National Savings Month

April has been designated as National Savings Month, and it is so proclaimed in order to focus public awareness on the need to develop good financial habits.

This brings to mind the fact that it was some fifty (50) years ago that the late Earl Nightingale authored an important talk entitled, The Strangest Secret. In this talk, he outlined the fact that if you were to pick 100 persons at random at the age of 25 and follow them to age 65, here is what you would find:

1 will be rich
4 will be financially independent
5 will still be working
54 will be broke
(The others will have passed away)

Now these are amazing figures when you consider the fact that we are living in the richest country that has ever existed on the face of this earth!

But even more astounding is the fact that in the fifty-or-so years since that talk by Mr. Nightingale, we don't seem to have learned very much about the handling of money - as witnessed by this piece that was taken from Paul Harvey's News & Comment program on ABC Radio.

"Since the invention of credit cards, Americans have lived on borrowed money. Advertisers promote spending, and money lenders make it possible to where today, in an age of incredible wealth and prosperity, half of all American families have less than $1,000 in net conventional savings and investments. And for any rainy day, [most of] the rest of us have nothing!"

Hopefully, the members of AAII will prove to be the exceptions to what was stated above!

* * * * *