Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth... Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it. - John Templeton

How Participatory Budgeting Shapes Communities in Lithuania

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/stories/how-participatory-budgeting-shapes-communities-in-lithuania/]

www.participatorybudgeting.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth... Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it. - John Templeton

Those are the words of the late American-born British investor and banker, John Templeton. Templeton felt that it was good to share money among your loved ones or in a community.

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. – Hebrews 13 vs 16 (ESV)

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/hebrews-1316-do-not-neglect-to-do-good-and-to-share-what-you-have-for-such-sacrifices-are-pleasing-to-god--42643527713052403/]

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. – I Timothy 6:17-19 (ESV)

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://slideplayer.com/slide/17687457/]

“The real secret of happiness is not what you give or what you receive, it’s what you share.” — Suzanne Woods Fisher

Treat people you do business with as if they were a part of your family. - Konosuke Matsushita

This is everyone’s money. Money is an expression of our own hearts. In the world today, there are many misfortunes involving money. Here, people live supporting each other. If people’s hearts become one, it is natural that money also become one and is shared by everyone. Everyone can live happily with less money than if they owned it individually. This is one wallet economy. – Accountant of the Konohana Family

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-one-wallet-economy-of-konohana.html

Joint bank accounts explained

Decide if opening a bank account with someone else is right for you

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/best-joint-bank-savings-accounts/]

The following words:

1. Joint Account

2. Family Banking

3. Income Sharing

4. Pooled Funding A.K.A One Wallet Economy

5. Sibling ownership

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper. - George Pólya

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/mathsquotes/photos/pb.100063916962716.-2207520000/406079107699915/?type=3]

These five words have one thing in common, the money is being shared by two or more entities. In this blog post, I will post three articles about participatory budgeting which I believe it is a great idea for intentional communities and your family.

Participatory Budgeting in an Income-Sharing Community

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Adder Oaks
- 1 Comment

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.ic.org/participatory-budgeting-in-an-income-sharing-community/]

www.participatorybudgeting.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

Sharing income among a hundred people is a formidable challenge. At Twin Oaks Community, the combination of income-sharing and egalitarianism forms the core of community identity. About 90 adult members and over a dozen children live together on our rural farm in Virginia that is Twin Oaks. All of the money we make we share, not by dividing it up evenly, but rather by using our collective resources to meet the individual needs of all members. It is the combination of sharing our resources and having a fair say in how those resources are used that brings community cohesion and a shared direction. But it is a logistical headache and often a political nightmare to work out how exactly to allocate these shared resources. A couple years into my membership at Twin Oaks, I joined the economic planning team just in time for a revamp of our community budgeting process. The decades-old process was ailing, suffering from a lack of participation and impact of individual voters. Many members felt that their vote did not make a difference. After several years of trial and error, twists and turns, arguments and animosity, pizza parties and free cookies, we are finally settling on something that works well.

Twin Oaks has a long history of Participatory Budgeting, a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget.1 For us, the public budget includes both money from our businesses and the non-business work we expect our members to do. Twin Oaks values its internal labor as much as it values its money. Not only is our labor keeping the community businesses such as hammock crafting and tofu production afloat, but it serves invaluably in our domestic lives. The time that members spend cooking dinner, harvesting wood for heat, growing food, teaching children, and scheduling doctor visits are all considered to be contributions to the community just as is our income-producing work. All work is compensated with “labor credits” which are self-reported and are required to meet the work quota of 42 hours per week (on average). Each year we take a look at both the income we have available and the number of hours we collectively expect to work and make a plan about where that money will go and where we’ll spend our time. With a net annual income of about $700,000 and nearly 200,000 hours of labor, this is no small task.

For years the community used a process dubbed the Trade-Off Game. Unless one is a budgeting nerd like myself, this process is less fun than the name suggests. Each participating member, which was anyone interested, would be given a list of different managerial areas and the resources available (money and hours). Playing the “game” meant coming up with a balanced money budget and a balanced labor budget. One might assign $12,000 to building maintenance, $65,000 to food, $500 to recreation, 450 hours to cooking community meals, 8000 hours to the vegetable garden, 2000 hours to building maintenance, and so on. As long as the total money and hours matched those available, the player’s game was valid. Everyone’s games would be averaged together to produce the final budget.

Having each person set up a balanced budget is arduous and we would never get the participation, let alone a sensible budget, if we insisted that each person make such a detailed analysis. So we seeded the game with a planner take, a sensible budget offered by a small group made up of the economic planning team, the labor manager, and the current members of our rotating board of directors, along with one or two members at large. Everyone would then tweak the planner take, boosting or cutting the budgets as they saw fit, making sure to cut a dollar from one area for each dollar added to another. Caps were instituted as a precaution to avoid coming out with a budget that is too wonky to fit the community, requiring that no player could vote to cut or raise an area by more than 20 percent.

