Let’s Get Financially Fit
A Guide For Those Who Believe
Written by: Joyce Pranion
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LET’S GET FINANCIALLY FIT
Joyce Pranion
Copyright 2012 by Joyce Pranion
Smashwords Edition.
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CHAPTER 1: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I just wanted to write a few acknowledgments to those of you who have touched my life enough to give me the courage to write this book. I have to start with God who has carried me through the years even when I thought we were never going to make it. My husband who stuck by me even though I drove him crazy the last few years. My son who is my inspiration always. My sister for reminding me Jesus loves me. My in-laws who always made me feel that I could accomplish anything I wanted. My parents for teaching me how to stretch a buck. For everyone else in my life who I have not mentioned, you are always in my heart and I love you all for being in my life.
All scriptures were taken from one of the following Bibles; The New King James Version, The Amplified Version, and The New Living Translation. My thanks to biblegateway.com for your wonderful website.
I’d like to dedicate this book to my Yiayia who I know watches over me every time I smell a jasmine flower when I’m taking my walks.
CHAPTER 2: PREFACE
When I was a little girl, my father owned a small diner down the street from a major league baseball park. On game days the place would be hopping with customers. Dad always had the AM transistor radio going so we could hear the game. His favorite was baseball. I remember the whole place would light up after a home run. Dad would prop the door open so we could hear the fans at the stadium too. The diner was the original old time greasy spoon. The street out front was made of brick pavers instead of cement. The place was a long narrow block building which nestle between two other attached stores. The front was all glass so you could look in and see my dad cooking over the grill. The bell would ring with every entering customer. The left wall had the grill and a back counter that held the coffee pots. The clean plates were hidden behind the sliding doors of the upper metal cabinets. Facing the grill was the long counter where most of the customers ate siting on the red vinyl stools with their shiny chrome legs. Along the opposite wall were four red vinyl booths that set back to back. I remember using them to take naps on or eat the cherry pies my dad always had. I must have been between three and four years old because it was before I even started school.
On some days my dad would take me to the diner during the week while my mom worked. It was the mid 1960’s before electronic devises robbed us of our imaginations. I loved going there to play waitress even though I was probably more in the way than helping. I would take a Styrofoam coffee cup with the top on, flip it over on its lid, poke a slit in the bottom with a knife, write the word TIPS on it, and set it on the counter. Dad kept me behind the counter where he could keep an eye on me. He’d give me a rag to wipe the counter with. I remember talking to the regulars who came in for breakfast. I would ask the customers if they needed anything else. I wanted to show them how hard I was working to earn my tips. Whenever I could, I would take my hand made tip-bank in the back where the sinks were and look inside. The sound of the coins clanking together when I shook it reinforced my belief that I was working for my money and was being rewarded for a job well done. It never amounted to much but it didn’t matter. I was hooked on the idea of making money.
Years later my dad sold the diner and purchased a party store. By now I was an adolescent and understood the value of money. I would work at the store on the weekends. I only made $5.00 but I was already calculating the number of weekends I would have to work to make $100. I quickly realized that I had to do something else to increase my savings. It didn’t take long before I landed my first job. I have been working ever since until I was laid off due to the recent fall of the economy. Prior to that day, I was fortunate enough to have never stepped foot inside an unemployment office. That was definitely an eye opening experience for me.
When the economic crash began happening, my husband and I already had a plan of attack in place. We sold our house in the big city and moved to a one bedroom log cabin in the country. That move alone was the most important thing that saved us. We were both unemployed and the cabin was paid for with the cash we received from selling the big house. We had no car payments and were literally debt free. Because of the low costs associated with living in the country, we were able to survive on what we did save while we were working prior to the crash. Without that savings I don’t think we would’ve made it. I thank God every day for giving me the wisdom to save when I was prosperous.
