When Do You Eat the Cherry?

Material Excerpts

The following sections are taken from different chapters in the book,When Do You Eat the Cherry? This material is copyrighted by The Business Center which retains all rights to its reproduction.

Introduction

Imagine you had a delicious hot-fudge or caramel sundae – scoops of your favorite ice cream, mounds of whipped cream, syrup running down all sides, topped by a plump red maraschino cherry. When would you eat that cherry? On the first bite? Half way through? In the last spoonful of syrup and ice cream? Answer the question, please.

How you treat the cherry may give you an indication of how you treat your money and that is where the book’s title comes from. Eat the cherry first = spend today, pay later. You need this book! Eat the cherry last = save today and purchase later. You want this book! What if you eat the cherry in the middle or don’t eat it at all? You decide what that means! While it would be nice if this theory had a scientific basis, it doesn’t. However, if it seems to hold a bit of truth for you, then we may be onto a psychological breakthrough in money management!

In When Do You Eat the Cherry? we are going to look at managing your personal finances. We’ll focus on how you make money and how you spend it. How you save it and invest it. We'll give you ideas on what you can do to make the most of what you earn. Whatever you decide to do is up to you. You can add this to your marriage to have a “Money Mate.” You can buddy this information with your spending to create a financial "Budget Buddy.” Now you get the idea where the subtitles come from.

In the end, we want the answer to the question "When Do You Eat the Cherry?" to be "Whenever I want to.” And the reason will be because there isn’t just one cherry on your sundae, it is covered with them. We want you to go from cherry scarcity to cherry abundance.

Think about how many hours you spend each week to earn your paycheck. Then, ask yourself how many hours do you spend thoughtfully managing that money in a year? It may be a scary thought.

There are a lot of decisions about handling your money that you have already made. Some big, many small. They all add up to create your financial health. You be the judge of the value of what we'll share with you. It's your money and you know what you want it to do for you.

We want you to think about five things when it comes to your money:

You could change the order of these items, but all five are worth thinking about. We can also look at your money management from another angle – your future wealth building behavior.

How old are you now? _____

Consult the table below to see if you are saving enough to retire. The examples assume you begin with a zero balance.

Savings Rate Table
Age % of Current Net
Income* to be Saved		 $5,000/mo.
Net Income
Example		 $2,500/mo.
Net Income
Example
25 10% $500/mo. $250/mo.
35 16.4% $820/mo. $410/mo.
45 29.4% $1,470/mo. $735/mo.
55 66% $3,300 $1,650

Taxes – and Legally Avoiding Them

Another way to reduce your tax bill is to keep your income from being taxed in the first place. This can be a big help to your long-term savings and investing. Here’s how:

Checking Your Credit

It is a good practice to check your credit file every year or two. This can be done for free by going to www.annualcreditreport.com. This web site is the officially free site. You can also call 877-322-8228. Through this one site or phone number you can check your files at all three of the major reporting services: Equifax, experian, and TransUnion. Each service is legally required to give you one free report every year if you request it. If you find outdated or incorrect information on your report, notify the credit bureau and get it adjusted. Do not be fooled by firms that advertise a free credit report or credit score. These sites require you to sign up and pay for a "credit monitoring” service in order to get the same information you can have free at the official site.

Building Wealth by Investing

If savings is the first step, what else can you do to build wealth? You must invest your savings. There are many paths to the same destination. The earlier you start investing, the longer your investment has to grow. Time is your friend if you have lots of it. Save now and you can play later! As you invest, you need to consider four characteristics of your investments: