[caption id="attachment_951" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="----John's $950 Saturn is $10,000 cheaper than his truck and gets double the gas mileage----"][/caption]
I had lunch with John today. We did a little financial check up on how his debt reduction was going and talked about how we could maximize his efforts to continue his journey out of debt.
I told him how his story (see his full story here) has by far been the most popular thing I’ve written about on this blog.
He was thrilled at potentially giving someone else encouragement in their “journey out of a self-dug hole”. I asked him if i could share details.
“Absolutely.” He said.
Perhaps the coolest thing about his journey is that nothing miraculous or spectacular has happened to him along the way. He’s received no inheritance, hasn’t won the lottery, and hasn’t been given a single penny from Ed McMahon and the fine folks at the Publisher’s Clearinghouse. In fact, the value of his house has gone down $10,000 and he …

Maybe the people of North Dakota have figured out the circles.  At the end of the fiscal year they will have a $700 million surplus (see the full story here).

In a bad economy.

Like North Dakota you must figure out how to manage three circles. What are the circles?

Despite the seemingly endless things you could do with your money, there are really only three choices:

Consumption
Contributing to Others
Contributing to the Future.

That’s it.

You must decide how much money you are going to consume, use up, burn. Each of us has to live, and to do so requires consumption. You must also decide how much to contribute to others. How much of what is yours will you send to help those in need around you. Finally you must decide how much to contribute to the future. In today’s economy, many people are wishing they would have paid more attention to this last, critical category.

The sizes of the circles vary from person to person and you don’t get to tell someone else how to manage their circles.

How are you managing your three circles? How much goes into each one? No one will move from consumer to contributor without having an understanding of their personal …