That wisdom is also what motivated me to write this book. I realized that saving was our fall back. One I think everyone should have. The only way we were able to survive was because we looked at our finances years before and planned. Do you remember those words; plan for your future? We have become a society of complacent misfits who rely way too much on some corporate ghost to protect us. Open your eyes and take a good look. I don’t know anyone today who hasn’t been somehow negatively affected by this economy. Let’s stop the bleeding and start mending our pocket books. This can all be simply repaired with a little dedication on your part.
I wrote this book with the hope that it will help everyone who reads it. Even if it is just in one of the areas I talk about. No one can tell you what to do with your money, that’s up to you to decide. I’m just trying to show you what I think works. This book was written for the person who’s just making it with their finances. It is for those of you who see this and want to turn it around. Give the ideas a chance and work out the math and let the unexpected downturns happen. They won’t matter to you anymore because you will have an action plan in place.
This book was not intended on being any sort of a Biblical reference book. I love reading many Bibles and I couldn’t help but relate a scripture to finance when it just made sense to me in that capacity; even though I highly doubt it was intended to be viewed in that way by its author. You may not see it as I do and that’s OK too. I just wanted to share them with you.
CHAPTER 3: INTRODUCTION
Recent economic events have put a strain on everyday living. I’m certain all of us can identify with someone we know that lost their job a couple of years ago and can’t seem to find one that pays the same anymore. What about those poor souls who were foreclosed on without any answers as to their next moves?
In all my life, I never thought I would be hit with any of these issues. I held a degree, had a position at the same company for twenty years, paid my mortgage early each month, and even purchased a vacation home. We had a fixed plan for retirement and we would have never had the desire to change anything. That was not until the massive layoffs that resulted from outsourcing happened. People lost their jobs, then their homes, and eventually I was out of a job due to lack of work.
Sitting at my computer one day about a couple of years into my unemployment, I couldn’t help but feel thankful to God for giving me the financial knowledge I had in the past which set us up to survive during that time. I realized that we made it with little difficulties because of the way we managed our finances.
I began writing this book which spells out the tools that anyone can use to take control of their personal finances. The words flew out of me faster than I could type. The book is an easy read and covers topics like how to take a personal property inventory for insurance. There’s a chapter that shows the steps to lowering your mortgage payments and lowering all your debt. It also explains how to make a budget and stick to it by focusing on spending habits. It even shows an easy way to balance your checkbook. There are also tricks in saving without realizing you’re doing it.
I was very proud of my guide and wanted to share it with others but I found employment and filed the words away on my hard drive almost forgetting about them for another year. Ironically, I lost that job too. It was like God was giving me a wakeup call. I remembered my draft and now am compelled by an authority higher than all of us to share it with you. May the words help you as you put them to use as they have proven helpful to me. God bless.
CHAPTER 4: YOUR FINANCES AND YOU
But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Matthew 23:12
It doesn’t seem like it takes a lot to be a humble person but at times it feels like the hardest thing to do. I have to keep reminding myself that the only reason I have this knowledge is because it was given to me by God. If He never gave me the persistence to pursue a degree, I would’ve never gotten the knowledge. I may have done the work but He gave me the drive to do it.
It’s been so long since I’ve written, I mean really wrote my thoughts down. I think I was so afraid to see my sadness on paper that I just didn’t do anything about it. I thought if I just changed my thoughts to happy ones, then the problem in my head had to go away, right? Wrong. It lingers and lingers until you want to burst. There’s no place to go. There’s nothing that makes it go away. It just hangs around like that annoying strand of hair hitting the side of your nose. You keep wiping your face but it never goes away. You think everyone can see it. You must be the most ignorant person alive because you can’t find it. So you keep wiping and wiping hoping the next swipe will grab it. It’s not until you stop that you realize it’s hanging from the other side of you face. Every situation you perceive is that strand of hair. It taps you and you feel something. You react because of that feeling. Sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss the mark. The one thing most of us don’t notice is that you just learned something. It could be simple or it could be complex. It’s up to you what thought pattern you want to take and hold in.
