Take Responsibility, not a Bail-Out

With the media pitching story after story about government bail-outs, financial market meltdowns, and the end of the economy as we know it, it would easy to start believing that our only hope for a financial turn around is the government. DON’T DO IT! The government (or it’s involvement) is not the solution to the financial messes that we’ve made, or Wall Street for that matter. It comes down to personal choices. Small choices that add up little by little into financial success or failure. If the latter is where you find yourself, then your personal choices have got to change starting now. As in today!

Start doing something different than the way you’ve been doing it so far. Start living on less than you make. Start paying off your debt instead of accumulating more of it. Start saving for a rainy day and retirement. Start thinking for the long-term (like where investments will be 10, 20, or 30 years from now….not just a week from now). Start making decisions based on long-term, historical, and practical terms. Quit believing the propaganda that says “government is our only hope for financial survival”, because it’s not. It never has been. And nations that have tried to become that end up hurting the people far more than they ever help (remember the Soviet Union…aka communism!). Anyone who believes that the government is better equipped to run every area of your life is spewing socialism. It doesn’t work.

What does work is rolling up our sleeves and getting to work and living a responsible life. The kind of life where we take responsibility for our actions, good or bad, and we live with the consequences of those actions. We don’t point the finger towards someone else when we were the one that made the mess. Instead, we get busy cleaning up the mess and make better decisions next time. It’s not easy to live this way I know, but it’s the only way to live if you want lasting success.