On getting ahead.

I might make a post or 2 about spiraling down.


I have a friend that has been a social worker for three decades or so. She’s seen a lot and once asked me for some ideas on poverty.

Some of it can probably be attributed to laziness, some to lack of gray matter, some attributed to ignorance. Some is just plain bad luck, and some is out and out stupidity. I suppose there are a jillion reasons that some people just don't live very well and others do.

Some of it I can attribute to a lack of planning and thinking ahead.

Take car ownership. Most of us own a car of some sort.

I own a pickup because it fits my lifestyle and occasionally I can use it to make a few bucks here and there. A pickup lasts me for about a decade until it starts to nickel-dime me and I sell it to either some kid for peanuts or scrap it. Generally, the vehicle has pretty close to 200,000 miles on it, and still runs pretty good.

So let’s take a look at someone’s budget. They think, sharpen their pencil and figure that they can afford, say $500/month for a vehicle.

So they go out and buy a vehicle with $500/ month payments.

This is their first mistake.

Every 5000 miles there is a scheduled oil change. While it’s only a few bucks, it has to be done regularly. Also, there are wearing parts like brakes, mufflers, generators, batteries and the like that wear out over the life of the vehicle.

This costs money.

Of course, when the car is new, this really isn’t too much of a problem and much of it is covered by warranty, although generally speaking, preventative maintenance is not.

So you have a 5000 mile oil change coming up, and you scrape the $25 up by shorting something else in your life. At 10,000 miles, you do it again. You slice the meat a little thinner.

You do it again at 20,000 miles.

At 25,000 you realize you’re a little short that month so you put it off and maybe skip it altogether. You catch it at 35,000, and at 40,000 you realize you got away with skipping the 30,000 change so you decide that maybe it’s OK to change your oil every 10,000 miles.

By this time, the vehicle is off of warranty and you need brakes, which cost a few bucks. So instead of coughing up for decent parts, you cheap out and buy bottom of the line brake parts, which wear out quickly and have to be replaced more often than quality parts.

And so the cycle begins and at about 100,000 miles the entire car is now ready for the bone yard. It’s what? It’s five years old and just paid for, and shot.

It’s part of the mentality that creates the cycle of poverty.

Had our family opted for, say a somewhat less expensive car at, say $400/month and tucked the $100/month aside for maintenance, they’d be a whole lot further ahead.

Their vehicle would have lasted twice as long, with fewer repairs. Based on a 5 year note, and the vehicle lasting a decade, they’d have had 5 years of not having to make a car payment.

With $400/ month going toward the next vehicle for five years, we’re talking about having $24,000 put aside for the next vehicle they need. They can pay cash and avoid payments and the interest altogether.

I know we’re talking about a hypothetical situation here and haven’t taken a lot into consideration. I’m using this as an oversimplified example, but I think that a lot of the financial problems people land in is because they don’t take the time out to think out what something is really costing them.

Maybe schools ought to teach basic finance. It might help.

Of course, it’s easy to cop an attitude and blame someone else, but the truth is that many people just don’t think.
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Sometimes the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.
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One of the things I notice out here about people is their sense of priorities.

There's a guy out here that makes a hell of a lot more money than I do, but never seems to have any. He's living paycheck to paycheck and is constantly either borrowing small amounts of money from the guys or mooching an occasional meal from someone. He's CONSTANTLY working overtime to pay for all of this stuff.

His wife looks like she spends a fortune at the beauty shop, and his kids have all of the right brand sneakers and fad clothing.

His house is huge,he has a lot of toys and his pickup is almost brand new and is the biggest, and most powerful one Dodge makes. I'm sure it gets really lousy gas milage. I once asked him why he got such a big and powerful rig, and he told me, "I do a lot of 4 wheelin'."

Yeah, right. He doesn't live on top of Mt. Shasta. There's not a scratch on that damned truck.

I once asked him to help us move a bunch of plastic buckets and he begged off, telling us he didn't want the bed scratched up.

So what good is a truck like that?

I once got to visit him at his place and he has the biggest shop in his garage I have ever seen, yet there was no evidence that he's ever so much as built a bird house.

I seriously wonder what his credit card debt is like.

This guy isn't rich. He's just a poor person at heart waiting for an opportunity to move into primitive squalor.

Of course, when that happens, he'll be the first to ask for some kind of bailout or he'll declare bankrupcy and get to keeep it all, and suckers like me that play by the rules will pay his bills for him.


The part of this that galls the living shit out of me is when some poor bastard that lives frugally and plays by the rules can't get squat if he runs into trouble.

My social worker friend told me that she had to bust her ass and call in all sorts of favors to get a lousy five grand to get somebody's kid a lousy hearing aid.
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I just bought myself a new pickup. I paid about a third of what this guy paid, it gets damned near 30 mpg, does everything I want it to and in about a decade when I get rid of it, it'll probably he covered with the little nicks and dings that a working pickup normally accumulates.

I seldom work overtime.

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Jeff Foxworthy made me laugh the other day.

He said that rich people have a portfolio of various stocks, bonds, and other investments.

Rednecks buy lottery tickets.

I buy 4 per trip, one each for the four drawings that take place in a 2 week tour. Four bucks for 4 nights worth of entertainment. We sit by the TV and make up things we'd do if we ever win big. The laughter itself is well worth the dollar, and for a buck it's well worth it for the entertainment. There's really not a hell of a lot to do out here at night when we're not actually transferring cargo.

I think tomorrow's post I'll look at the lottery.
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A nightly post from the Gospel According to Piccolo