inkbluesky

13 ways to live well on less

*Make a budget. “Without exception you have to do a written plan, called a budget,” says Dave Ramsey, author of “The Total Money Makeover.” Listeners to his national call-in radio show tell him once they make a budget, “they feel like they got a raise.” The reason, he says, is “managed money works harder.”

*Pay cash. “When you spend cash, it hurts,” says Ramsey. “And you spend less.”

Ramsey recalls a study several years ago that showed when shoppers spend cash, “you spend 12% to 18% less than when you spend plastic because of the emotional pain.”

Plus, he says, you can get a better deal when you use cash as a negotiating tool.

I was hestitant to post this link because of the crap at the beginning about what his grandmother could buy on her income. We can learn a lot from our grandparents, but those were distinctly different economic times. A single middle income wage earner had the purchasing power to buy a home and take care of a family. That same buying power today takes two incomes. Some good tips in general. The one anecdote about a friend that got a $38,000 Rolex for $18,000 seemed ridiculously out of place too. The median household income in the U.S. is $56,000. Even at the incredible bargain of $18,000 Rolexs hardly fit into the average person’s budget or you certainly don’t need a Rolex to have an accurate time piece.

u r what u hide behind 1600×1200.

An Immoral Philosophy

When a child is enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), the positive results can be dramatic. For example, after asthmatic children are enrolled in Schip, the frequency of their attacks declines on average by 60 percent, and their likelihood of being hospitalized for the condition declines more than 70 percent.

Regular care, in other words, makes a big difference. That’s why Congressional Democrats, with support from many Republicans, are trying to expand Schip, which already provides essential medical care to millions of children, to cover millions of additional children who would otherwise lack health insurance.

But President Bush says that access to care is no problem - “After all, you just go to an emergency room” - and, with the support of the Republican Congressional leadership, he’s declared that he’ll veto any Schip expansion on “philosophical” grounds.

It must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.

The House plan, which would cover more children, is more expensive, but it offsets Schip costs by reducing subsidies to Medicare Advantage - a privatization scheme that pays insurance companies to provide coverage, and costs taxpayers 12 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.

Speaking of grandparents most would probably say this was “penny wise and pound foolish”. One comment I heard on this story today was that Bush is afraid that the health plan for children will work and if that works then who knows what that could lead to - better health care and lower costs for everyone?