Savings

Six months ago, I was finishing my last final after eight years in college. I have studied three different disciplines, and I found my niche with international business. Of course, the day after I finished that final, I looked to the job market and noticed that it is nothing like the job market when I went back to college for business three years earlier. As with most people I started to watch the stock exchanges and because I work a night shift I sleep with the television on watching the business channels. I have watched my family pull their hair out as some of them have lost their jobs, read their statements from their 401k’s, and start looking for ways to pay for their monthly bills. This troubled economy brings out the worst in people, cost cutting, higher stress levels, downsizing, etc., but for some reason I do not see the economy that way. Either it is that I have changed personally to be more of an optimist or the past 3 years, or my business program has trained me to look at the down economy as opportunity for growth. Employment data is set to move above nine percent this Friday, and instead of being outraged about who, what, where, started the decline, I decided to just deal with the issue. Over a year ago I made it my personal mission to pay off my bills for the simple fact I was annoyed that I was paying for the use of money. I will not get into the details, but as the market started to cave in onto itself, I sat back and knew that all those years of studying just paid off. Having almost a year savings, ability to pay off debt in days, rather then years, and the peace of mind that comes from not worrying about finding a job out of the gate shows that the major reason we sit in this situation is because we financed our way into. Now six months later, I am still saving money and making strategies for the future, and I am still not an emotional mess. Yes, as with most graduates, I would love to find a great company to work for, but instead of running around taking any job just to pay for my loans I can sit and wait for the economy to turn around and find that perfect job in an area that suits me.

So, with all that has happened over the past six months, I decided to stop pointing fingers, plan, and move forward with my life, and never allow myself to get caught up in all those things that the rest of the people have. I was lucky, that I changed my life before the recession hit; I now have learned that having savings is by far the most important thing to have a good restful night of sleep. As a final note; I believe that more and more people have decided the same thing, since the National Saving Rate jumped from .2 to over 4% in the past few months. With almost 70% of the GDP focused on the consumer in our national economy, WE need to pull ourselves out of the recession. Governments, banks, businesses, companies, corporations, LLP’S, and partnerships grow out from the people around the country, not the other way around. SO, as people tell others to spend, I say save and in time the economy will heal itself. We are on the right track, and because we spent out way into this recession and global melt down, we will need to save ourselves out of this recession.