I have learned...

So, everyone's talking about the economy, and I've been reading lots of articles on it while at work (it's been slow, and you can only pay so much attention to things like pulling paper clips and staples). Today, as I was looking through things, I got to thinking - forget about the rest of the country for a moment - what have I learned from this?

The most important thing, I think, is this - budget, and don't live outside your means.

I'm just starting out on my life, really, and yes, I already have a lot of debt from student loans. I wish I didn't have so much, but I knew that I was going to, and I've accepted that, and I plan to pay it all back - it'll take a while, but that's always been my intention. And unlike a lot of my peers, I don't have any credit card debt.

Aside from that, though, I've started making a lot of decisions about how I'm going to live my life over the next few years, at least.

1. Saving. My big plan for the next little while involves saving as much money as I can manage each week. I'm not really sure where to invest money, but I think I'll worry about that more once I have enough money saved up to actually bother investing in something. And honestly, while I know that investing is better than just letting money sit in a shoebox or something, I'm, understandably, a little leery about anything more risky. I've never been a big risk-taker in the first place. Whenever I get around to investing, I want to know what I'm doing, or be able to pay someone who does to take care of it for me.
2. Budget. I know this'll be hard for me for a while, but I'm not going to let myself go shopping as much, and when I do, I'm only allowed to buy what I need. And honestly, I know I don't need as much food as I eat, either. It's time for me to look into cheaper and greener ways of living.
3. I'm not buying anything on credit. This is kinda reliant on managing the saving thing, first, but I'm going to try my best to make sure I have enough cash saved up to pay for things, rather than either taking out loans or going for installment plans. Sure, I'll probably have to revise this in the future if I decide to buy a house, but that is an even that is pretty far off in my future right now. And I'm hoping my car lasts a long time, because I'd rather be able to pay for the whole thing right away than have to go through financing when I get a new one.
   
4. I'm not counting on anyone besides myself to fund my retirement. There's been a lot of talk about 401(k)'s and everything lately, too. I'll admit, I don't understand half of what they're talking about - I never took econ. classes, and it's really not my thing. But I think it's been made pretty clear that social security will be non-existent by the time I might hit retirement age, and unless I work in a government library, I'm not sure I'd trust to a pension plan, either - at least not entirely. I may not know a lot about investing, but I'm rather expecting I'll have to learn.

As I said before, this is all based on a multitude of articles I've read lately. This is one of the most interesting ones, I think. I learned a lot from that one, at least. I was also rather shocked by on in the Washington Post about Indian Call Centers - it's interesting to see this problem through the eyes of people in another country, and I think it's kinda depressing to think about what it says about our country that one of the largest growing call centers in India is a firm that deals with debt collection.

I can only hope that most of the other people in this country have started learning the same lessons, and that enough of us have learned before it's too late. But I can't really control what others think and learn and do. So instead, I'm trying to hold myself firm to these ideas, and hoping that others do the same.

Once again, this post has gotten pretty long. (I swear I'm almost incapable of being succinct). But I wanted to share one other thing - on the positive side, check out this article about a Downs Syndrome Teen becoming Homecoming Queen - very sweet and uplifting little story.