Marriage…When Your Spending Plans Don’t Agree
The expression is opposites attract, and this is very much the case when it comes to spending plans in a marriage. If you are a careful spender than being married to someone who is a spender can be trying and challenging especially in difficult economic times. Whether your spouse is a person who spends to get a good feeling from it, or they overspend due to carelessness, the results are still the same, leaving you with too much debt and little savings to pay it down with.
If you attempt to solve this problem using the lecture method, then you may just drive your spouse to spend more, thus resulting in more problems.
A more effective strategy to combat this problem is to keep track of household expenses. Accountability for household expenses may be just enough to show your spouse the areas that need work, without really saying anything.
If this doesn’t work? Then the time has come to get separate bank accounts. And if your spouse’s spending is causing extreme stress on your household finances, then you may have to consider stronger measures.
Finally, you might consider lightening up a little. Marriage is one of life’s great blessings. If you think the occasional iToy is expensive, wait until you see how much a divorce costs.
Obama Economic Stimulus, Will It Work?
Most American’s are thinking that with a National Debt of over 10 Trillion dollars why is this guy already spending this much money when he hasn’t even taken office yet. Well, on some level, we all are aware that spending is actually what keeps the economy going, but let’s face it, we also know that we need our money right now, and most people are not running around spending all that they have. So why does Obama think that his stimulus package will work when Bush’s didn’t.
The answer to that is both complex and simple. When Bush set out to stimulate the economy, he did so by sending checks to individuals and families. Great in theory, however most American’s who were already struggling used those checks to pay bills or stashed it away for a rainy day. Therefore, we did not all run out and shop for new items and that in turn did not do for the economy what Bush had hoped.
In Obama’s plan, which does include checks to the American public, it however does not rely on them to be the stimulus. It is offering a much more comprehensive and multi faceted approach to stimulating the economy which includes sizable tax deductions for businesses for each new employee they hire on. This will help create jobs, which in the long term seems like it will have a bigger impact on people’s spending. After all, you can’t be out spending if you don’t have a job at which you can earn some money.
If you look over the plan you will in fact see that Obama’s plan will help stimulate the economy which will not only help the individuals but also the businesses and the unemployment rate. Overall, this plan is cheap compared to how much Bush has spent on bail outs in the last three months. At least the Obama plan stands a chance.