Inevitably, the final budget would come quite close to the planner take each year, leaving players scratching their heads as to how their participation mattered. Even worse, dishonest play was implicitly encouraged. I might want the food budget dropped by 10 percent, but I can bet someone else will vote to raise it. So what do I do? Vote to cut it by 20 percent to balance them out. In fact, I might cut a large area that I actually like if I know others will vote to raise it. That will leave me with lots of money to distribute among the small areas I support. The Trade-Off Game quickly became an exercise in strategic play, rather than a process for determining the actual desires of the community. Was this what egalitarian income-sharing was supposed to look like?

“Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers.” ~ Shakuntala Devi

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.homeschoolingsc.org/5-of-the-best-math-quotes/]

When I joined the economic planning team in 2013, revamping the game was an idea already brewing. We had seen a record low in participation with a mere 11 members playing (out of over 90 adult members) and the team had already put out surveys trying to figure out why exactly people did not seem invested in determining where our shared resources go. Enough members had expressed willingness to try a new process that we felt we had to look seriously into what other strategies we might use.

This was an exciting introduction to the team. I had studied mathematics in college but had no real training in economics or budgeting. I was also still relatively new to Twin Oaks, just starting to feel at home enough that it made sense for me to be one of the people guiding the community through this budgeting process. I was still learning the ins and outs of our finances while simultaneously brainstorming for a way to do things that would be truly democratic. I was part of the team working to more fully actualize the ideals of my home. We hoped that we could come up with a system that would get people to participate, enjoy it, understand more fully our community needs, and share our resources in a way that truly reflected communal desires. Voting systems might not be the thing that gets most people’s hearts racing, but I felt inspired by the possibility of meeting such a democratic ideal.

Our solution came to us in a system that had already been introduced to Twin Oaks: Fair Share Voting (FSV).2 FSV is a powerful voting system that is ideal for allocating shared resources, yet it is woefully unheard of. It is a ranked voting system, much like the Instant Runoff Voting that gained some attention during the 2016 presidential election season. Third-party candidates support ranked voting systems because they allow voters to put their true preference at the top of the list without running the risk of wasting their vote. If that candidate is not a finalist, then the ballot will be considered a vote for their second favorite option, and so on down the line.

Fair Share Voting works the same way, but is used when trying to allocate a certain quantity of resources to some set of proposed projects, each with its own proposed budget, whether large or small. Each person ranks their choices, but each ballot is represented by an equal share of resources. If 10 people are using FSV to allocate $10,000, then each ballot is essentially allocating $1000. A player who ranks a small project as their top vote will spend less of their initial voting power, measured in dollars, than someone who ranks at the top a bigger project, even when those two projects both get high rankings from other voters. And the more people that vote for an area, the less is spent by each person, since the cost required to fund a project is shared among the ballots that ranked it high enough. But if a voter’s top-ranked choice is not supported by others, then the tally will consider the next item on their ballot without them having wasted a vote on a loser. And even if they voted for a winner, their ballot can still fund items further down in ranking as long as there are still dollars left on the ballot. Majority support does not mean only majority funding. Most of the money goes to the areas the majority supported, but a large minority may use its share to fund other projects.

- John Templeton

Twin Oaks has used Fair Share Voting to vote on one-time project allocations in the past, but adapting FSV for ongoing budgets was a different beast altogether. So many of our programs would not make sense if their budgets happened to be voted way up one year and way down the next year. Take the dairy program, for example. We have so many cows, so many calves born over the course of the year, and expect a certain amount of milk from them. If the program gets cut one year in both our labor and money contribution, what will we do? Sell a bunch of the cows? Let the lactating cows go? What if it gets funded back to its usual amount the following year? Do we then buy ourselves a new herd? We needed a way to give the membership direct influence on these ongoing budgets while respecting the fact that they are ongoing and long-term. We decided that we, those administering the budgeting process, would set absolute minimums on all the community budgets. That way people would still rank all of the areas at the levels they wished them to be funded, but even an area that no one ranked would still get the minimum funding required to maintain the infrastructure of the community. Armed with this clever implementation of FSV, we were ready to reinvigorate community involvement in budgeting.

