"I don't know anyone who makes enough money to be saving. Everybody I know is making it paycheck to paycheck, and barely that."

I am trying to be neither sarcastic nor demeaning when I say to you; "Perhaps you are hanging with the wrong crowd?"

Perhaps you've made a "life model" that requires some adjustment? You don't need to be a (God Forbid) Republican or Conservative to be financially successful...just ask Warren Buffet.

If you want to be "successful", (whatever that means to you) perhaps you should be doing what those you deem successful are doing.

Just an observation.

Tom,

I have graduate degrees in music and theology. What would ytour suggestion be?

I guess I'm hanging with the wrong crowd, too. Neither my husband or I have 401K's or group health insurance. Every extra penny goes to paying medical bills even though we're reasonably healthy and try to stay that way.

There's precious little left over for retirement savings, and 'retirement' is a fantasy for us. We haven't had more than a 2% raise in years; just cuts in benefits.

I don't pretend to know what anyone else should "do" for a living. I do know that when what I am doing isn't giving the desired/required results, it's time to re-evaluate and make some changes.

Those changes can be as simple as changing spending habits, to a complex as starting or closing a business, getting a second job, changing companies, or changing careers. Everybodies' circumstances are different.

Have to side more with Melanie on this one. Conducting a lifestyle of "personal responsibility" only goes so far.

Since W took office, most people who haven't been downsized or outsourced have not had wage increases (when given) keep pace with inflation.

A person CAN cut back in a lot of areas, but the sacrifices and uncertainty begin to wear badly. My sister's been living a rather Spartan lifestyle of late, and now she's been hit by the flooding in the Northeast. She said that a lot of the people in her area were getting through everyday expenses (food, clothes) by using credit cards. A lot of them are still recovering from flooding over the past two years, and they've lost more than she has this time.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know that the current trend can't last.

So, what you are saying is that individual circumstance is not affected by personal choice and direction; we're all just a bunch of victims?

One can always choose to look at things from either a systemic or a individualistic point of view. They're both valid- to a point. And they both have their blind spots.

In this case the individualistic pov ignores age discrimination, stagnant and falling wages for many many working people. Rising energy, food and health care costs. It ignores the de-industrialization of our economy, offshoring, globalization, the cheap labor politics of immigrataion. It ignores tax policies that tax earnerd income at a higher rate than unearned income.

But still, there is room for us as individuals to navigate these structural obstacles. But whether we win or lose in our individual efforts to advance our individual casue we need to remember the system is always structured by elites of wealth and power to serve their interests. Not those of the majority. The ultimate challange of a radical social democracy is to create systems that work for all.

I wouldn\\\'t know Social Democracy from Donkeys.
I DO know from experience that if my own personal ship is sinking, I get a choice:

I can blame and castigate the Navigator, or the ship designer; or spend my time trying to figure out \\\"Why?\\\"....

...Or, when somebody offers me a hand, I can get in the lifeboat and keep from getting sucked under.

I didn\\\'t make my comments to simply make a \\\"point of veiw\\\". People offered that they were in dire straights financially, and that those they knew were in the same shape. Just as someone offered me a hand up when I was in that position; I, however clumsily, offer the same.

I have no control over \\\"the system\\\". I do have control over how I react to what is, and how I can keep a roof over my families head, food on the table, and something left over for the future.

Again, I proffer only what has worked for me, and for those that were kind enough to show me.

Whether anyone wishes to partake; well, that\\\'s up to them.

What do you do when nobody offers you a hand, Tom? They aren't required to and a lot of the time they don't. What do you do then?

Again...I can only do what I can do, and that is offer what was given to me freely, and worked in my life....

What you choose to do with it, I have no control over.

At a particularly low point in my life, I worked for a boss who I feared, despised, resented, and also envied. As my personal situation declined, so did my performance at work. One day he called me into his office. He told me straight up that my work was poor, and my attitude was taking a nosedive. He didn't know what was going on, but whatever was going on with me, I needed to knock it off, and get myself straightened out.

He told me that what was going on in my personal life was none of his business; but he told me how he thought I could resolve my problems. He spelled it out for me, and I walked out of his office even more angry and resentful.

I resented his intrusion into my life, and the presumption that he knew better than I did what it was I needed.

Needless to say, I didn't heed his advice, kept doing what I was doing, and I was fired; which only made things worse.

It took a while, and things got very bad for me, personally, and financially, 'till I became so desperate that I became willing to try his approach. Since then, the improvements in my life have been gradual but steady.

Again...I can only do what I can do, and that is offer what was given to me freely, and worked in my life....

What you choose to do with it, I have no control over.

At a particularly low point in my life, I worked for a boss who I feared, despised, resented, and also envied. As my personal situation declined, so did my performance at work. One day he called me into his office. He told me straight up that my work was poor, and my attitude was taking a nosedive. He didn't know what was going on, but whatever was going on with me, I needed to knock it off, and get myself straightened out.

