each month with the statement from your bank. If you use on-line banking, it would be to your benefit to balance and reconcile your bank account monthly.

These two simple methods, that is do some plastic surgery and regularly balance and reconcile your bankbook, will help to plug the leak in money going out of your cash account so that at the end of the month you will help to improve the saving rate of money in our culture and better plan for your future needs.

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Word derivation for the day: Where did the phrase “tickled to death” come from?

Legend has it that there was an old form of Chinese punishment and torture in which the victim was literally”tickled to death”. If this was true, then it was presumably possible to so tickle the fancy of a person that he too will die.