Saving Money...

I know I promised months ago that I would put an audiobook "best of" narrator list up in my next post. This is not it.
That will come in the next few, but I have something a bit more important for people to know here: Saving money. Every one has something to say on the subject: clip coupons, forgo the lattes, and cut back to eating out 1x a week. The media seems to recycle the same damn advice over and over and over.

At the dentist yesterday, I picked up a copy of Good Housekeeping, intrigued by a Dr. Oz article on the cover. After reading it, and thinking maybe I should buy a copy before it goes off the stand I noticed what looked like an interesting article on saving money, titled "How We Saved $10,000 in Just One Year." Money wins out over calorie counts every time! Wow. 10k! They must have been doing something really REALLY different! I was grinning ear to ear thinking I was going to learn something new. Oh boy! I was in for a treat!

Skimming it, I first saw the photo of this picture perfect American family, proud as punch of their achievement and holding items from their "saving sojourn." In the photo, the mother was holding in her lap, a half gallon carton of 360 milk from my favorite "fleecing your money via fear" supermarket who I fondly refer to as "Whole Paycheck." Insert *Facepalm* here.

I did skim the article, and to be fair to my first impression before I posted here, I reread it on line (http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/budget/we-saved-10-grand-wealth-watchers)

Honestly, I couldn't stomach most of it. The life this person lived, seemed to be one step below the partial sharing jetset folks. This magazine (Good Housekeeping) is supposed to appeal to the American women with a household to manage and run. Who exactly was this supposed to appeal to?

I sat there and wondered if the editors at Good Housekeeping are suffering from Romney-itis, and are incapable of relating to the majority of the country who earns far less than 500K a year. Reading on, she enlisted friends of hers that had already lost their jobs, had some money in the bank, but were cutting back to make their nest egg last as long as it had to. These folks were a diet buddy of sorts. And although they had some common sense ideas that people in the below that income bracket already do, it was almost sad.

Saving 10K is not as important to the wealthy of our country as it is to the folks who are trying to scrape by and are at their wits end. For these folks who are barely getting by, coupon clipping is not even coming close to making things easier. Instead the insults kept coming...the author panics in the article about having to "pay" for college, never even had a brain cell thought about having her kids get a job to help defer the cost.

The one common sense thing that the author did do was to keep track of what she was spending ala Weight Watchers. The "discretionary" daily spending amount was another facepalm moment. $90 a day? Seriously? But I do give her kudos for keeping track of what she spent in a semi-structured manner.

I am very saddened by this article and honestly, I am not going to buy April's edition of that magazine. In the next few postings I will be illustrating some of what I do to save money and also provide me with a better standard of living than what is currently sold to the American public's current philosophy of today.

As my posting history here is spotty, I am committing to having one new blog post here up each week. Intermingled with the "saving money" bit, will be odds and ends that come across my path and be of interest to folks who wander on by. I hope you will pick up some info and insight as I share what I have learned to make my life richer with you all.