Your finances can be looked at the same way. Most of us think that we have to hold a CPA or MBA to be able to master the secrets of the great mathematicians of the past. Be honest with yourself, have you ever said any of the following? I can’t figure this stuff out. I don’t even know how to balance my checkbook. I’m in debt over my head. The bank wants the mortgage payment and I just got laid off. How can I possibly think about balancing my finances at a time like this?
If you’ve remotely thought about any one of those sentences then tune in. There is never a perfect time to sit down with your finances but one thing is for certain; if you never do it then you will end up with a bigger mess than you thought. If most of us would have taken the time to do some number crunching a few years ago we probably could have avoided the banking crises and more importantly this recession we’re in. Whether you want to do this or not, you should. You should care about your future. You should know your budget. You need to be proactive not reactive.
Now, I’m not angry. I just get dumbfounded when I think about the mess we’re all in. I get upset at those who did know the consequences yet allowed those who didn’t get sucked into their own personal holes. Don’t ever think that they couldn’t see this coming because they could. They don’t make a move without having ten others analyze every angle. It was all about how much more money they could make and how much control they would gain. With that said, it’s our jobs to educate ourselves so that they will never have the ability to do it again. Before we end up being a society of the haves and the have-nots let’s take some time to figure our own personal finances. Let’s figure out where we are, where we’re going, and how do we get there. It’s really as simple as just looking at things differently and finally seeing that strand of hair hanging from the other side of our face.
I want to show you how easy it is to make a budget that will really pay all your bills. I want to help you learn the real value of a dollar. I want you to be able to feel financially comfortable before fifty. I wish we could all stop worrying about our finances and focus on our families again. Let’s get back to those old ideologies when having a job was just what we did and wasn’t who we were. Let’s let those who need all that power and headache keep it and take it to their graves. Let’s realize what life is really all about and just live it with a humble conscious. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do anyways?
CHAPTER 5: WHO AM I?
But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
Proverbs 4:18
When I read this passage I couldn’t help but picture it. I saw a wooded scene during the fall with yellow, red, and gold leaves scattered on the path I was walking on. Up ahead the sun was shining through the canopy of the trees and a beam of light was falling on the path. As I walked closer to the ray, the light kept getting brighter and brighter until the whole forest was enveloped with love.
Before I get ahead of myself and start pouring my ideas all over you, I thought I should tell you a little bit about myself. I am the child of Greek immigrants who came to the United States in the 1950’s. As most Greek’s did, my father opened a small diner and my mother spent her next 30 years processing checks at a bank downtown. I was the youngest of 4 siblings and was raised in a very strict house. We were never wealthy but I don’t remember ever being without. I remember pretending we were rich. Little did I know that my playing would be the basis for my endurance during some pretty scary times later.
After high school I went to work at a bank like my mother. I couldn’t stand the assembly line atmosphere there. Most people don’t really know what goes on inside a main office. They just walk up to their tellers with their transactions and think that’s it. Processing checks is a twenty-four hour, seven day a week business. There’s endorsing and encoding, balancing and not balancing. I had worked every shift and any day of the week that I was needed to get the job done. The career changing event for me was the year I had to work on Christmas day. I remember leaving as all my older siblings were arriving at my mother’s. I cried all the way in and vowed that it would be the last time I would ever work on a holiday again. I have managed to keep that promise to myself. The following semester I entered the university.
Not having the funds to go to school full time, I had to attend school during the days and still work at the bank during the evenings. It took me nine years to complete my bachelor degree in accounting. Because of the partial tuition reimbursement I received as an employee, I was able to finish with very little in student loans to pay back. That was the biggest gift the bank ever gave me since they didn’t do much for me after graduation. I always assumed that I would get my degree and just move into their accounting department. I figured why wouldn’t they promote me, they paid for the degree, right? That was the late 80’s and the big thing was to hire the new MBA’s that flooded the employment market. The bachelor degree became the equivalent of an associate degree overnight and I was again passed by.