Marie Taylor, Ink

Because of the economic challenges of the times, I thought I should I share my hard-earned understanding of the world of money and finance.

My first law of financial management is extra money generates more bills. For instance, get an extra couple of hundred in the bank and you can predict the future. The car battery will die on the freeway, the tooth you’ve been babying will turn on you like a wet cat, you’ll see your boss looking at you with an unhealthy speculation, or you’ll find that you forgot to pay the mortgage. 

There seems to be some magic point, say about $500, and if you can get over that hurdle without have a major expense, you’re okay for a while. About a year ago I had a lot of work which resulted in a pile of money coming in at one time. I let it sit in the bank for a few days and admired the balance.  That giddiness did not prompt me into making more money however, because if I made more money, I’d generate more bills. That is not the way to the black side of the ledger. 

Now, my second law of financial management is closely related to the first and is this: no matter how much you make, it’s never enough. This has something to do with the cost of living. In other words, the more you make, the less you can afford. Now this does not mean if you make less money, you can buy more. It means that no matter what you make you can’t afford it. I think that this law is so self-evident it doesn’t require a lot of explanation. 

My third law of financial management is: the faster you spend it, the further it goes. I derived this law by careful observation and a little Aristotelian logic. Here is how it came about. I once noticed that when I was driving and ran low on gas, an overwhelming urge arose within me to drive quickly to a gas station. Following that natural impulse, I tepped on the gas and made it to the station. If I had dilly dallied, I wouldn’t have got there without a tow.

Think about it.  Not convinced? Pay closer attention. This next part is currently unproven but relying on my mostly infallible intuition, I do not question the validity of the following deduction.

When we get low on gas, the adrenaline surges in our body. This creates an adrenaline of another kind within our psychic body in the metaphysical world. It is this, shall I call it astral adrenaline, that is propelled into our gas tank giving the car that extra push it needs to get to the station. If you drive slowly and meander along the way, you’ve just short-circuited a sure thing. 

Apply this same scientific principle to the world of finance and I think that you’ll quickly see the obvious conclusion. If you’re running short of money, what you’ve got to do is go out and spend some more real fast. This is an unwavering rule in the in-and-out box of my life. When the balance gets low, I go out shopping.

I pick up a few treats to keep my money-making engine oiled – a book here, a little dinner there, some new clothes somewhere else. This not only raises my spirits considerably, but it makes me feel rich which in turn feeds that psychic energy reserve in my astral money-making engine. Before I know it I’m headed to the black side of the ledger.

Let me leave you with these final words of wisdom:

“Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow money to do it.”

Artemus Ward, “Science & Natural History”