How to solve your

money problems

Rigor and discipline

In order to improve one's material situation, to reach a minimum of financial security, one must adopt a rigorous attitude towards money, manage one's budget well, refuse to loosen the strings of one's pouch too easily. In other words, one must have a correct and realistic comportment regarding money. To do it, one has to classify one's needs into a hierarchy in the strictest possible way and then act consequently at all costs.

Do not envisage your expenses under the stroke of your impulses or on the spur of the moment; on the contrary, plan them well in advance by establishing them in a precise priority order. You can classify your needs in three categories — indispensable needs, useful needs, and unimportant needs. Let's say it right away: considering your present money difficulties, it's for the moment absolutely out of the question that you try to satisfy the last two categories of needs. Of course, it's impossible to establish hard-and-fast guidelines for everybody for each one has his own personal situation; but the general rule is that one must be as strict, and even as "stingy", as possible in the hierarchical organization of one's needs.

1. Indispensable needs. These are incompressible needs, the ones which, when not satisfied, can give rise to real problems — a wholesome and balanced diet, good medical care, clothing, housing, children's studies, and so on. A car could belong to this category, but maybe it's not the case with a video recorder or a camera.

2. Useful needs. The satisfaction of these needs makes life more pleasant, but their non-satisfaction doesn't cause you real problems. Not having a hi-fi set, for example, probably won't deprive you of anything essential, unless you need it for professional reasons. In this category one can list a large number of comfort equipments, trips abroad, outdoor dinners, expensive spare-time activities, and so on.

3. Unimportant needs. Here we deal with futile, superfluous needs, the satisfaction of which doesn't correspond to any necessity and only results in a short-lived pleasure or only calms a temporary urge. In the industrialized societies, including ours, this category of needs is the most numerous and the most perverse. Powerful, insidious, and invading advertisement proposes us an incalculable number of gadgets which on the moment take on the appearance of indispensable products but which actually are of no great use. Tyrannical, this advertisement gives us a feeling of guilt if we resist its incitements.

It's important to beware of such artificial needs as of bubonic plague. Remind yourself constantly of Benjamin Franklin's warning: "If you buy what's superfluous, you'll soon have to sell what's necessary".

One can classify alcohols and all carbonated or sweet drinks among these unimportant needs. Go totally without them. Know that water is the only indispensable drink — and also the best for health. Soft drinks are harmful because they attack your teeth with the sugar they contain, and provoke meteorism; as for alcohols, with their exorbitant prices, they are unquestionably detrimental to your waistline and cardiovascular system.

Also go without cigarettes, which can do you no good and can only cause you serious health problems.