Just to get us rolling let's think about this quote:

"The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket." - Kim Hubbard

The sentiment here is certainly that if you don't spend it, you save it. That's personal finance 101, a lesson I fear too many of us, particularly in America, have failed to teach our children. The result is larger personal debt levels held by each new generation that create the facade of success but which all too often are in reality the cause of stress and financial downfall.

On a macro level we watch the Obama Administration crush this concept with their irrisponsible spending that will leave all of our children with unheard of levels of national debt that will ultimately compromise their very national security.

Do people realize what is going on? We certainly all understand that we shouldn't go to Ruth's Chris and buy a $150 steak dinner using a credit card when we know we won't have the $150 in our checking account to pay the credit card bill when it arrives in 30 days. So please someone explain to me how our country spending $1.8 Trillion Dollars (or whatever the figure is today) can be a wise decision...knowing exactly what we are doing....spending money we don't have in the bank....spending money our children will have to pay back (and what lessons are we leaving behind for them?). To make matters more serious, we aren't paying back the domestic credit card company (where we have the choice to file bankruptcy when we don't feel like living up to our legal and moral obligations), we have to pay back other countries. Our children are the not-so-proud benificiaries of our indebtness to the People's Republic of China, among others.

To make matters worse, because the Obama administration doesn't understand that spending money we don't have isn't the answer, Obama will in fact create a situation where the quote above is untrue. It will be untrue in that saving your money and "putting it in your pocket" will also prove unwise. By all means, do NOT take your money out of the banks and out of the markets and stash it in your personal safe. Ask any educated economist and they'll tell you what the next obstacle will be for our economy as it recovers (and it will) - inflation.

Thus, save your money today (don't be afraid to spend responsibly as you live for today with an eye on the future), but what you save, save it wisely to protect it against inflation. Because if you put your $150 under your mattress, it won't cover the cost of that Ruth's Chris steak dinner in 3 years...it'll probably just buy you a side of mashed potatos.

Introduction

Greetings. As the hot topic over the past 6 months, it only seemed appropriate to begin my own outlet to discuss various aspects of Banking, Finance, & the Economy...and occassionaly some subject matter completely unrelated to the aformentioned.

In the spirit of full disclosure I'll provide a one time 30 second bio of my background so the reader can decide if I'm biased, uninformed or uneducated in a particular area.

I hold a bachelors degree in the Liberal Arts as and Economics Major and Religion minor. I don't plan on discussing Religion here, but certainly my conservative slant will undoubtedly make itself evident. Post graduate, I took a very breif role in investment sales and realized that was not the life for me. From that point I worked approximately 2.5 years in retail banking (while I knocked out my MBA) and am now approaching 5 years in commercial banking first for a large local credit union and more recently for an aggressively expanding local community bank. Personally, I and am very happily married with my first child on the way.

As you might imagine after a quick study of my background, I am a very analytical person (I use Excel Spreasheets whenever and wherever possible) and virtually always wait to formulate an opinion until as many facts as possible are in on the matter.