Pay yourself first or last?

Adam (a staff writer at Get Rich Slowly) wants you to “challenge yourself” by replacing the the standard ‘pay yourself first’ advice with:

Only pay yourself first if you deserve it.

Now, Adam isn’t suggesting that you stop saving that 10% to 15% of your gross income that the bulk of the personal finance blogosphere recommends …

… what Adam is really asking is:

Should You Stop Funding Retirement to Focus on Debt?

[This] is one of the most heavily debated dilemmas in personal finance. Unlike “spend less than you earn” or “track every penny you spend”, there’s no cookie-cutter answer to this question. Variables such as age, career, risk tolerance, and even personality type make each individual situation unique.

This is a good line of questioning – and I encourage you to read his article – but, unlike Adam, I think there is a “cookie-cutter answer to this question”:

You should always ‘pay yourself first’ …

… but, where you place that money depends on where you earn the greatest after-tax return.

Keeping in mind that a “dollar saved is a dollar earned”, it could be in:

- Your 401k, potentially earning 8% plus the value of any employer matches (in an earlier post, we calculated this as providing another % point or two to your long term return),

- Your debts, potentially saving 10% to 30% interest on high-interest car, credit card, and consumer loans,

- Your real-estate investment strategy, potentially earning 15% to 25% in long-term rental increases and capital appreciation,

- Your seed capital for your new business, potentially earning 50%+ in future profits and windfall gains on the sale of the business,

- etc.

But, is unlikely to be found in paying off low interest student loans (saving 0% to 5%) or mortgages (saving 4% to 6%) or in investing in low interest savings such as bank accounts, bonds, or CD’s (earning 1% – 5%).

Blindly plonking your money into your 401k, or paying off debt, or paying down your mortgage is not the way to get rich(er) quick(er) … 7m7y readers always look at their options in terms of greatest contribution to reaching their Number.

Moneytopia?

Many thanks to my new blogging friend, Kohti, for pointing me to an interesting new online game purporting to teach me all about money …

…. but – with all the greatest respect to the game’s authors – if I had played this game 7 years ago, I think I would have been depressed.

You see, it encourages you to create a character (mine was a 20-something year old, single male earning around $24k p.a.), and make some buying decisions:

- some mandatory (accommodation; clothes; car; computer; etc.), and

- some optional … I didn’t choose any of these at all.

I also had to choose a Big Dream and a time-frame to aim for; for some weird technical reason I couldn’t put in what I really (would have) wanted back then, so I chose a $4million retirement goal, aiming to achieve that in 7 years.

Now, I tried to make reasonable decisions and spend/save money as I felt that i would have back then, so when I was given a choice like this one:

… well, I mostly chose the zero-cost option (in this case, “stay at home and ride the bike”). On the plus side, whenever I was asked to “pay my bills” … I simply chose the sensible option and paid them all, giving them scant attention:

…. anyhow, that’s one example of the benefit of a frugal lifestyle: choose a low-cost lifestyle and you can at least sleep comfortably that you can easily pay you meager bills as/when they fall due

BTW: Rather than choose some set amount to invest (that would have required more thought), I simply transferred money to my Investment Account whenever I had a couple of thousand dollars saved up … no doubt, I would have achieved a slightly better outcome (better compounding) if I had transferred the money weekly rather than 4 or 5 times a year, but I am sure the effect would not have been huge.

The only problem with this sort of ‘frugal living’ style of wealth management?

It doesn’t come close to helping you achieve any sort of Life’s Purpose that involves not working and/or travel; here’s how I did, with 9 months to go before I wanted to ‘retire’:

You see, the problem with this game – and, all the books/blogs/financial advisers peddling this sort of nonsense – is that they tell you how to maximize your savings, but not how to achieve the real goal: which is to reach your Number by your Date … and, for most people that seems to mean Getting Rich(er) Quick(er).

The funny thing is that this game encourages you to seek a mentor … see the guy pictured in the circle? He’s the Richest Guy In Town and he’s there to help you (according to the game’s instructions) …

… except that he conveniently forgets to tell you any of the real ’secrets’ as to how HE became so rich! As playing the game makes patently obvious, he sure didn’t get there by saving / investing his meager salary

What the game is missing is a ’start a business’ button; nor does it have an ‘invest in real-estate’ button … so, we have to rely on a risky maximum compound growth rate for our investments of 12.5% (and, I even had to survive a market crash!) or ’safer’ returns much lower than that.

