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Time：第 174次例會，2008年09月20日（週六）下午2:30 ~5:30
Place：
viewtopic.php?t=15
14:30~15:30 Free Talk
15:30~16:00 Speaker Session
16:00~17:15 Topic Discussion
17:15~17:30 Happy Time
Host: Timothy W. Y. Cheng(Taipei), Irene Wang(Hsinchu), Benjamin Yeh(Kaohsiung)
Assistant Host:
Topic：Mind Over Money
Source: From Reader's Digest - June 2008
"But I can't save any money." It's an excuse I hear a lot. Sometimes it's a whine. Other times I detect a note of defiance. In the past few years, it has become increasingly frequent, as more and more Americans make less than we spend, eating up the equity in our homes, borrowing from our 401(k)s. The national savings rate is declining. And the situation seems to be getting worse.
The question is: Why? Why don't Americans make saving a priority? We certainly know that saving money -- like eating broccoli and strengthening our core muscles-is good for us. In the latter cases, we listen. Yoga and Pilates have never been hotter. And broccoli now comes as a baby vegetable, precut and bagged, and even in purple. Yet saving for tomorrow is still a largely ignored and unappreciated skill. There are three reasons for this.
One: Saving today is harder. "We've had an income transfer away from the middle class," says Anthony Pratkanis, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who specializes in financial issues. The typical household income has held largely steady around the mid-$40,000 range for a good half decade, he points out, while prices have continued to rise. "If you're having to spend a disproportionate amount of income on food and gas, it's hard to save."
Two: Credit became too accessible. For years it was simply too easy to get your hands on money to spend. While banks at one time would not let you spend more than 36 percent of your total income on debt (including mortgage), they stretched that number to 55 percent during the housing boom. Why save when you could get that big flat-screen TV today -- just like the one the neighbors installed -- and pay for it with mortgage debt that was both cheap and deductible?
Three -- and most intriguing: Saving is, was, and always will be no fun. "Saving money," explains Jason Zweig, author of Your Money and Your Brain, "doesn't feel good." Think about it this way: Choosing to save almost always means opting for delayed gratification instead of immediate gratification. "You can buy a pair of shoes today," says Zweig, "or have a nice retirement 20 years from now." You can go out to dinner now or put the money into an emergency fund in case the car's transmission goes out -- someday. You're going to buy the shoes or head to the restaurant because the pleasure of getting something good today is much greater than the pleasure of getting something good years in the future -- even if the reward in the future is bigger.
Visualize Your Goals
Let's say you're 31 and you want to retire in 25 years. The key is to make the goal as concrete as you can, says Zweig. Pick your birthday circa 2033 as the day for your retirement goal. Then ask yourself, What do I want to do when I retire? Do I want a villa in Tuscany, a boat slip in Fort Myers, a condo in Waikiki, or a paid-off mortgage where I am right now? Of course, it's different for everyone. But you've made retirement tangible: You have the date. You have the goal. Then you give it a name. It becomes "The Condo in Waikiki Fund." You put a little Hawaiian music on your desktop, or cartoons of pineapples -- whatever reminds you of your goal. Put your account statements in a manila folder and decorate it with Hawaiian beach scenes.
Sound corny? Sure, but what you're doing, Zweig says, is building an emotional environment that you can save in. All these things work together to motivate you, and then when you see the pair of shoes, it will be easier for you to say to yourself, This is a choice between shoes and Hawaii. Suddenly, you can leave the shoes in the store.
Rally your team. Use your friends and family as a way to discipline yourself. Tell them what your goal is, and ask them to remind you if you're about to spend money on something you won't need. (Tell them you won't get cranky and will appreciate the help.) You can even do this on the Internet. Dean Karlan and Ian Ayres of Yale just launched a website called stickK.com, which lets you post your goal, notify your friends, and set up penalties if you fail. It worked for both founders, who lost a significant amount of weight by pledging a significant amount of money if they didn't drop pounds. But you could also use it to build an emergency stash, increase your contribution to your 401(k), or amass college savings for your kids.
Break it down. Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, says that one reason many middle-income families don't save is that they don't believe they can come up with big enough sums of money to do it effectively. The fact is, he says, small amounts can be quite effective. Start with your change. "It sounds trivial, but we have story after story of people who accumulated hundreds of dollars that way, realized they could do it, and worked harder to get more," he says. Then add an automatic transfer from checking to savings every month. Some banks, like ING Direct, are even willing to transfer money weekly if moving smaller amounts more frequently sounds easier on your wallet.
Finally, recognize that the saving process is actually healing. It makes you feel better -- a better person, a better spouse, a better parent -- to know that you have something put away for your future. Says Brobeck, "You may have to make sacrifices in the short term, but you'll feel so much better in the medium to long."
Questions:
1. By all accounts, “Saving for tomorrow” would be very important, but corny. Could you please share some smart ways about how to save money?
2. Do you have any concrete individual financial planning policy? Have you ever used any investment tools for managing your finance? What’re the results, your perceptions and comments on them? Please share with us.
3. Retirement might be way off in the future, but time slips away so soon, we need to have forethought for it. What’s the ideal retired life you’d like to have? How much money could support that kind of life and how will you accumulate it?
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