For Blacks - How to Budget: Your "Entertainment" Budget

Your "Entertainment" Budget

In this economy and for the past 40 years, Black Americans have struggled to close the income gap between us and whites.  It is hard to do when you cannot save any money.  But I put to you this question: are you unable to save money because you spend it on the things you need, or because you spend money on things you want?  Then if you say it is because you spend it only on things you need, then I ask you the next part of that question: do you know how to distinguish the things you want from the things you need?  That might make it look like I'm assuming you're stupid, but the thing is you're fighting an entire system that is geared to make sure you fail and to squeeze every possible dollar out of you.  It is becoming harder and harder to distinguish what is necessary from what is luxury.  At the end of the day, luxury is not necessary.

“The average American is exposed to 247 commercial messages each day.”

Consumer Reports Website

No Budget = No Money

If you complain that you have no money to save, I guarantee you are spending 90% of your money on luxury items.  Let me start out by making sure you understand what is necessity.  We cannot have a dialogue if you do not know what a need looks like.  A need is something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as food, or they can be subjective and psychological, such as the need for self-esteem. On a social level, needs are sometimes controversial. Understanding needs and wants is an issue in the fields of politics, social science, and philosophy.

• Adequate nutritional food 
• Adequate water
• Adequate protective housing
• A safe environment for running your business
• A supply of basic clothing
• A safe natural environment
• Appropriate health cures
• Security in childhood
• Significant primary relationships with members of the opposite sex
• Physical security
• Economic security
• Safe child-bearing
• Appropriate basic education.

So these are the basic needs that humans all over the world need.

The Need List Explained

• Everyone needs food and water as a basis of staying alive.  One step above staying alive, is everyone needs food that has all of the nutrients that will keep the human healthy until he dies.  
• Humans also need a roof over their heads to keep out the wind, the cold, the heat and the rain.  
• Due to the reality of modern man, humans now need the ability to make money, so added to the list is having a safe environment to operate your business or trade.  [ remember, throughout history every member of society had their own trade / skill and they traded their trade / skill with other members of society to live.  From the beginning of slavery onward, that trade / skill was taken from 30% of the population and at the end of slavery that number exploded to 80%, but the need is still there for being able to do business and apply your trade / skill. ]  
• Every human needs adequate protective clothing for summer, winter and rain.  
• Every human needs to live somewhere, where nature will not slowly or quickly kill them.  This simply means that he should live somewhere decent.  
• Every human needs the knowledge, should their food supply diminish and their health fails due to a vitamin / mineral deficiency [and this is what disease actually means] that they have access to being able to be cured.  This does not mean that they go to a doctor, but that each and every family has the knowledge of how to cure the deficiency.
• Every human needs to be protected as a child from whatever predators are out there, be they animal or human.  This protection affords them the ability to grow up and become adults.  Children are weak and fragile and adults should recognize this.  As an adult it is your duty to protect children and making sure children understand this.
• Every human needs a significant primary relationship with a member of the opposite sex.  Once this is established, they can get married to each other to insure that noone else will infringe upon this relationship, including parents, relatives and strangers.
• Every human needs to be secure from being killed on a daily basis.  This is a basic human need, the likes of which should go without saying.  This includes war.
• Every human needs to be secure that if he plys his trade that his customers will pay him and the monetary system will keep working without interference from governments foreign or domestic.  This is a basic need that is constantly being threatened by federal, state and local governments on a daily basis and Americans, in particular, tolerate this.
• Every human needs to be able to have children safely, without threat from anything or anyone that wishes to terminate their pregnancy due to their own predatory nature.
• Due to this modern age, every human has a basic need to be educated on actual human history and not the fanciful human history that the Anglo-Saxons wish to hoist upon the world, or the plutocracy wishes to impose upon the world.  Along with this, News channels need to cease to rewrite current history.  Without basic, untainted education, every human is doomed to failure.

According to Alf Nucifora, an Atlanta-based marketing consultant:

“Research tells us that the average American consumer is exposed to
more that 600 advertising messages a day in one form or another.”
The Business Journal Phoenix Website

What are Wants

Anything that does not fall under the need list, is automatically a want.  In fact, the need list, needs to be broken down even further to its most basic, because some things on the need list can be luxuriated into a want instead of a need.  Notice that there is no item called: Entertainment.  So your TV and Movie night are automatically a want and not a need.

Remember the strict parents raised their child on school, homework and food and shelter.  The child of course excelled in school.  But, everyone thought the kid was boring.  And, he was.  But, he now lives in a big house and has a cute wife.

In the article ”Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned

Scientists” by Michael Brower, PhD, and Warren Leon, PhD:

“The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a

day, and globally corporations spend over $620 billion each year to

make their products seem desirable and to get us to buy them.”