In other words, this game proves that it’s impossible to make $7million in 7 years (or even ‘just’ $4 million in 7 years) by following ’standard financial advice’. Don’t believe me?! Then check this out:

Go ahead and try the game … it could save you a great many years of otherwise lost ‘investing time’ by showing you what NOT to do

The Myth of the Million Dollar Retirement Goal …

A couple of weeks ago, I posed the question: Will a million dollars be enough when I retire?

There was much discussion that makes it clear that you must also ask: WHEN do you want to retire?

You see, 4% inflation (say) eats away at your money, such that if you were to retire in 20 years  – which is when you hope to get your $1 Million bill – it’s only ‘worth’ $500,000.

And, inflation continues even after you retire, which then means that you probably need to earn at least 9% on your Million Dollar Bill (4% to ‘cover inflation’ and 5% to spend) … this still leaves you only the equivalent of $25k today to live from (assuming that you want your $25k ‘retirement salary’ to at least keep up with inflation for as long as you need an income).

Assuming that this makes sense, let’s see how practical this Million Dollar Retirement Goal really is:

There are two schools of thought:

- There are those who believe that you should aim to approximate your pre-retirement salary in retirement, and

- There are those who don’t.

Now, I am in the second group – as are most people who have tried the same exercises that our 7 Millionaires … In Training! tried.

For example, my salary throughout almost all (bar the last 3 years) of my working life was less than $50k – $100k (incl. fringe benefits) and my wife had to keep working, BUT that was a purposeful strategy designed to get me to a retirement in just 5 years (instead of the notional 20 years) i.e. at 49 y.o. on the equivalent of $250k+ a year income for life (indexed for inflation) post-retirement.

But, this post is aimed at those new readers who are still in the first group … they, too, fall into two (sub)groups:

- Those who believe that they need at least 100% to 125% of their final salary in retirement (because, they say, you spend more in retirement due to travel, leisure activities, and escalating health care costs as you age, etc.) , and

- Those who believe that they need only 75% to 99% of their final salary in retirement (because, as these other ‘experts’ say, you need less in retirement as your children are grown up and educated, weddings are already paid for, house is paid off or downsized, etc.).

… at least, that’s how the personal finance columnists seem to be split.

So, in our example from the last post, we work backwards:

Somebody who aims to retire with $1 Million in 20 years time is really saying that they want to live off an annual income of roughly $50k in retirement (that WE now know is only ‘worth’ $25k a year), which means that their final salary will probably also be $50k (+/- 25% depending on which financial ‘guru’ they happen to follow).

Now, if you follow $50k in 20 years time all the way back to today, that person is probably earning $25k today (i.e. assuming that they earn CPI salary increases for the next 20 years) …

… so, now we can work forwards again:

If you have a starting salary (i.e. today) of $25k and aim to retire with $1 million in the bank in 20 years, you will need to set aside about 45% of your gross salary AND earn 9% on your money (after fees and taxes) AND have a house that you can free up at least $250k from when you do retire (e.g. by downsizing or moving into a very cheap rental).

Of course, if you can save 45% of your salary for 20 years, then you must be in the Salary-LESS-45%-In-Retirement camp, which is another story altogether

So, it seems to me that getting to $1 mill. in 20 years for somebody on a salary of $25k is all bar impossible … and, even if you do scrimp, save, and ‘frugal’ your way there, you have only made it to the ‘lofty heights’ of living off about twice the poverty line, for a two-member household:

2008 HHS 100% Poverty Guidelines

Members of household————- 48 Contiguous States———–Alaska————–Hawaii

1———————————$10,400 ———————–$13,000————– $11,960
2———————————-$14,000 ———————–$17,500—————–$16,100
3———————————$17,600 ———————-$22,000——————$20,240
4——————————-$21,200————————–$26,500——————-$24,380

For each additional person, add—–3,600———————4,500————————-4,140

SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 73, No. 15, January 23, 2008, pp. 3971–3972

So, I think the Million Dollar Retirement Goal really is a myth – or, at least a very low bar to aim for – how about you?

