A to Z Challenge

A TO Z OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT"A challenge is a chance to prove yourself," they say.  I think it would be much more appropriate to put it this way, "A challenge is like fuel for your willingness and capacity to do things that you need to do or want to do in life." Today a lot of us are faced with all kinds of challenges, from being single parents to being seniors to being college students who have to plan for their future endeavors.  As much as people find resource management to be a boring subject they ask questions like "How do you do it? How come you are not in debt?" Well, I say that both my husband and myself were lucky enough not to have had educational loans. Also, we try to control what we spend. We are sometimes looked at as cheap, but we are old enough not to get hurt by name calling.

Colleges in India used to teach that someone's Credit line does not mean that they have that money. They taught us that the only money we actually have is what we had in cash or what we had in our bank accounts. When we came to America , we understood the use of Credit Cards and God only knows how many times we came on the verge of using the maximum amount and paying the minimum, especially after buying our home. The fear of being called cheap and the desire to keep our home looking nice is innocent. However credit lines have a price which sometimes is more than what we can afford and makes the joy of buying something seem unimportant. I think this fact is not learned by listening to someone, but by experience alone. So from now on it is either pay in full or don't buy for us. Some people are lucky enough to just swipe the cards and pay the bill in full. This way they get the sky miles, the cash back bonus etc, which is neat as long as they can pay back the bill when it comes. Otherwise, swiping the card is good when the money comes out of the checking account and no bills to pay.