What it Really Takes to Create Sustained Abundance

An friend emailed me to ask if I am still committed to writing this Blog. I had to think about it for a while before responding because while I am very committed to the principle, I have not been active in the doing. I think this is true of most consumers. In our heart we know that our recent style of living is not sustainable and must be changed.
As an average American consumer affected by many aspects of this downturn, I am actively interested in understanding how it has occurred , what forces were/are beyond my control and what things I've done under my own control that have made it worse for my family.

The real bottom line in all of this is that most average Americans do not have any idea about their personal finances, have no budget or plans for the future (no savings) and have basically gone with the flow of easy credit and consumption because it was fun and the path of least resistance.  At least 25% of the Baby Boomer Generation will retire on Social Security with no other source of income.  At the present time, the base income of Social Security is below the Poverty level in this country.  Is there any reason to believe this situation will improve?

Now that this period of easy credit and consumption has slowed and may stop for a long while, I am wondering what it will take for people to sit back and really consider what it takes to maintain a sustainable life style in America, what I call "Sustained Abundance".

If you take the position that you cannot rely on anyone else, not parents, not siblings or other family or co-workers, not local or federal government and maybe not even a spouse or significant other, what do you really have to do to pay your own way and create enough abundance to be sure that you will have abundance at a reasonable level into the future? Many will take the position that living for the moment is the easiest way not to deal with any of the above issues.  Ignorance, as they say, is Bliss.

As a responsible spouse and a parent, I choose not to ignore what is happening, and in fact I am asking more questions than ever about credit, about planning for the future and about every new purchase I consider. This new attitude comes from the realization of the many blunders I've made with credit, my failure to plan and purchases that have come back to bite me in the rear.

As an example, I went to have my car tuned up last week and was told that I needed new spark plugs in my six cylinder engine.  The cost for replacing six spark plugs is $440.00 with labor and my car is not a luxury vehicle by any stretch.  At 100k miles the Catalytic Converter died and could only be replaced at the dealer at a cost of $2,200.00.  Needless to say I had not saved money for either of these events.

The question foremost in my mind now is, why didn't I ask the simple questions about the cost of maintaining the vehicle I selected before I bought it? I did not plan for sustained ownership of the vehicle and simply assumed that I could get a new one if anything too irritating happened to this one.  How many of us have/had the same attitude?

We have all made decisions about our financial lives.  Some of us have done better research than others, but all of us need to start asking the hard questions about our past and future purchases and plan for the costs that relate to our decisions. What kind of parent would I be if I did not make an effort to explain the simplest realities of personal finances to my offspring?

There is light at the end of the tunnel for anyone who shakes of the sleepy ease of going with the flow as it has existed for years. Positive change, more control and less fear is almost entirely attainable in spite of outside conditions, once you make the commitment to creating your own Sustained Abundance.