How do you stack up?

OK, so I’ve found a few online calculators that I don’t like, but it’s time to quit bitchin’ … here’s one that I do like:

This one asks just two questions to determine how your Net Worth ’stacks up’ against others, by age and by income.

Here’s how I stacked up just before I retired (a.k.a. Life After Work) at age 49 and was still drawing a ’salary’ of $250k:

[AJC: OK, so I'm ignoring all of my other business and investment income, etc., etc. for the purposes of this particular rant]

Again, the obvious question is: how much SHOULD I have accumulated in my net worth?

Let’s assume that I just want to replace my then-current gross income of $250,000 by the time I reach 60 … a reasonable goal, if you ask me, but still way, way more optimistic than the general population would hope for:

Step 1: $250k is roughly $385,000 by the time I reach 60 … a simple estimate of adding 50% every 10 years to allow (very roughly) for 4% inflation gets close enough to the same result without using an online calculator or spreadsheet.

Step 2: So, if I want to keep the same standard of living – with all the arguable pluses and minuses of grown up kids and greater health and insurance costs … not to mention more green fees – I’ll need to generate a passive income of at least $385k that, according to our Rule of 20 (which assumes a 5% ’safe’ withdrawal rate), means we need $7.7 Mill. sitting in the bank (well, in something that will give us a RELIABLE 10%+ annual return).

Step 3: If I plug my starting Net Worth (let’s go for the generous starting average for people on my super-generous assumed current income) into this online annual compound growth rate calculator, I can see that I need just over a 19% average annual compound growth rate between now and then.

OK, so I have my target, now let’s take a look at how likely I am to achieve it (you see, it’s not as bad as it sounds: I can keep adding a % of my salary to my Net Worth, as well as reinvesting any investment gains and/or dividends) …

… to my mind, I’ve had 27 years of ‘practice’ to get where I am today – if I match CNN Money’s ‘profile’ – using:

- How much I had saved when I started working, and

- What % of salary I’ve managed to regularly save over those years, and

- What average investment returns I’ve managed to achieve in that time.

Well, I’ve been working for about 27 years, and I started full-time work with about $6k of car and pretty much nothing in the bank. So, if I plug in my current net worth (again, assuming that it’s what CNN Money says is ‘average’ for my super-high assumed income); what I started with; and 27 years between the two … the calculator shows that I must have averaged 21%, so no problem!

Except that I had to receive massive salary increases to get from my starting salary of $15,000 [AJC: I thought that was huge! And it was ... in the early 80's ] to my current (assumed) salary of $250,000 … in fact, my pay increases would have needed to average between 11% and 12% every year for 27 years! Now, that’s hardly likely to continue …

So, if I assume an average compounded investment return (e.g. stock market) of 12% for the past 27 years … which seems pretty darn generous, if you ask me … then, I would have needed to be smart enough to save nearly 40% of each pay packet for the entire 27 years (including putting some of it … a lot, I suspect … in my home).

Running that forward (assuming a more sedate, and probably much more likely, 5% salary increase each year until I retire at 60) and I CAN reach my Number!

In fact, I overshoot by about $1 mill., so I can even afford to drop my regular savings rate to ‘just’ 35% of my before-tax pay packet … easy, huh?!

So, it seems doable, except that I see four problems:

1. I need to have a starting salary of $250,000 per year

2. I need to have a Net Worth of at least $1.12 million by age 49

3. I need to be able to save 35% of my GROSS pay packet

4. Even after all of that, I still NEED to work until I’m 60!

[groan]

Adrian.

PS How DID I stack up at age 49? Easy: $7 million in the bank. What did I start with just 7 years before that? Nothing: I was $30k in debt. So, is it ‘doable’? Absolutely: And, this is just the place to find out how

How much should you have saved by now?

This is rapidly appearing to become a blog about your Number … of course, that’s not the case: it’s a blog about money, specifically about how to make $7 million in 7 years, but you can pretty quickly see that having a real financial goal in mind is a powerful focusing tool.

