For me, Christmas is always a time to reflect on the many blessings I enjoy, including my Christian faith, friends and family, fairly good health, a steady job, a car, warm clothes, enough to eat and a roof over my family’s head. But with the blessings, comes heartache and a constant, daily struggle to make ends meet.

Welcome to the world of the working poor. Unfortunately, for many in our world, this time of year holds no special meaning, no promise of good things to come. Instead, the onset of winter is accompanied by fear and anxiety over what might happen next. This is the world of the working poor, the people with jobs who put in 40, 50,even 80 or more hours per week, yet still can’t make ends meet.

They have no reason to look forward to this wonderful season. For them, winter only means high energy bills, cold dwellings, transport problems, insufficient clothing, inadequate footwear, cold and flu season, hunger and a host of other problems.

Often working seven days per week, the working poor discover that no matter how hard they work, they could never save enough to buy a car or move into an house of their own, trapped in an endless, unforgiving cycle of poverty and costant daily or weekly battles to pay the bills.
We need to break this cycle. Every single member of the working poor needs to invest in their own future as well as struggling to live for today. Easier said than done, my practical experience proves this. But I’m slowly breaking through the net, a bit at a time.

I’m concentrating on my future, which is something I should have done when I was eighteen. And this is how it works:

Earn as much extra money as you, take that extra (or even two extra) jobs. Out of the extra money you earn, put 85% of it to your bills, aim to get debt free as soon as you can. Invest the remaining 15% on your future - get an education, get a few web sites on line, look for streams of residue or recurring income that come in month after month for work that you’ve only done once. Publish books, start a self help group, help and serve other people.

Einstein said that the purpose of life was “To serve other people, there is no other purpose”. Build your part time business around helping others - they pay gladly if you can help them to solve their problems. And the best way to do this is start your web site, or publish your book, working once, and that one time work will pay you for the rest of your life.

Start snowballing your debts. Pay the 85% extra income onto your smallest bill every month. When that bills cleared, pay the bill’s monthly payment and the extra 85% income onto the next smallest bill in addition to your regular repayment every month until that bill’s cleared as well.

Then carry on like this, creating your own financial snowball which starts slowly, then gathers momentum more and more until it becomes unstoppable. Get debt free as soon as you can.

No one has the right to take your money off you (except Governments of course). Spend as little as you can, save and invest as much as you can, as quickly as you can. Manage your money, and your bank accounts, on a daily basis. Cut out all uneccessay expenditure, take packed lunches to work, make your own drinks, stop buying from food stores and vending machines. Snowball your savings, banking every week.

You’ll break the cycle you’re in within two years. Aim to be debt free in five. Hold onto as much of your money as you can. Stop Spending.Invest in building your own future.

No one has the automatic right to your money. You have to give others that right by spending. Don’t. Do as you do today and yesterday, you’ll stay exactly as you are now. Do something different and your life will change.

Christmas is your call to action. And it starts now, today.

Tags: crisis, debt, debtors, financial