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Since I announced Finance For Youth: The Self-serving Contest, I got a couple e-mails that made me laugh a little, scratch my head a little, and think a little. Two of them just had to be posted. I only wish that these were comments and not emails. These are reprinted exactly as received, so any spelling or punctuation errors are there on purpose.

The first one was from reader “L”

“Wil

Why bother writing a book? I’ve been a teacher for more years than you’ve been alive, and kids just don’t care. It’s better just to let them fall on thier faces then to try to do anything about it. The people in your ‘audience’ have better thing to spend their money in. This is just a huge waste of time. Give it up.

L***********”

My response:

L-

I can’t disagree more. These kids are no more a waste of time than you and I are. In fact, I would argue that spending the time on these kids is exactly what you are paid to do. I do it because I think its important– you should be doing it to stay employed. Maybe most of these kids won’t buy my book. But if one does, and learns from it, that’s not bad, now is it? Just like I wouldn’t let a baby just learning to walk fall on their face and hurt themselves, I don’t think it is fair to do so to a young person when their best role-model (you) tells them that they are a waste of time. I sincerely hope you reconsider your vocational choice, since the thought of you influencing my children causes me to cringe.

The second email was from “D” in California:

“Self-Serving is right! Do you have any concept of how much time, effort, and experience goes into making a commercially viable book cover? People train for years, go to school, and work hard comming up the ranks. And you want them to give you a winning cover design for what? A hand-shake and a button? Get real. If you even get any responses, I bet they are just amateurish suck jobs!”

My response: You might be right. Maybe they are all suck jobs, but they suck a lot less than anything I have the talent to put together. You are probably right about the prize. No hand-shake. My best advice to you– don’t enter. I can’t afford someone with your obvious skills and reputation (even though I don’t know who you are). Thanks for the input.

While I haven’t yet received any entries, that’s not the point. Could I just hire someone to do the job? Of course. Finance For Youth is not a source of income for me, I make enough that I’m not dependent on it. I’m having a contest because I think it would be a lot of fun, and because I want the reader to be as much a part of F4Y as I am. If that’s wrong, oh well. Like I said, this isn’t my job.

So, my wife tells me we only have a specific amount of money in our [checking] account to last us the next two weeks.  She gets paid every other Friday, and I get paid on the 1st and 15th.  Sometimes, they coincide well together, other times, it really sucks.  But this got me thinking.

The amount of money that is sitting in my checking account is more money than I used to make in a month as a high schooler or college student.  Of course, I only had myself to worry about, but that’s not the point.  I used to be able to make that amount of money last for an entire month, and now, my response to my wife was, “What the–!!?”.  I actually said the hyphens and punctuation marks (okay, actually, I made a suggestion that a gentleman should never make for his wife). 

 As much as I would like to think that I never make money mistakes, I have to admit that I have been making a huge one for several years now.  I have been operating under the concept of “water seeks its own level”.  What I mean is, that I have been living the lifestyle of someone who makes as much money as I do, albeit a frugal person.  When I was younger, and made considerably less money, I used to live within that salary, and all my bills still got paid.  I’m not apologizing, because I still believe that money has no value unless it is actually being spent, but I bet I could probably go back to spending pretty close to the same amount as I used to without losing out on too much.

Oh, wait, here it comes.  Of course I would lose out.  I would have less fun, my wife wouldn’t like me nearly as much as she does (she would still love me, I think, but she wouldn’t like me much), and I would be working much harder than I was at the time.  I couldn’t just decide that I wanted to leave without considering the repercussions of that decision and how it might affect my marriage and my life.  And all that extra money?  What good would it do me?  I suppose it might pay for my divorce lawyer, but the only lawyer I know that I would trust with a divorce would be my wife’s uncle (I should have rethought that decision…,) and he charges A LOT.

 The point here is, being frugal isn’t sacrificing until you drive yourself nuts.  You need to live within your means, and as far below your means as you feel comfortable doing.  While there are perks to making more money, there are also very good and valid reasons for those perks.  Could I go back and do surveys in a mall?  Or work retail?  Sure, but why would I?  I’d give up a lot of freedom of, say, not working on weekends or being able to get home from work at a decent hour.  Finance For Youth wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t be any happier.  Since all the bills have been paid, I don’t see a problem with having a lower balance in my checking account.  Besides, she never said anything about the money she just moved from there INTO one of our SAVINGS accounts!