Stay Home and Save as if Your Life Depended on It

Nobody used to love to go places more than I did. In the good old days of Clinton-omics, “let the good times roll…” played on the jukebox in my head. I had my bags packed and passport in hand for whatever Port ‘o Call beckoned this motley crew. If the dollar fell while we were in El Cordoba or Timbuktu, non problemento-there was always an ATM that would throw cash at us. And like that sassy profane and trailer-trash belle from O’Hara, we’d cry, “Let’s think about that tomorrow.”

And ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the feeding frenzy of easy money and endless credit came to a screeching halt. I got word that the ‘one-stop shopping with an unlimited equity line of credit had been reversed just as I was trying to get some dough from that slit at the money machine: This account is overdrawn and there will be no more where this came from! And then the record changed. It lamented my loose ways with money as it spun “Ain’t that a shame…”

As they say on TV and in the movies, fast forward six months and you will catch me balancing my check book, cutting back on vanities and living on what I make every two weeks. Sometimes it feels as if I went to sleep a ‘fat cat’ and woke up dead broke with a bad memory about how it happened. But I have been a student of Buddha too, too long not to know that his core message is “Wake up and pay what you owe!”

Okay I am rewriting the wisdom of this great teacher, but waking up to what things cost and how and when they must be paid for has changed me more than any other single life lesson I have ever remembered.

So the next time you want to blame the banks and the traders and stock brokers-the stupid real estate market that dared crash and diminish the value of your house thousands of dollars-think again. We all got caught up in “get rich quicker” and forgot a caveat so ancient it’s probably in the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone: “If it’s too good to be true…” You know the way that old saw goes. So do what I do: go back to basic arithmetic and reinvent your budget. Save not spend. Get to know your neighbors and stay away from London Town. Be patient. This lesson will roll back around in a few years. Let’s hope we’ve learned that it is more blessed to save than spend.

Albert Clayton Gaulden can be reached at info@sedonaintensive.com or visit www.sedonaintensive.com/ for more information.

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