Mary Hunt's Thought of the Day...enjoy!!!!

Money is not for Spending

Many years ago a reader sent me a clip from the American Spectator Magazine. It was so profound, so moving. I put it aside planning to share it with my readers in the following issue of Debt-Proof Living (formerly Cheapskate Monthly).

Well, if you knew the condition of my office (more piles than files ...) you would not be surprised that was the last time I saw it. In my initial reading I paid no attention to the source nor the name of the reader. I had no where to go.

I searched and searched for the clip, month after month. It just vanished. From time to time I would clean things up (the act of moving piles around) always hoping to come across the clip. But alas, it was gone.

Not long ago I walked out of my office into the adjoining warehouse and there sitting on a shelf in plain view was the clip. Don't even ask where it was or where it came from. I have no idea.

Anyway, I am so excited to be able to share this with you all these many years later. I see that it was sent to me by Jitendra R. Bhatt, M.D. of San Clemente, California, on October 19, 1995. Here it is:

"My parents, who are not really rich, have never, as adults, been seriously worried about money. They have always lived modestly, even frugally and have always had wants that are modest compared with their means.

"They are not geniuses at investing and have never been wildly well paid. They have just been like an ant, putting aside money year in and year out, and now they have a comfy cushion around them.

"What I keep coming back to is that the real bottom line is a simple idea that savers know and the terrorized don't; money is not for spending; it's for saving and then for spending. Or you might put it a different way. Money is not for spending now. It's for spending on a rainy day. If that rainy day doesn't come in your life, it might come in your children's life or their children's.

"Money is protection, the shield for your family and for you. There is no new suit of clothes, no vacation, no new car that can offset the pain of being truly worried about running out of money.

"I have had that fear. It comes at about five in the morning and it keeps you awake and makes your mouth dry and makes you hate the sound of birds singing in the morning. I don't want anyone I love to come even close to it."

--Ben Stein in American Spectator