What’s your Financial Fitness Foundation made of? If you’re reading this than yours is probably better than the sand most Americans have been building on lately. Yep, bashing my fellow Americans again… Not for bashing sake but in the hope that more will take the cue and wake up from the drunken spending binge that they’ve been on for the last few decades.

   I’ll remind everyone that I imbibed in this cocktail hour of spending for a while in my life too. There’s no judgement intended in my comments, unless you know better and refuse to make the proper adjustments. In reality, make the adjustments or don’t – doesn’t really matter to me but don’t try to walk both roads, freedom will most likely only come at the cost of other pleasantries. At least initially!

   Lately, I’ve been attempting to clarify my thoughts on the financial freedom opportunities that are available to everyone willing to make some adjustments. This post will be another illustration of what’s bouncing around in that vast open space between my ears.

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   We’re all familiar with the old food pyramid from our high school health class, right. You know the one with healthy eating habits broken down as you progress up the pyramid shaped chart? Well, that’s the mental picture I want you all to have from what I’m describing today… Except with financial health instead of nutrition.

  Can you imagine a better foundation design than the pyramid provides? Is there a better design for standing the test of time? Well, maybe there is but since I’m not an architect, I’m not aware of it. For this illustration we’re going to accept that the stability that this shape provides is going to achieve what we’re after, long life expectancy and invulnerability.

   Are you imagining the pyramid? See that lowest level or tier, that’s where our necessities should be located… By necessities I mean those old basics, Food – Water – Shelter. I realize that this is overly simplistic, I just need to get everyone on the same page.

   Only after we had these basics covered would we be able to move on to build our next level. If we were forced to pay attention to physics, that would dictate that this be required… I have to assume that anyone reading this has these 3 basics taken care of, at least for today or they wouldn’t be reading this on the Internet. Most of us do have them covered but for how long? What’s coming down the road that could threaten them? Job loss, physical illness or even death of a spouse – any one of these or a dozen other potentially hazardous pitfalls are waiting in the trail ahead that composes most of our futures.

   The idea that if I can feed and cloth myself today, it must be alright to move onto the next level. I think that this is the premise that gets far to many folks off track. The thought that I’ve got today covered and we’ll just let tomorrow take care of herself… Hmm, really! It seems that the laws of entropy don’t allow us to take our hands off the wheel without catastrophic results!

   What is ordered today has a way of becoming disordered tomorrow. That is unless diligent watch is kept to prevent this from happening… With this in mind, I think we should all go back and make sure we have our financial foundation laid solidly before we move on to whatever comes next. It’s important that we remember that the foundation isn’t the entire house. However, it is the critical piece that must be respected if we intend to build solidly on top of it.

   Imagine that this lowest level of the financial pyramid actually is the foundation of your home. Do you take your financial life as seriously as you do this concrete footing? You should… If you were to be able to remove this concrete substructure and substitute it with just plain old soil would the house stay up? Yeah, probably for a while it would. Then winter would come and the wind would pick up, soon the beautiful home would be leaning and the cracks would certainly appear soon after. Look around, see any family members with cracks in their financial walls? If we answer this honestly, we all probably know someone that’s currently out of work… Think they’re seeing these cracks?

   So, you’re probably wondering to yourself where I’m going with this whole pyramid illustration, right? Well, we’ll get there, we’ll get there! If you look at this foundation I keep referring to, what do you see? That’s right, just the preliminary step in building an actual house or in this case lifestyle! Not to many of us would stop the home building process at the foundation… I don’t advocate stopping your financial lifestyle here either. Build the biggest, most attractive house on top of this foundation as you please! Just don’t get ahead of yourself or your financial house will end up just like the house that’s leaning precariously and has cracks in the walls.

   Sometimes, when a house has been built on a faulty foundation, it has to be completely taken down and then rebuilt only after the problems are corrected. Many Americans are facing solutions that are this drastic, right now! Bankruptcy, foreclosure – suicide? All because the building went beyond the carrying capacity of their foundation - financial foundation. Can’t happen to us? Don’t believe it, it can happen to us and that’s why we prep, so we have solutions to the problems that life throws our way… What better prep than a deeply dug, thoughtfully laid, wide financial foundation. Sound goods, doesn’t it!

   In part 2 of this post, I’m going to describe what goes into this foundation and some possibilities in how it might be built. Just like all of us, our foundations will be somewhat unique depending on what we intend to build on top of them but they all have many things in common. They all have to be built of solid materials that will stand the test of time. It’ll be these similarities that we focus on… Stay tuned!

Prepper