Of course, increasing participation is not as simple as saying “Hey! Check out this new voting system! It’s so cool, you won’t believe it!” Few members think about our budgets on a day-to-day basis, let alone the details of our budgeting process. For the first time in my life, I found myself employed in something of a PR campaign. I was making signs and posters, writing papers for our discussion board, and talking up this new process as much as I could. Many members were skeptical of such a shift, so I did what I could to assuage their fears (and did not completely succeed with some). Even more members, however, remained apathetic. Whether they played or not, they argued, the most important needs of Twin Oaks would be prioritized. We’re not going to let our buildings fall apart or see ourselves starve because too few people put a vote in for those areas. “I just don’t care,” I heard way too many times. “Whatever people decide will be fine.”

Treat people you do business with as if they were a part of your family. - Konosuke Matsushita

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1521938]

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-one-wallet-economy-of-konohana.html

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-7-guiding-principles-of-konosuke.html

The fact is, people do care. Spend a day on the farm listening to people and you will hear comments about our budgets all over the place. “I can’t believe we spend so much money to put berries and nuts in our granola.” “Why can’t I claim labor credits for the time it takes me to drive to the doctor?” “Damn, I’m glad we decided to buy those new solar panels.” Our annual budgeting process might not be on the mind of those making such utterances, but they are talking about the resource allocation determined by just that process.

The solution to getting people to turn up for this new voting game was simple: pizza. We turned the game into a series of pizza parties. Members would show up and we would have the electronic ballots pulled up on community computers and personal laptops. People would cast their vote while eating pizza, and we would be there to answer any questions about how to interface with the ballot and how the votes would be tallied. This strategy worked remarkably well. (Disturbingly well, I might think. Is pizza really a stronger motivator than our shared economy?) Those of us on the econ team were quite happy with ourselves, content with a job well done. That is, until we tallied the results.

It turns out that our implementation of FSV was setting ourselves up for disaster, a disaster which manifested. We were not realistic about setting minimum budgets. We looked at the results of some areas and said to ourselves “Sure, the community won’t fall apart, but are we really ready to operate with a food budget cut in half? We’re going to be eating a lot of rice and beans.” As much as we tried to educate all the players, it was hard for them to really see the impact of their voting choices. Many ballots used up their shares in the top few areas, leaving several areas severely bloated and many more unrealistically meager. The members also felt fatigued by the game, having to rank every single area. We have well over a hundred areas to budget for, ranging from food to bike maintenance to local relations. The budgeting team ended up taking the results and editing them heavily. We came up with a balanced budget that worked well enough, and when we shared it with the community no one balked. But the democratic ideal we were aiming for was missed by a long shot.

Our next several economic planning meetings felt pretty depressing. We had spent a good half of a year getting ourselves and the community amped up about a new revolutionary voting process that would change everything. And then it failed. We seriously considered scrapping FSV altogether and returning to the Trade-Off Game. We knew that the latter would never really provide the egalitarian input we strove for, but it was within the comfort zone of the community. Would they support yet another revamp?

Thankfully, our disappointment in our first attempt to use Fair Share Voting subsided. Rather than scrap it, we decided to tackle the problem of ongoing budgets from a different angle, while still preserving FSV. Rather than using voting to build each budget from scratch or an absolute minimum each year, we would propose budgets that reflect the status quo and use FSV to adjust them. If providing status quo services leaves us with extra cash or hours, we would vote on which areas to bump up. We could also use the adjustment when status quo would leave us lacking cash or hours, which might happen if our businesses do not do as well as previous years, baseline costs such as energy or insurance go up, or the working population of the community is expected to be low. FSV works much the same in this case, except that it is used to vote for cuts; areas that one would most be willing to see reduced are ranked at the top. Each player’s fair share is made up of “negative dollars,” and everyone is required to rank enough areas to ensure that the necessary cuts will be made.

The past three years, we have used this method of budgeting, which we call The Adjustment Game. We meet and set status quo budgets, decide whether we need add games or cut games, come up with a list of areas that could be supplemented or reduced, and present those areas to the community to vote on. We have continued at times to use pizza, cookies, and coffee to motivate people to play. But the game is becoming more routine now. We do not have to re-explain every bit and contrast it against the old system. The new system is the standard now. And it’s doing what we hoped for: it provides real opportunity for the membership to directly influence budgets in a fair way, is an easy enough ballot to understand that everyone can play, and creates community buy-in for our collective budgets.

However, I hesitate as I write such optimistic words, knowing that this will be read by the members of my community. The fact is, not everyone feels empowered by our budgeting process. Each year when new budgets are set, there are always some who denounce the results. It is tempting for me to wave off these concerns, chalking them up to the grumps who didn’t get their way. The long-term members who spent years doing it the old way just don’t want to adjust. The new area manager is simply annoyed that the other members are not excited about their project. Another member has personal animosity toward another and is using this opportunity to play out social drama.

