Lucid Minds

Savings

June 29, 2007

Last Revised:  May 23, 2012 4:50 PM

It is said that most employees live from pay check to pay check.

Probably true.

Here is a report on the rental market, 2006, in Los Angeles, for some selected types of housing, compared with the average income of various types of jobs.

In this report for Los Angeles, the "Fair Market Rent" for a 1 bedroom apartment was found to be $952 per month, etc. According to this report not more than 30% of your income should be spent on housing and that would mean that you would need to earn $22.87 per hour to "afford" a one bedroom apartment. Per the chart the average earnings of various jobs shown -- some are above and some are below.

Are you comfortable with your housing quality? What percentage of your income are you saving? What percentage of your income are you spending on rent or housing?

Rental data are from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's report on Fair Market Rents for the year 2006 and are based on a survey of recently occupied units. The Hourly Wage Needed to Afford is the hourly wage that must be earned so that this rent does not exceed 30 percent of income, a standard measure of affordability. It is based on a concept developed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Wage data are as of August, 2006 and were obtained from a proprietary database of salary information by geographic location maintained by Salary.com.

Source

Savings rates are lower than they have been for many years:

 

It would appear that people feel forced to save less, spend more on housing in order to live reasonably and that savings rates are going down more?

Kevin Lansing, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, tracks the personal savings rate -- the Commerce Department's measure of how much consumers have left after spending is subtracted from income. In November the savings rate was a negative 0.2 percent.

Given how much red ink households racked up in the first 11 months of last year, Lansing said the nation's personal savings rate could well be negative for all of 2005.

That, he added, would be "the first such occurrence since the Great Depression." (source)

Yet, no matter how poor you may think you are, or how rich, the likelihood is that no matter what tomorrow may bring, you will not starve and you will not run out of money for gas for your car. You will have a place to sleep.

And, most likely, no matter how poor or how rich, if you put a bunch of money carelessly into your pocket and lose $100 on the street, you will still survive tomorrow, OK.

The trick of saving money might be to take a few dollars, every pay check, and stick it where you can't spend it -- a savings account might be OK if you don't have any history of "embezzling" your own savings and buying trinkets.

So, if you get extra, unexpected money in your hand, put it where you can't spend it -- don't ever spend it -- you will feel and BE Rich with savings, but not with trinkets.

A Company should follow the same Policy. Vibrant Life should be taking a bit of money every week and hiding it so that the spenders don't even know it could be used for some trinket. We should never spend it -- but as it builds up, in that hidden place, the Company will be comfortably solvent and senior management (whoever is senior enough to know where the stuff is hidden and who have NO tendency to want to spend it) will be confident of the future.

That confidence will translate to higher stats.

Try it. You'll find that it works. 

In fact it's such a good idea that the Company could improve the stability and productivity of staff by picking employees who already HAVE savings, or who save out of their pay checks -- regularly.

Or, find a way to encourage staff to save, such as a 401K retirement fund. More here. You should be investing in your future.

I might even ask you, from time to time, to show me your savings account. Not that I'm nosey, but that I want to have staff members who have the self-discipline to save money, no matter how much they earn or spend.

Self-discipline in saving probably means you will do well on the job.

Save, be solvent and be secure.

 

 

Quotes from L. Ron Hubbard are copyright 1994 © by the L. Ron Hubbard Library. All rights reserved.