Occupy Wall Street? Let's Have a Tea Party and Think About It!

Occupying Wall Street? Let’s have a Tea Party and ponder this pickle that we’re in. My step-dad survived the great depression. He worked hard, tried to live right and always put family first. One of the best lessons he ever taught me was about money. I wanted to spend it – he wanted to save it. When it came to be getting something I wanted the answer was usually “no”. When it came to something I needed the answer was always “yes”. Each Friday when he got paid, he’d go to the bank and cash his check. He’d bring all the money home and then as he would say: “Time to fill my buckets”. His buckets were envelopes. He laid the cash out on the kitchen table. 10% would go into the “church” bucket. Then whatever bill was due, the cash went into that envelope for the full amount due. He’d then put $60.00 in an envelope for my mom as grocery money. He’d also tuck away $20.00 each week into a “secret” hiding place – which we’d know about, when the time came for us to know about it. Then once all the money was disbursed into the proper bucket, he’d go back to the bank and deposit the rest. He’d pay each bill in person – and with cash. He rarely wrote a check and never would touch a credit card. He was forced to retire after working 49 years and 9 months for one company. Nope, they wouldn’t give him a gold watch – after all, they said: “You didn’t work 50 years.” He did alright. His home was paid for, and he drove a brand new car every year. So did my mom. In his life time of “working for the man” as he would say; he only earned $ 449,000.00, or a little over $20,000 annually. But yet, he had over $100,000. In the bank when he retired. His definition of prosperity was: “To do whatever I want, whenever I want to.” And he did. He fished and hunted. Took vacations, volunteered, took my mom out to dinner two or three times a week. Owned every tool you could imagine in his work-shop and spent hours on end, making things, refinishing things or shooting the breeze with his buddies around the potbellied stove. He had a good life. He would say a prosperous life. “I never had a debt, that’s the secret to success – and always pay cash!” The day he died, my mom told me about his secret hiding place. When I looked behind the bread drawer I found a bag full of $20.00 bills. We took it to the bank and after they counted it the total was just a few dollars less than $8,000.00. The cost of his funeral was $7,900.00. It was paid for, in cash, just like he would have wanted. He’d be amused by the “Occupying Wall Street Protestors. “If you’d paid cash for things; only bought what you needed rather than what you wanted and stayed out of debt you wouldn’t be in this pickle now!” He’d be right. I guess I’ll give his “prosperity plan” a try – I certainly don’t have anything to lose.”