Credit Crunchies - Bringing you Hope in 2009

For some it might seem that the reason for creating this blog was as a "knee jerk" type reaction to the sudden economic atmosphere of fear. However my aims and probably the aims of many other writers here was not to "cash in on poverty" but to sign post personal prosperity.

Thing about the classic basic maths of money management, for example:

income - (bills + food + other spending) = amount left to save

Let's put some overly simplistic numbers into this.

£26,000 - (£24,000) = £2,000

This guy is probably doing okay for themselves and in the excessively blind and optimistic years that preceded the current economic crash and the years of the same that will come again this is a successful person.

Often it is not until the situation becomes:

£12,400 - £24,000 = HELP!!!

That people turn to blogs such as this for advice.

But I want to tell you something - the person in our illustration was being foolish as are we all. If companies, even during good years, we're run like we run our lives and homes they'd need to go running cap in hand looking for cash when there is a short fall. Oh wait...



What if our fictional person, let's call him Bob, started trying to reduce his spending section through being frugal where possible, investing in efficient (and green) technology in his home and down sizing his car to a more efficient model?

Bob would have seen his success look like this.

£26,000 - (£18,000) = £8,000

Given that he maintained this for years it would have become this:

£26,000 + £7,500 - (£17,400) = £15,600

Does that not look better?

And when the crunch gets to Bob

£12,400 + £8,300 - (£16,900) = Phew!!!

Being efficient need not be part of a frantic bid to block up holes in the tank but a lifestyle that viciously attacks liabilities and frees up you income to actually start working for you in the form of actual assists.

Had we all done this the growth would not have been very dynamic and nothing exciting might have happened but at the same time it would still be slowly happening and this down turn would not be as bad if it even existed at all.

When you spend £450 a quarter on heating your home when some simple changes could easily drop this to £390 then what you are doing is burning £240 a year that could not only still be in your bank account but actually earning you money. Make that saving for 10 years and add some rough interest and you would be holding £2,520 Had that been traded sensibly it could easily have been more like £3,000. Instead you give that to the energy company and then complain about bad service.

Why would you want to do that?

So you have a nice job and it does not bother you, you say? But does it bother you that across all your bills you might have sufficient capital to have created for yourself a second income stream that could now been protecting you against the credit crunch?

That is what this blog is about. Learning how and where one can actually be happy with less and then cutting out the wastage so that we have more scope to do the things that make us happy.

For some of us this is a message of hope - the old lifestyle has to go so we can survive but for other people this is simply sound planning - the old lifestyle has to go so that we can be more secure than ever, happier and free.

If you want to share hope and knowledge create an account and then comment here saying "yes I'd like to share" or words to that effect. After all we are all richer for giving and sharing.