Learning to Crawl before you Walk before you Run

You absolutely must learn to Budget before you can Save and learn to Save before you can Invest and you must Invest in order to buy really awesome things and have a great life!

Have you ever heard the analogy of putting the "cart in front of the horse?"

Usually the horse pulls the cart. However, in the analogy, the cart (the thing that must be moved) is put in front of the Power that moves it.

You are so fixated on what you want that you ignore HOW to get it.

The result? You focus your effort on the second part of the process and ultimately fail.

Here's the deal, how many people do you know that have really fun "toys" (Cars, ATV's, Vacations, nice clothes, etc.) but they complain about not having enough money or not knowing how they can afford to retire?

They are focusing on the Cart and ignoring the Horse. You will shortly see that if you start your Investing early you will quickly outpace what you can legally save in a tax advantaged retirement account. What will you do with the extra money that you can't place into retirement accounts? One option would be to look for other investments, but, depending on your expected Standard of Living during retirement you could spend the extra investing money on "toys" at least once in a while.

In short, you can't walk (Save) before you can crawl (Budget) and you certainly can't run (invest) before you can walk (Save).

Take care of the truly important things first; Budget, Savings, Investing. And the luxuries of life will come to you in their own due time. Be patient when spending your money. Let your money grow and work for you for a little while. Then, when you have taken care of the important things, you can use the money that your money has made FOR you to buy some toys.

Questions:

1. What are the three parts of financial happiness?

2. What are some "cart" items that are keeping you from seeing the "horse"?

3. What is meant by the phrase "use the money that your money has made FOR you to buy some toys"?

Resources:

Lecture Guide

PowerPoint: Electronic Budget Simulation

Teachers Pay Teachers Files