Budgeting

Since we had Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace class last semester, I thought this was an interesting way to explain our national budget in simple terms.

“Financial advisor Dave Ramsey put forth an interesting scenario recently on his nationally syndicated radio call-in program. Taking a hypothetical phone call from John Q. Public and his wife, We the People, in one brief illustration Ramsey demonstrated that no one in Washington, D.C., is really serious about cutting spending.
Ramsey has a way of boiling large numbers down to their essence and showing us the absurdity of our debt crisis. In his radio example, his callers — “John” and “We” — are earning $58,000 a year. However, they are spending $75,000 a year. More importantly, they have credit card debt totaling $327,000. In fact, $10,000 of the family’s income goes just to pay interest on those credit cards.“Now, what would you expect my advice to this couple to be?” Ramsey asked his radio audience. He then proceeded to say that if he followed the current model of “cuts” being proposed in Washington, his recommendation would be that they reduce their annual expenditures by a mere $3,000 — all the way down to $72,000.Ramsey has a way of boiling large numbers down to their essence and showing us the absurdity of our debt crisis. In his radio example, his callers — “John” and “We” — are earning $58,000 a year. However, they are spending $75,000 a year. More importantly, they have credit card debt totaling $327,000. In fact, $10,000 of the family’s income goes just to pay interest on those credit cards.
Ramsey has calculated that these numbers are in exact proportion to the actions of our federal government in dealing with our deficit. However, instead of terms like “billions” and “trillions,” to which no one can relate, Ramsey has reduced the numbers to one we can all comprehend. Anyone with a brain can figure out that a family making $58,000 and spending $75,000, with $327,000 in credit card debt, is headed for bankruptcy — or worse."
Go here for the rest of the article by Doug Patton - http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/34650?amp