Guest Columnist - Cameron Verdi

Cameron is a good friend and financially astute observer of our weakening economy, please enjoy his perspective....

So with Bernanke( The Fed Chairman, who controls the Reserve, a position that can be herald as one of the world's most powerful positions) scheduled to talk tomorrow, the topic of conversation will undoubtably be about the state of our economy. Recession, inflation, you know, the normal stuff. Funny how the government is trying to act as a triage for all the pain our economy is currently in. Congress felt compelled to meet with some of the Oil big wigs this week, to determine exactly how did they make soo much money over the last few years. I have one number for you, $107. Price per barrel of oil, is a good start.

Enough about that, I find it funny how we can spend soo much time trying to understand why we are where we are, opposed to what we can do to fix it. This wont be fixed over night, and I dont intend on pulling my hair out trying to understand all of our global issues, including, but not limited to our devalued dollar, global dislike for the War, etc. From my perspective, it all starts with baby steps, 101 of spending and budgeting on the personal level.

A rule of thumb that I have always leaned on, is to take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.

What does that mean? Well, lets get analytical on it.

If you bring home $4,000:

Try to save 10% of that into an account you dont touch ( except for emergencies)( May I recommend: www.ingdirect.com)

So you now have $3600 left.
Roof over your head shouldn't cost you more than 30% of your take home ( 4,000 x 0.30)= $1,200
Car and gas----that is up to you....but for the record, you now have $2,400 to play with.
$2400 less car expenses, gas, utilities, phone, health insurance ( dont skip this one, it is important), food, dining out, entertainment etc.

This all seems basic, but you would be surprised how much better life could be without the pressures of not having any money saved. Down the road, we can talk about IRA etc, but I think this will be a good start. Since I finished rebuilding my house, I realized I was lighting a lot more money on fire than I needed to be, so I have implement my old school style of saving, just like in the old days, and feel like it is an important thing to always maintain.