He told me that what was going on in my personal life was none of his business; but he told me how he thought I could resolve my problems. He spelled it out for me, and I walked out of his office even more angry and resentful.

I resented his intrusion into my life, and the presumption that he knew better than I did what it was I needed.

Needless to say, I didn't heed his advice, kept doing what I was doing, and I was fired; which only made things worse.

It took a while, and things got very bad for me, personally, and financially, 'till I became so desperate that I became willing to try his approach. Since then, the improvements in my life have been gradual but steady.

I guess Tom is saying something like "If it's not working, try changing your approach."

But the real trick is to specify IN WHAT WAY to change the approach. For example, clothes - who would really be willing to trade down from department stores to lower middle class clothes, or from there to to "K-Mart wardrobe" (a phrase from a record by Was/Not Was - now it would be "Walmart wardrobe"), or from there to buying used clothes? Who would really be willing to eat rice and beans as their main food, like some kind of third worlder? Some kinds of expense allocations are simply non-negotiable. Similarly, taking action to increase income (instead of decreasing outgo) is often even more difficult, if not in practice impossible.

Life is full of suffering,
and over too soon.

It's kinda funny; I've offered an approach that has worked for me and others. The commenters here have made assumptions about what it is, yet I've been told here that whatever it is, it would only "go so far", "be of limited value", that increasing income is "even more difficult, if not in practice impossible", that an individual approach has "blind spots" or that it "ignores the de-industrialization of our economy........", and of the two e-mails I've received from readers here, one admonished me to "take your feel-good snake oil and go sell it to your born-again idiot friends" the other telling me to simply "****off, **shole".

When my boss finally got tired of my "stuff" and called me back into his office (to fire me, but I didn't know it at the time) he asked me if I had tried any of his suggestions. I told him that I had talked to friends, and that they really didn't think any of it would work.

He told me that I was like the guy living in a small town in the blistering desert; when a stranger came through and told us about places where grass grew, water fell from the sky and sometimes snow fell; we all cried "BS!", because none of us had heard of that.

The help is free for the asking. It doesn't involve multilevel marketing, chain letters, joining ANYTHING, sending money or stamping envelopes. There is no group, cult, seminar, book or website, and nobody is going to measure your performance. It is not a marketing ploy or something you join.

If you are like me, it did require that I do some things in my life.

Ya'll have a nice day.

Tom - Perhaps you'd get a better response if you were more straightforward in stating what you are recommending. So far, you have not been specific in ANY way. When you say, "the help is free for the asking", this evokes - for me - all the other times people have said "it's free" when actually there were strings attached. What WAS it that your boss suggested to you, that at first you (like the readers here) rejected, but that your later experience showed to be a fruitful approach?

Our hostess Melanie, with her degrees in both music and theology, may recognize the following quote, made memorable to me as the lyrics of a song by Bobby McFerrin, of much-maligned "Don't Worry, Be Happy" fame -

"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”---Hebrews 12:11

The advice I was given was pretty basic in concept, difficult (for me) in execution. As an angry, troubled adult, I suffered from bouts of debilitating depression, coupled with a developing addiction along with chronic health problems. I might preface this with the admonishment that it likely will not work until addiction problems are dealt with ( in my experience, untreated addictions seem to undo any positive steps one can produce).

None of this is original, nor even new...it can be found in 12 Step groups, self help books and spiritual and religious literature through the ages. But it does work.

But it does require that I DO the things, not just "think about them".

A.Make a decision to give up anger, resentment and blame for my circumstance.

B.Accept that much of my troubles are due to my own bad choices in life, and admit it to someone else, remembering that I am human; neither as bad at being good nor as good at being bad as I may think.

C.Do a thorough written inventory of my life; include financial, moral and social interactions, looking for where I was at fault.

D.Set reasonable, written goals for myself in each of the areas I find myself deficient.

E.Make a decision that no matter what happens today, I will do one small measurable thing to achieve one of those goals.

F.Look for someone else in worse shape than me, and help them.

G.If this works for me, share it with someone else.

H.Share with someone in need some of what I have received, and tell no one.

That's it.

I have never done this in writing before; usually I simply talk to someone who I may think could use this. I normally share some things (of a somewhat embarrassing nature) that I managed to do that got me in the pickle I found myself, and how my life is different today. I won't do that here, as it is a wide open public forum and not appropriate.

I also have found a couple of people that I admire how they conduct their lives; they serve as friends and mentors and examples, so that I am not operating in a void, relying only on my own warped judgement.

Some also say that re-establishing a spiritual connection also helps.

Agin, none of this is original to me, and on the surface, appears pretty mundane, but if done rigorously, will produce inspiring results.