Never Too Late

Many Americans were disappointed to learn that existing home sales in the United States fell 8 percent in September, and that sales have plummeted a hefty 19 percent during the past year. At the same time, national median selling prices are down 4 percent from a year ago.

These are worrying statistics, particularly because after a half century of increasing housing prices, many had come to believe that housing prices would always increase. Indeed, many Americans have come to depend on the increasing value of their home to provide security in a crisis and support in their retirement years, rather than to routinely save some of every paycheck for those critical purposes.

There has also been a recent flood of stories about home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies stemming from easy credit and overspending. During recent times of relative prosperity, Americans have become poor savers. The U.S. savings rate has declined from approximately 10 percent in the 1980s to 6 percent in the 1990s and to a negative ½ percent in 2005. That means that Americans spent more than they earned in 2005. The last time the savings rate was negative for an entire year was in the Great Depression years of 1932 and 1933.

Something doesn’t feel right about these numbers. In the last decade, total household net worth for Americans has doubled -- yet America’s personal savings rate has now sunk to among the lowest in the world.

These statistics should not panic us, but they should be a wake-up call for us to return to better financial habits that most Americans remember, but fewer and fewer practice. Our savings dearth has been fostered by politicians who fail to recognize the need for better public policy and tax policy for encouraging more savings, and who at the same time provide awful examples by the careless way they spend every last dollar they can snatch from the public purse and then, once spending them all, continue to spend by incurring runaway public debt.

Government seems oblivious to the problem of our low personal savings rates. American Debt Resources, Inc., a non-profit credit counseling organization is one of many private sector organizations helping Americans reclaim control over their financial future. The organization points out that in any ten year period 75 percent of families will experience a major financial crisis, whether it is loss of a job, illness, divorce, or some other unexpected challenge.

Its advice is to save, and it emphasizes that the best way to save is to always pay oneself before paying anyone else. Its counselors explain that to do that requires “taking a set amount of your paycheck before paying any bills and putting it in savings. Then plan your budget around the remaining income.”

Saving through automatic payroll withholding is a foolproof way to develop better savings habits. That technique allows you to save first before spending the first dollar from your paycheck. I’ve never known anyone to regret that they saved. Automatic saving is one of the best practices available to rich or poor for building wealth and financial security, but it is also one of the most frequently ignored practices.

Time is running out for many baby boomers, and many are underestimating how much they’ll need to make it through their retirement years. A study by The Center for Retirement Research estimates that Americans are saving at a rate that will allow them to replace only 57% of their pre-retirement income after they stop working. Many have optimistically assumed that by selling homes that are constantly appreciating in value they will be able to meet retirement income shortfalls, yet emerging housing statistics challenge the validity of that assumption.

We should all return to better savings habits. Good savings habits are not only good for families, they are vital for our country and its economy. Our household and national savings provide more than just funds for the future, they also provide the capital for investment by new and existing businesses, which in turn ensures that there are well-paying jobs for all Americans.

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again -- and expecting different results. Your failure to save will do nothing to produce the financial security you want. The surest way to reclaim a sound financial future and peace of mind is to begin saving today. While time is a saver’s best friend, it’s never too late to begin.

Never Too Soon

In recent years there’s been much discussion about what schools should and should not be teaching. But there is a growing consensus that most schools have overlooked one very important aspect of preparing students for life’s responsibilities. For most of our lives, we are all involved to some degree in financial management – whether that entails budgeting and spending responsibly, buying a house or a car, saving for our children’s education, managing a retirement fund, running an organization or business, or overseeing the finances of government. To be sure, the recent staggering number of people who have been overwhelmed by easy debt or who have lost their homes through foreclosure, along with the runaway spending by government officials at all levels, suggests that much more should be done to teach all Americans better principles of money management.

That is why I was delighted to learn recently that the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) has developed a program to teach very young children about money. Recognizing that attempts to teach financial literacy to high school and middle school students often fail, CUNA has wisely designed its program for preschoolers. Because older students already have been saturated with advertising messages and with peer pressure for the newest and best of everything, no matter the cost, the obstacles for beginning a financial literacy program once bad habits are established are impractical to overcome.

As CUNA points out, “Children learn about money from many sources. Long before they enter school, they observe adults using money and buying things. They watch television daily and see thousands of commercials each year. Like it or not, money is a part of your preschooler’s life.”

The Credit Union National Association calls its program “Thrive by Five,” and it offers “parent and child tested” activities and resources on its website that are meant to give parents ideas for:

* Teaching how money works and what it can do,
* Talking about how your family uses money, and
* Modeling good money management.

In addition to providing tips for teaching preschoolers about money, CUNA’s website contains simple stories about money for preschoolers, a list of 17 things a five-year-old should know about money, and hands-on learning activities that teach concepts such as “saving should be a habit; once money is spent, it’s gone; people have to make choices with money; and don’t trust ads.”

This sounds like an excellent program. It is especially encouraging that our state currently has the highest per-capita rate in the nation of “Thrive by Five” program materials distributed to our schools. Come to think of it, if ”Thrive by Five” is successful for toddlers, why not offer a similar program to those government officials who often provide such poor examples for our youth by the routine way they indifferently exhaust public funds and concurrently chalk up crushing public debt?

Responsible money management is important for everyone, whether individuals, families, businesses, or governments. We are seeing credit card debt, bankruptcies, and mortgage foreclosures increasing out of hand. It would be a true blessing for us all if other civic and business organizations follow CUNA’s lead in assuring that people get an earlier start in learning how to handle money wisely. If this program proves to be effective in the long run, we’ll all benefit tremendously.