It’s also a ‘comparator’ – a tool to use whenever you are presented with two financial alternatives … for example, Scott who is deciding how many clinics to open: 1, 2, or 3+ [Hint: only one of these is the right answer, and it's not the obvious one!] … it was ONLY by having a clear understanding of his Number / Date that he came to this conclusion.

Without that understanding, Scott could have made a terrible (OK, far better than terrible … more, non-optimum) decision that would have had the opposite effect to that intended: it would have committed him to working for 10 to 20 more years.

So, now that I have provided the hint, let’s look at today’s conundrum, posed by Money Magazine in March 2008: how much money should you have saved by now?

Well, given the current market the chances are that what you have saved has halved, but what you should have saved hasn’t … bummer

But, here’s what Money Magazine advises; to see how much you should have saved by now:

If you are age 45 multiply your current salary by 4.1
If you are age 50 multiply your current salary by 6.1
If you are age 55 multiply your current salary by 8.5
If you are age 60 multiply your current salary by 11.4

So, if I said my current salary was $250k (well, that’s what I most recently paid myself before I retired), then I should have saved $1.525 million by now …

Can you see the obvious problem?

Well, it assumes that I am going to want to keep working for another 15+ years!

Why? Simple: $1.525m can only support a ’safe’ 5% annual withdrawal rate of $76,250 (before tax) … so, unless I want to take a HUGE pay-cut, I’m going to have to keep working until I’ve saved at least $5 million … lucky that’s exactly what I did

So, here’s how you should calculate how much you should have saved by now:

1. Calculate your Number,

2. Decide your Date,

3. Subtract your Current Net Worth from 1.

4. Subtract today’s date from the Date

5. Divide 4. into 3.

That’s how much you need to have saved each year between now and your Date, if you want to reach your Number.

Now, you can get fancy and use an online compounding calculator to do the year-upon-year calculations, but this is a good place to start.

A cruel financial joke?

Well, after a week of up/down – but, mainly DOWN – blog time, we have our new site up and running! Please let me know what you think?!

Thanks for your patience … FINALLY, here is today’s post

_________________________

Oh, if only we earned three times more than we do today …

… then we could tithe, save, and meet our financial goals. Life would be SO much easier

Rick puts it simply:

Saving half your income is far easier if you make $180,000/year than if you are making $61,000/year.

I’m not so sure: there is a cruel financial joke; it goes something like this:

- earn $50k, spend $50k?
- earn $150k, spend $150k!

The good/bad habits are made when you ARE earning $61k per year … at least, in my experience. And, in Scott’s (who is an Ultra High Income doctor) experience, as well:

Even if we brought home a third of what we do now, we would simply have a smaller mortgage, lower taxes, lower resulting insurance and lower costs in several other areas and we would be saving a large percentage of our salaries as well. This is were delayed gratification comes into play

The reason WHY Scott can save half his income, is because he started off with low expectations, and kept them in check, even as his income grew and grew and grew:

I guess people think that i’m super frugal and living a little on the miserly side, since we are saving half of our net income per month. But, the thing is, we net 15-16k per month now. If I can’t find some kind of peace and enjoyment on half of that after growing up poor, then I have serious problems!

Peace and enjoyment is found in frugal living for some, and living ‘large’ for others; what matters most, I believe, is that you live within whatever means you decide to put together

How much windfall to spend?

Want to make money in real-estate? Then you need to know where the ‘hot’ cities to buy in are … this US News article from Luke Mullins should tell you just that!

______________________________

I classify ‘windfalls’ with all other Found Money: save 50%+ and spend up to 50%

I’m not going to tell you to spend half, but you can and should – at least – spend a significant portion: at least enough to fully celebrate your good fortune (even more so if it was a result of hard work rather than luck).

Interestingly enough, by chance, I came across this quote from Ramit Sethi (I Will Teach You To Be Rich):

I don’t recommend you sock away 100% of unexpected earnings. In fact, I force myself to spend 25%-50% of any unexpected money within a month, a technique I developed to keep motivating myself to earn unexpected income.