But I have to take their concerns seriously. As much as we try to democratize the process, the fact is that those administering the game do have considerable sway. We have to ask ourselves questions such as, “How exactly do we determine what budgets represent the status quo?” “Which areas do we consider up for adjustments in years where we have to cut?” “Are we really making the game easy and accessible to all?” These are important questions that require close examination. We will continue to examine them and continue to tweak the game in years to come.

“The real secret of happiness is not what you give or what you receive, it’s what you share.” — Suzanne Woods Fisher

While each budgeting cycle brings in some grumbling, the nature of that grumbling is beginning to shift. It used to be complaints that the process did not make sense, that one’s vote did not count, that it was either too confusing or too simple to be useful. Now I hear complaining about the votes themselves. Some are shocked that we voted to bump up personal spending allowance over low-cost community services, such as shared musical instruments for community performances. Others retort that allowance has been too low for too long, and the music is just a pet project for some. Another chimes in that our food budget should take precedence over either concern if we really want to have a healthy and varied diet. This is what we want. Our budgets may be controversial, but they are engaging. The apathy is past. Our economic planning does matter and people know it. We might just be getting closer to that democratic ideal.

1. Definition from the Participatory Budgeting Project, www.participatorybudgeting.org.

2. For a detailed description of Fair Share Voting, please visit: bit.ly/2lnE3xw.

Adder Oaks has been a member of Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, Virginia for six years. Sharing his life and income with a hundred others, he works as an economic planner, tutor, and parent. Adder is co-host of the podcast Commune Dads.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.ic.org/participatory-budgeting-in-an-income-sharing-community/

“I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one’s life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important.” — David Rockefeller

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1387987/David-Rockefeller-I-am-convinced-that-material-things-can-contribute-a-lot-to-making-one]

Why Income-Sharing?

Bumper Sticker for an Income Sharing Community:
"My other car isn't mine either"

· Why Income-Sharing?

· Essay About Income Sharing

Businessman counting money, japanese yen banknotes, in front of laptop computer at working desk

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.freepik.com/premium-photo/businessman-counting-money-japanese-yen-banknotes-front-laptop-computer-working-desk_5887107.htm]

“The real secret of happiness is not what you give or what you receive, it’s what you share.” — Suzanne Woods Fisher

Treat people you do business with as if they were a part of your family. - Konosuke Matsushita

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-one-wallet-economy-of-konohana.html

It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. - Robert Kiyosaki

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/527418]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki

https://www.richdad.com/

It is a more economically just way to live in relationship with each other.

It avoids a luxury economy and many of the pitfalls/tragedies of the class system and of economic privilege. (although often not all of them, as income-sharing is complex and as subject to the pressures of the mainstream as anything that is outside of the dominant paradigm)

It frees up energy and resources in the group to pursue other activities, especially ones more closely tied to the values mission of the group. Since the group is collectively taking responsibility for covering the basics of life like rent, food, etc. this is much more efficient than each person in the group spending their life energy to provide those things for themselves. Therefore there is extra time, money, etc leftover for people in the group to spend on other activities that are important to them. For example, Twin Oaks sets aside a certain amount of money and labour hours each year devoted to members to do political activism—in this way, doing activism work counts as part of our weekly work quota. We've also sent people to seed-saving workshops, and given hours for a member to write a book about growing food.

By collectivizing their resources, the group can have access to more resouces than each individual could alone. For example, at Twin Oaks members have access to an outdoor sauna beside a pond, a fully- equipped woodworking workshop, free yoga classes in our home, etc. It is highly unlikely that any one of us would have these in our lives otherwise, but we do here because the group has had the resources and chosen to provide them for ourselves.

People have a higher level of interdependence and engagement in each others' lives—being financially connected results in connections of other types as well. For many people, this vastly improves their quality of life. Of course it brings up challenges as well, but again for many people this is well worth the trade-off, and to the extent that those challenges can be resolved with some level of skill, that can lead to a deepening of relationship and of the strength of the group structure.

Sharing income acts as a general purpose insurance policy. All insurance schemes are simply arrangements for pooling risk so that the individual members of the pool do not have to keep as large a reserve of cash on hand. Income sharing allows members to insulate themselves from financial risk (loss of health, loss of job, loss of property) with a much smaller per capita cash reserve than an independent person.