PROVIDE A WATERY GRAVE FOR A LOST CAUSE

One has to wonder what drives the Administration and some members of Congress to promote policies that weaken US sovereignty, threaten American industries, export jobs, leave our borders undefended, and subject American businesses, our military personnel, and our citizens to the laws and regulations established by transnational bureaucracies like the United Nations, instead of by our elected representatives in Washington. Do these promoters distrust their own country, are they willing to allow the interests of the UN to take precedence over the interests of our citizens, or are they just idealistically pursuing what Henry Kissinger refers to as the new “international architecture?”

It was just a few months ago that a national uprising of the American people persuaded Congress to soundly defeat a proposed illegal alien amnesty bill. Yet in the last few weeks, the Administration and many amnesty supporters have been attempting to repackage their amnesty bill into something called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

The DREAM Act, which was quietly tacked on to a defense authorization bill, would have granted amnesty to illegal aliens who entered the United States as children. These young illegal aliens would have been granted permanent, lawful status that would have then allowed them to seek permanent lawful status for their parents who brought them into the country illegally as children. Once again, the American people said “no.” Americans understandably want our laws to be respected and our borders secured and defended.

Remarkably, the Administration is now collaborating with Senator Joseph Biden on something called the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), a United Nations power grab rejected by President Reagan a quarter of a century ago because among other reasons it would undermine U.S. sovereignty. LOST was first proposed by the United Nations in 1982, and it would give the UN authority on, over, and beneath the ocean’s surface.

LOST would restrict the U.S. Navy’s intelligence gathering and submarine operations; it would require our military to obtain permission from the UN before boarding or detaining any ship it suspects of carrying terrorists or terrorist supplies; it would give the UN its first authority to tax, by imposing hefty fees and assessments on any American company involved in such things as seabed mining; and it would establish a UN tribunal, superior to our nation’s courts, that would have the last word over all maritime issues involving fisheries, marine environmental protection, oceanographic research, and navigation.

Hasn’t our long, difficult experience with the UN made clear what such a treaty would mean for the United States? It would mean that our laws, our sovereignty, our freedoms, and our property rights would be turned over to an assortment of nations that despise what we stand for, yet covet what we have.

Some of our political elites may dream of a new “international architecture,” but the remarkable house that was built in Philadelphia more that 230 years ago has provided Americans with freedom, wealth, and opportunity unknown anywhere else on the face of the earth. It is time to demand that those in Washington defend our remarkable Constitution, as Ronald Reagan did, against all who would undermine it. The LOST Treaty and any similar schemes that assault America’s interests should be slipped into the deep blue sea for a fitting burial.

Phyllis Schlafly on the Law Of The Sea Treaty (LOST)

The Price of Freedom

The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress recently published a report entitled American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics (Updated June 29, 2007). As we approach Veterans’ Day this year, it is a document worth reflecting on, because it provides in great detail the U.S. casualty statistics for every war in which the United States has participated, from the Revolutionary War through our current Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The report lists, by branch of service and by a variety of demographics, the 4,435 deaths in the Revolutionary War; 2,300 in the War of 1812; and 1,733 in the Mexican War. While the report lists only Union casualties, other sources reveal that between 618,000 and 700,000 Americans, both blue and grey, died in the Civil War. Taken alone, this vast number of casualties nearly exceeds our combined loss in all other wars from our nation’s first, the Revolutionary War, through Vietnam.

These somber statistics tell of the sacred commitment through the years of those who fought and died to provide freedom for their fellow Americans. In the Spanish-American War, nearly 2,500 of our countrymen perished; two decades later in World War I, nearly 117,000 gave their lives, as did another 500,000 in World War II.

In Korea there were 36,754 American deaths; and in Vietnam, 58,209; in the brief first Persian Gulf War, 382 perished. Since the early nineties, we have continued each year to lose 1,000 to 2,000 of our young men and women in uniform, even during times of relative peace. But that number of annual casualties is actually declining.

In the Global War on Terrorism being waged in Iraq during the past 4½ years, our losses to date have totaled 3,800. While this is much lower than the toll from conflicts of the past, the loss of each American life is heartbreaking and the measure of that sacrifice is enormous. Each life we lose is sacred in the glorious cause of liberty and freedom. And as we thank the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, we at least can gain some solace that the number of our casualties has been on a decline.

One cannot handle this Congressional Research Service report without seeing past the numbers to the hundreds of thousands of selfless young men and women who have paid the ultimate price for the freedoms we cherish. I suspect that nearly every American family has been touched by the loss of at least one loved one within memory, and through those tragic and painful losses, we are all profoundly invested in the great American cause of liberty and justice for all.

There is much controversy stirred up by the axis of the radical political left, including its Hollywood and media allies, over the War in Iraq. They would have us view this war, which most of us sensibly understand is a battlefield of the Global War on Terrorism, as a pointless waste, a quagmire, a war that cannot be won.

But the truth is that with the recent troop “surge” under General Petraeus, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of military and civilian deaths in Iraq. Last month saw the lowest monthly toll since July 2006 and the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. Civilian deaths are down by over 53 percent.

Some feel that this surge started much too late, but it is clearly working. Thousands of terrorists who, were they not engaged in Iraq might be terrorizing and killing civilians in the United States or wherever people enjoy freedom, have themselves been neutralized as a result of the surge.

The price tag for our freedom has always been beyond measure, but it is a price Americans have always had the courage and will to pay. It would betray the memory, honor, and youthful treasure of so many thousand brave Americans who have given their all defending our freedom, were we to head down the slippery slope of retreat, defeat, and humiliation advocated by the radical left.

The words of the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, written four centuries before the birth of Christ, remain true today: “The secret of freedom is courage.”

I pray that our nation will never cower from this time-tested truth.