Of course, blindly following blanket rules won’t make you rich … you have to qualify them and assess against your own situation, which is why this blog (or others) cannot be misconstrued as personal financial advice … for example:

- If you find $20 on the street, buy yourself a latte and a magazine and then put the other $10 in your end-of-month savings ‘cookie jar’

- If you sell your business for $2 Million don’t spend $1 million

- If you get a $200 a week pay increase:

… do spend $100 immediately (enjoy!)

… don’t spend $100 extra a week (unless you HAVE to)

No rules, but some guidelines:

- If the ‘found money’ is life-changing (for me, that means getting you to your Number, or a Big Step closer) then spend a chunk … perhaps as much  as the top tier on your version of the 10-1-1-1-1 chart (provided it isn’t more than 5% – 10% of the total ‘found money’). Do me a favor: spend it on something you’ll remember (for me, it was the Maserati and the Villa-in-Tuscany vacation)

- For the money that you do want to spend – one-off, but not life-changing – still apply 10-1-1-1-1, but kick it all up a notch (e.g. you only need to think about spending $100 for 10 minutes) … but, ONLY until that allocated money is spent

- If it is an ongoing – and fairly reliable – stream of ‘found money’ (e.g. a pay increase), calculate how much of the increase you NEED to spend (i.e. add to your budget because you have been going without, or are behind, or have critical debt repayment, etc., etc.) then gradually wind your spending back to that number and save the rest.

An example may help to illustrate the last point:

You currently earn $500 a week, and are behind a little. You calculate that another $40 a week will be enough to ‘break even’ on your spending (you know: put food on the table; clothe the kids; pay down the remaining balance on the credit cards that you tore up, etc. etc.).

Now, you receive a pay-rise (I guess you got lucky and switched jobs, or decided to take on a second job) of $200 a week (after tax, of course):

1. You are committed to saving at least $100 of that, so $100 a week additional goes straight into the investment account

2. You are committed to spending $40 a week (see above)

3. So that leaves $60 a week undecided:

Week 1: spend $60 … enjoy!

Week 2: spend $40 …. enjoy!

Week 3: Spend $20 … enjoy!

Week 4: By now, you’re actually saving $160 a week extra … what do you expect? Every week to be Christmas?!

Enjoy!

How much money can you amass living frugally?

The answer, of course, is a lot … especially if you consider $1.4 million ‘a lot’ … and, who doesn’t?

KC (a regular at my new reader community: www.sharyournumber.org) sent me an e-mail asking:

I saw this article: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/95052F7B696733CA8625759500189E1C?OpenDocument

[the headline reads: "How social worker Jane M. Buri saved $1.4 million, then gave it all away"] and I can’t begin to think how you could start to calculate whether this is indeed possible for a moderately paid social worker who lived frugally.

What are your thoughts?

Well, on the surface the lady appears to be a classic miser; she:

- never married, never had children, never missed a day of work

- drove a 30-year-old car, watched an ancient TV (she resisted replacing her old TV and icebox), lived four decades in a house bought with cash in 1969 (the furniture was her parents’)

- dressed plainly, wore costume jewelery, dyed and permed her own hair

- would buy five sandwiches for $5.95 from Arby’s (she’d eat one and freeze the four others for later; when she went out with friends, they nearly always split the bill)

I think this statement sums it up the best:

She lived, her friends say, nearly as a nun.

On the other hand; she also ‘lashed out’ from time to time; if you call eating out ‘lashing out’:

Nor did she deny herself small indulgences. Some weeks, she ate out three meals a day, friends said. She traveled to Europe, and to the Rose Parade in California. She bought a baby grand piano.

OK, this is a lesson in frugality: single woman, no mortgage or car payments for thirty years and 100% gainfully employed living frugally …

… does this mean that it’s surprising how much she managed to leave behind?

Well, we have a data point:

She got her first job as a social worker in 1954, according to St. Louis Public School records. She made $3,800 a year. Within 10 years, she was running the department and had doubled her salary.

Let’s assume that she grew her salary from 1964 until 2002 at 6% p.a. (which leaves her a finishing salary in 2000 of nearly $61,000); let’s also assume that despite her frugal habits that she still spent / donated half her money (after all, there “was nothing she wanted and didn’t buy” and she “kept stacking charity donation envelopes in her sun room, until, once a year, she sent them all in”) … which all means, that we are assuming that she saved ‘just’ 50% of her salary.