Union of Concerned Scientists Website

The battle you have is distinguishing between that need and want.  Increasingly it becomes harder and harder to tell a need from a want.  Of course a Coke, is easily distinguished from water as a want.  But, bottled water is not distinguished from a want.  And, marketing experts launch million dollar campaigns to tell you that the New York Water system is horrible for your health, so you should buy bottled water to keep you healthy.

It is the job of a marketing firm to make sure you, as a customer of their client, mistake their product for a need, instead of you putting it into the category of a want.  In fact, a lot of corporations may dominate an entire industry so that the marketing of a category becomes the basis of your purchasing, instead of just a product.

“A conservative estimate has the average American consumer exposed to

more than 850 commercial messages a day.”

Texas A&M University Digital Library

Let's return to bottled water.  Bottled water is not a need.  In fact, by law, no municipality can have tap water that is harmful to humans, period.  There may be trace elements in the water system that shouldn't be there, like fluoride, but that's the duty of the citizens to tell the mayor and governor to take that out of the water system.  Meanwhile the bottle water companies launch a campaign telling you how bad fluoride actually is for your health and kid's health and that bottled water doesn't have fluoride in it, so buy bottle water in general.  The reality is, if the citizens simply go to the water district or sue them to take fluoride and other harmful substances out of the system, they wouldn't ever need to buy bottled water.

Water is a basic human need.  But, corporations have turned it into a want, by putting it in a bottle and selling it to you.  There is a huge distinction between the two.

Let's not stop at bottled water.  There are some wants that advertisers have pounded into our brains so much, that we now accept them as a need. Let's return to our need list and turn it into a want list by virtue of advertisers disguising luxury items and luxury living for necessities.

1. FOOD:  you need food to live.  However the only foods you actually need are: heirloom organic vegetables; heirloom organically raised beef and chicken and eggs.  You do not need any grains nor dairy.  In fact human consumption of grains has contributed to the ill health of populations.  Most grains are actually weeds, especially soy.  But, corporations have heavily marketed breads and grains as being an essential food and not the weed that it is.  We do not need dairy either.  There is no basic human need for dairy products at all.  In fact the marketing of dairy providing calcium or other nutrients is a complete and blatant lie, especially when you consider that any and all dairy products are heavily pasteurized, killing any and all nutrients in the product.

“If you're like most consumers, you have been the target of intrusive

marketing and a constant barrage of irrelevant advertising messages.

The average American sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day.

If you fill out a warranty card, get divorced, buy a home, get listed

in a school directory, enter a sweepstakes, purchase an item from a

catalog, file an insurance claim, or perform a myriad of other

everyday activities, some company somewhere makes a record of this

fact and sells it to marketers for profit.”

Superprofile Website

Essentially, if it is not pure organically raised cows and chickens or organically grown not-genetically modified vegetables and fruits, it is not a need.  And no, soy is not a vegetable nor a fruit.  It is a very bad for you weed.  Repeat a lie enough and everyone believes it, this is the case for soy and the soy industry.

The be all end all of this category is that you cook for yourself.  Many companies cut corners to try and pretend to bring you wholesome food.  The truth of the matter is that they incorporate weed by-products like soy, into their foods, to increase their profits.  You become unhealthy in the process of just eating, what you think is food.  Be smart and cook your own food.  It takes just as much time to prepare a meal on your own, from scratch, than eating unhealthy food, and on top of that shoving it into a cancer inducing microwave.

“The average American adult is exposed to over 600 advertising

messages in a single 24-hour period. -- Managing Business to Business

“Marketing Communications, De Bonis and Peterson.”

2. WATER: You only need to drink water.  Not fruit juice, not alcohol, not coffee.  And, you only need to drink the water that comes out of your own kitchen faucet.  You should not and do not need to buy bottled water.  It has to be the largest scam going.  In fact, you do not need 7 glasses of water a day, like the advertisers say.  They simply try to make you feel like you need that much to force you into purchasing bottled water.  The worst part of the bottled water scam is that most bottled water comes from tap water to begin with.  They do not come from a river, nor a mountain stream.  They come from the tap water located in some town where it is bottled.  So what are you paying for?

This was published in a column at The Newspaper Association of America

Website

“Not too long ago, the average American was exposed to over three

thousand advertising messages in the average day. Today, you get that

many before breakfast! Everyone is trying to build a brand. This

season, the networks have added one more minute of commercials per

half-hour, and that is just the beginning. Have you seen the ads in

golf holes (talk about hidden persuaders), in bathroom stalls, on

grocery register receipts and even in the sand on the beach?"

Newspaper Association of America Website

3. HOUSING: This is the real sad part about American marketing for the past century.  At its core, humans only need a roof over their head.  They do not need tremendous space, nor luscious living accommodations.  The housing industry has made it appear that you NEED to have your own home.  The reality was that Americans, like everyone else, lived 3 generations in a house.  Yes, the house was big, but everyone wasn't suffering from back breaking debt to have a house of their own.  The rest of the world still adheres to this.  People, overseas, only move out if they need to be close to a job or something.  Even so, they can always return home.  Housing should never be a point of ruining your financial life.  In fact the more affluent Americans, still live 3 generations to a house.  Not only does it make financial sense, but it contributes to the closeness of the family.  With 3 generations in a home, noone has to take a portion of their income and throw it away on housing.

