This months home teaching message

We were just blessed to have our home teachers come and share a message for this month on preparing now to serve a couples mission. When we got married we were given a book called "Financial Peace Revisited" by Dave Ramsey. I always have enjoyed hearing tips on how to save my money and so I really enjoyed this book. I plan on randomly sharing pieces from this book as it has helped me to see clearly a lot of financial things.

So to go along with our home teaching message from this January it is an interesting truth that the typical American saves 2.2 percent of after-tax income, while the average Japanese saves 27.9 percent of after tax income! Wow! That is a big difference! When I heard this I thought "I've always wanted to save my money, but I just don't know the best way to do it without spending it!" I've tried saving cash and putting it in a special box, but then I wasn't earning interest.

 So what I did is I opened a second savings account as well as several money market accounts. Each account has its own purpose and each month I put money into these other accounts (you can set it up online so it is real easy to do as soon as you get your paycheck). (Don't forget to pay your tithing as well!) I have that my first priority is to put $100 each paycheck into a retirement fund (yeah I know it sounds really early, but this can go towards paying for a couples mission for us! And you dont have to do $100, you can do $50, $10, etc.) When that got to be a certain amount I put it in a CD so that I could get more interest. It is amazing how quickly the money builds up. Hopefully someday Ill learn more about interest rates and I can put it in a Roth IRA or something that builds more interest, but this was a simple way for me to start out. Then in my money market we occasionally put money in to save for other things (for example a trip to Europe, a new TV, etc.). The money market account is great because you can only withdraw 6 times (depends on the bank) a month or you are penalized, so this type of account is a great way to save money where you aren't as tempted to use the money unless absolutely necessary.

So in other words, being Latter-Day Saints, we need to try to be money smart and avoid debt and learn how to save our money for the future. Developing habits now will help us to learn the value of saving and teach us habits that we can teach our children. Even if our income is low we can always save our money even if it is just a small amount. Avoiding debt is talked about a lot by the Prophets and saving our money is a great way to avoid debt.

Have a great week!