Putting this all into a spreadsheet (with the final assumption that she just managed to earn 6% on her money, compounded over the 50 years that we are talking about), I can see that $1.4 mill. is reasonable for her to leave behind; in fact – by pure coincidence, because of all the assumptions that I’ve made – that’s exactly what I came up with at my first attempt at running the numbers.

There’s no doubt that living this frugally for 50+ years, having no major expenses (family, house, car, etc.) is the secret to this kind of financial ’success’ … she apparently enjoyed the life of a ‘nun’ … so might others … would you?

How do you eat an elephant?

We all know the Richest Man In Babylon and the Automatic Millionaire approach to getting rich (very slowly, and if we ignore inflation … you wish!): simply save 10% to 15% of your gross salary …. and wait.

But, that sage advice is doled out like just something that you can easily do …

… but, there’s a couple of problems:

1. It’s not so easy to save that much if you’ve got a stay-at-home spouse, three hungry kids, a car loan and a mortgage to ‘feed’; I mean, not everybody started reading personal finance blogs in their diapers [AJC: that's when they start writing them! ], and

2. It’s not enough: inflation, financial crisis, work crisis, home crisis, etc. all ‘eat’ into your savings and decimate your Save 15% Until You Die Or Retire Whichever Is Worse plans.

Fortunately, I have a solution to both problems:

We solve the first problem by remembering that ago old adage / riddle:

Q: How do you eat an elephant?

A: One bite at a time!

It’s the same with savings: set your target at 15% of your gross salary, then make a start by saving just 1% more than you are saving today. If you’re currently saving nothing, then I guess you’re now saving 1% … infinitely more than before

As often as you can, but no less than monthly, increase that savings amount by 1%. Repeat until you reach 15%.

In Australia, we have $1 and $2 coins; I just automatically throw these in the center console of my car. Last time I checked, there was $50 or $60 in there … if I were poor, I guess I would trundle off the the bank and deposit that in savings account, until I had accumulated enough to add to my 401k.

You probably won’t even miss the ‘lost’ spending money …

Then we can solve the second problem by saving even more; here’s how, and you won’t even feel it, I promise:

You only save more when you are allowed to spend more!

It’s a trick that I taught my children: when they get money (any money: an allowance, a gift, find it on the street, etc.) half goes into Spending and the other half into Savings.

So, too, does it go for you: anytime that you get any additional money [insert 'found money' methods of choice: a pay increase, a second job, a windfall, loose change that you save out of your pockets, a gift, a manufacturer's cash rebate, tax refund check, etc., etc.] you Spend half and you Save half.

Over time, you will find that your rate of savings goes up tremendously … and – almost – painlessly (because you get to spend the other half)!

Of course, there is a third solution: simply contrive to earn more money from businesses and/or investments such that your savings won’t make any difference to you …

… but, I encourage you to try my “eat the elephant” Making Money 101 strategies as well because the money that you have saved will help you to fund these ventures  – with enough left over to ensure that you have a safety net of some sort in case your plans don’t work out; and, even if things don’t work out the way you expected, if you followed those basic guidelines, you’ll probably find that you’re still better off than 90% of your neighbors

Bunker Strategy For Surviving A 12 to 24 Month Recession

The blogoshpere is alive with posts that trumpet that Suze Orman has changed her financial advice .. some of it inspired by this excellent article from Yahoo Finance News:

Personal finance gurus usually treat credit card debt as the plague and urge consumers to pay it off–ASAP. But this week, Queen of Personal Finance Suze Orman announced on The Oprah Winfrey Show that the old advice is wrong. The recession has made job loss so prevalent, she says, that consumers now need to make creating an emergency fund with eight months worth of expenses their top priority.

Now, I also happened to be watching that Oprah show [AJC: I can blame my wife ... she watches religiously ... can I help it that I am sometimes also standing withing 'eye shot' of the TV ] where Suze said:

If you have an unpaid credit card balance [and] not much saved up in emergency savings, I need you to listen up. My advice has changed. I want you to only pay the minimum due on your credit card balance, and instead, make it your top priority to build as much of an emergency cash fund as you can.