Black people especially need to return to living 3 generations to a home.  It is a much better financial state to have everyone contributing to one home than several homes.  And, once the home is paid for, it should stay in the family forever.  A 12 bedroom house is a much better living arrangement than a single family with 2 children stuffing themselves into a two or three bedroom shack, paying out the nose.

Excerpts from the article “How Not to Fail at Your Marketing Or, Who's

fault is it, anyway?” by  Michael Lovas:

“The average American is targeted by 3000 messages per day. That

includes phone calls, e-mail, meetings, conversations. -- Data Smog by

David Shenk”

The big scam of the century was that they rewrote the "American Dream" and turned it into "everyone wants a home of their own, with a two car garage, white picket fence, cute wife and 2 1/2 kids."  This never was the American Dream.  Maybe it was some corporate fat cats "wet dream".  But, there is nothing American, nor dreamlike in having possessions.

"The American Dream", October 1973 issue of The Freeman, John E. Nestler reflects:

"Whereas the American Dream was once equated with certain principles of freedom, it is now equated with things. The American Dream has undergone a metamorphosis from principles to materialism. ... When people are concerned more with the attainment of things than with the maintenance of principles, it is a sign of moral decay. And it is through such decay that loss of freedom occurs."

Chuck Baldwin emphatically stated in his article Can You Imagine This Country?, that material gain is not the American Dream. Baldwin writes:

"We hear much today about the American dream. By "the American dream," most people mean buying a big house, driving an expensive automobile, and making a lot of money. However, this was not the dream envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Remember that, for the most part, America's founders gave up their material wealth and substance for something they considered of far greater worth. Unfortunately, this hedonistic generation knows little of the kind of sacrificial spirit personified in the lives of America's patriarchs.

In the minds of the founders, liberty--with all of its intrinsic risks--was more desirable than material prosperity, if that prosperity was accompanied with despotism or collectivism. So strong was their desire that they were willing to give up the latter in order to procure the former for themselves and their posterity.

How dare Americans today refer to material gain as "the American dream." It is not! It is the freedom to honestly pursue one's goals that should be celebrated. Material gain is only a fruit of freedom, not its root."

So the scam started with a couple of lies:

1. houses always go up - complete lie
2. your family home is an investment and an asset - based on #1 and another complete lie

Thus ensued the push for everyone to buy a house who first had a good job; then a decent job; then just a job; then ... if they could sign their name.  It was all a scam to get people out of their money.  Cities went along with it, because more people were available to pay property tax.  Huge housing developers loved it because they could sell twice, if not three times the number of houses at hugely inflated prices.  Banks and insurance companies loved it, because it became increasingly normal to get a loan for a house than to actually buy a home, which was the original American custom.  As more and more people were thrown into the notion that they should own a home, the land the home was on, became nearly worthless and the house became the object of desire.

Never in the history of real estate has a building on land been worth more than the land it was sitting on, until this modern age of finance. [and you can quote me on that]  With the notion that space was somehow scarce, landlords started building upwards and land was only allowed enough space to hold the very house which sat upon it.  No more acres of land for a person to be self sufficient on, now people purchased tiny fractions of land and put a home on it, which they then took on ever increasing sums of debt to finance.

Each of us sees more ads alone in one year than people of 50 years ago

saw in an entire lifetime. -- DMNews magazine, 12-22-97.”

Judy Diamond Associates Website

Shenk, in his book Data Smog, states that the average American

encountered 560 daily advertising messages in 1971. By 1997 that

number had increased to over 3,000 per day.

Data Smog

Surviving the Information Glut

by David Shenk

If Black people were smart, they would consolidate and move all generations into a 3 story, 12 bedroom home that they could pay for with cash, with an adequate amount of land around it to be self sufficient.  Only a fool would pay a premium for a home, with no land around it.

More and more advertisement is spent telling us how we have "no time".  This includes that we should not buy a home with land around it, because we have "no time" to take care of the land and that taking care of land requires "work".  So we are all relegated to be lazy fools that are easily parted with our money.  We are too lazy to work the soil on our own property.  And we are foolish enough to pay 10 times as much to stay on a tiny fractional piece of land, as someone who has acres and acres of land.

4. COMMERCE AND LIVING: The rest of the needs fall into a category that is only needed because we live in modern times.  In the 12th century Africa, that would have been the end of the list and you could have lived like a king with just that much.  However, this is not the 12th century, nor Africa.  And, if you listen to certain people, you're no longer kings.  [more of that good American marketing and news media, showing Black people being arrested or uneducated on national TV]

This fourth category can be summarized by a discussion on building a family dynasty.  And that ... is another article.