Living in a society when many adults are finding themselves in debt; I have seen the importance of saving money- and the damage of not saving money. I have two examples that will help me to illustrate some of the major risks in not saving money. I advise you to read through this article thoroughly. I will try my best to include several tips for how you can save money within the article because I feel that it is one of the most important things that someone can do in their life.
While we work hard to secure ourselves positions in work places that will keep us and our families provided for; things can happen and at any point in time, we can lose our jobs. One specific example lies with my father. He has been working at General Motors since years before I was born (which means over twenty years) and with all of the drama that has been surrounding General Motors, he has been at risk for the past year of losing his job. He used to work on the night shift but this shift was cut from the location that he works at which means that he lost his shift premium, his schedule was screwed up (as he started working an alternating day and afternoon shift), and he switched which job he was performing within the location. As you can imagine this is frustrating but it was worse for the many others that were not so fortunate and ended up losing their jobs.
I have heard just some of the stories about the men and women that were previously working within General Motors. Men and women that had been making more money than most people in our city; and then one bad thing hits the company and they lose their job. Some of these people are finding themselves near homelessness and others walking around downtown selling drugs. It’s terrible to think of the great distress that has come to these people because they just didn’t have the money saved away. It is important to always save money for a rainy day. In order to do this; you should put away so much money from every pay check. While you can dip into this money when you have a large amount of money saved and things are going well- it should be saved for rainy days (or retirement!).
My second situation comes in a different form. My mother and her husband moved a couple years ago. When they moved, they found the perfect house. It was everything that they wanted. The problem however was that their cost of living was not as cheap because they were no longer in a bigger city that offered everything within walking distance. They had continued living with their old spending habits, although they could not afford to support this. Had they previously saved money to spend on entertainment and junk food and what-not when they moved; they could have prevented ending up in debt.
While there are many risks in not saving money; debt is one of the largest risks. While I am not a financial expert, based on everything that I read and hear on the news about the economy and the recession that we are in right now, it is clear that not saving money has landed many people with no houses, barely any food, and limited entertainment. If you’d like to ensure safety and security for your family then you should save your money for a rainy day. You never know when it’s going to pour!