Now, I think that Trent at The Simple Dollar hosted the best discussion on Suze’s comments, and I suggest that read both Trent’s post and all of the comments before you read on; Trent said:

In this environment, making the decision to jump from debt repayment to emergency fund building is about two years overdue.

I propose a different solution.

First of all, ignore a huge, long-term goal like an eight month emergency fund. Instead, if you’re worried about the downturn, focus on three key things through the rest of this year (and thus, likely, through the bottom of the downturn):

One, apply some realistic frugality in your life.

Two, acquire no new debt.

Three, build up your emergency fund a little now, but be prepared to reduce it in 2010.

I agree with Trent, asking people to save up to 80% of their salary for the next 12 months is way too much too late

And, I agree with Trent’s basic ‘bunker mentality’ of tightening the belt, but I am actually going to advocate a totally opposite three-step strategy, and here it is … 7million7years’ Patented Bunker Strategy For Surviving A 12 to 24 Month Recession:

One, ramp up your Making Money 101 strategies …. during recessionary times, double them if you can (i.e. save 20% – 30% of your income; save 100% of any ‘found money’).

Two, acquire some critical new debt.

Three, use that new debt to build up your emergency fund a lot for now, but be prepared to dramatically reduce it when the recession turns.

Question: Who of sound mind acquires new debt in a recession?

Answer: Anybody who wants to survive!

Look, if you didn’t start storing nuts for this recessionary winter in 2005 / 2006 then you probably have NIL chance of building a large enough emergency fund to tide you over if you do lose your job now or soon … worse, if you do lose your job, it could take months to find another one in the current market.

So, what to do?

Simple, look for where you already have nuts stored: for many of you, it will be in your house.

IF you still have equity in your house, simply refinance out as much as you can up to Suze Orman’s 8 months emergency fund limit (however much that may be for you) PLUS a sufficient ‘buffer’ to make 12 – 24 months of mortgage payments. Now may also be a good time to consolidate your credit cards and other higher interest loans into the same loan (not normally a strategy that I would recommend … but, this is an unusual plan that we are executing) …

… and, fix the interest rate (so long as the loan conditions allow you to pay off as much extra as you like when you like!).

Why?

Well, you now have peace of mind … for only the price of 12 to 24 month’s interest on your mortgage, perhaps a very small price to pay for surviving the deepest recession that you will likely see in your lifetime.

If you don’t lose your job, you can pay back the loan whenever you feel that things are somewhat coming back to normal (i.e. jobless rates are dropping again), and if you do lose your job, you have the cash buffer to help you survive.

Sure, this is a drastic strategy, which will cost you some unecessary interest and lost investing opportunity as you borrow money at 6+% just to have it sitting in the bank at 1.9% if you are lucky, so I am aiming this strategy only at those who:

1. Believe Suze Orman, but have no hope of meeting her criteria at this late stage, or

2. Believe that their job is at reasonable risk.

For a person on a gross income of $50,000 a year, with a current mortgage of $250,000 (a lot of house!), this rather unique ‘insurance policy’ would cost you less than $100 a week … a lot of money, sure, but small change if it helps you survive the Second Great Depression (well, at least  the worst recession since the Great Depression).

If so, this is counter-intuitively probably your best chance of protecting your home and family and riding the storm … but, if you don’t get a new job within a few months then you are probably slightly closer to foreclosure.

Or, are you?

You have 12 to 24 months protection (by way of the 8 months living expenses plus interest payments buffer), whereas without doing this you have whatever you can scrape up. Compare that with the alternative: what would you do if you lost your job next month and you didn’t put this plan in place? How could/would you survive?

Your honest answer dictates whether this admittedly ‘unusual plan’ is for you …

… if it is; if you do have the spare equity; and, if you do meet the two criteria listed above, now is the time to execute this plan. If you wait:

a. You won’t be able to refi if you have lost your job, and

b. A HELOC won’t save you, as the bank will probably pull it.

So, refinance your home now and put the spare cash into another bank instead!

Of course, if you don’t have the ’spare equity’ in your house … cross your fingers