Sharing income frees up individuals to do less income-generating work than they would need to do if they were living independently as long as the group as a whole is doing enough income generating work. This is one way that utility maximization comes in by allowing more specialization (social efficiency) and personal flexibility. Examples: One member is a talented programmer (easily monetized skill set) but terrible cook another is a talented cook and handy person (less easily monetized skill set). The programmer can spend more time programming without worrying about keeping fed and keeping their domestic machinery functioning, the cook and handy person can spend time cooking and fixing things around the house without worrying about earning money. As far as personal flexibility goes, if your finances are not directly and solely dependent upon you earning money you can more easily take vacations or take time off when you need it as long as the group will carry you (and presumably as long as you are willing to do the same for others later).

Also, sometimes we broaden the definition—it's not just about income- sharing, but resource-sharing in general. We collectively own our vehicles, our houses, and over 500 acres of land—there are benefits to these that go beyond just having one bank account for many people.

Independence is very appealing but it comes with a high price tag.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.twinoaks.org/about-twinoaks-community/about-income-sharing#why-income-sharing

Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms: it is about understanding. - William Paul Thurston

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://mathequalslove.net/mathematics-is-not-about-numbers/]

The following article first appeared in the Communities Directory 4th Edition
published: year 2000, Fellowhip for Intentional Community

by Valerie Renwick

You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers. - John Forbes Nash, Jr.

PHOTO CAPTION: Hands holding leather wallet with Australian dollars 50 banknotes. Finance and payment concept

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.dreamstime.com/hands-holding-leather-wallet-australian-dollars-banknotes-finance-payment-concept-hands-holding-leather-wallet-image195414574]

Income-sharing communities have a long and rich history in the communities movement. From tribal life, to the early days of nuns and monks living together and sharing one home in a convent or monastery, to Oneida community in the 1800's (the original makers of today's Oneida silverware), our roots are deep.

Current income-sharing groups may vary widely in their lifestyles and values, but all share a central economic practice. Some groups live a spiritual life focusing on the word of God. Others define themselves as secular and focus on aspects of shared decision-making and ecological sustainability.

An income-sharing community is an economic unit unto itself. Income produced by members, either in a community-owned business or outside work, goes directly to the community. In exchange, the community provides for all the basic needs of its members, including housing, food, health care, etc. (Individual groups may define "basic" needs somewhat differently) There is also collective ownership of community resources, such as land, buildings, vehicles, etc. In many cases, neither money nor particular skills are required to join; simply a willingness to wholeheartedly join the community in it´s purpose is sufficient. This opens membership to a wide range of people.

One of the most attractive features of this type of living is the interdependence and the level of engagement we share with each other. There is a high level of involvement in each other's day-to-day lives. Our co-workers are our extended family, and we come to know each other holistically. Members also have access to a variety of resources they might not otherwise have. For example, the community may provide a professional-quality wood-working shop for member use, or an outdoor hot tub, or free yoga classes by a skilled member.

"Great! Sign me up!" you say. What else does it mean to live in this type of community? Living so interdependently often means members need to posses fairly well developed social skills. The ability to cooperate with others, to keep agreements, and to resolve difficult interpersonal situations can go a long way in dealing with the conflicts that naturally arise out of such close living. A flexible attitude can help members respond to living with less personal financial autonomy than they may be used to. Most people who live with their own income are used to making decisions themselves about what quality of housing to live in, what style of car to drive, what type of food to buy, and how much to spend on favorite leisure activities. It can be challenging to make the same decisions with a group of people whose tastes, values and class backgrounds may be radically different from one's own.

Income-sharing is definitely on one end of the spectrum of what it means to live communally. This type of community has never been a majority in the communities movement, and yet we have always been a strong presence. Much of this is due to our ability to focus resources, which in turn makes more time available to members who do networking and organizing.

Income-sharing is not for everyone, but those who choose to live this life find it a source of endless riches. It is a life full of unity and diversity, struggle and growth, and ultimately, deep community.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.twinoaks.org/about-twinoaks-community/about-income-sharing#essay-about-income-sharing

Buy 100 acres of land and grow food and family together

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=263108289813122&set=a.156963517094267]

https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2023/09/dawdi-haus-for-elderly-parents.html

The Pros and Cons of Living in an Income-Sharing Commune

Sep 22, 2016

In the heart of Washington, D.C., seven people live in a single home and pool all of their incomes (which range from upwards of $80,000 to a couple thousand) together to share. The residents of Compersia Commune embrace an ideology that values unpaid labor and disavows capitalism. In this tiny, socialized economy, the collective gets everything you have—which, for some, has been liberating. “We talk a lot and think a lot about trying to transform our relationship to money,” says GPaul, the commune’s founder. “We’re doing all of this work so that worrying about money [and] stressing about money is not so present in our lives.”

VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJqRnoOn6bs

RELATED LINKS:

www.participatorybudgeting.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

“Savings without a mission is garbage. Your money needs to work for you, not lie around you.” – Dave Ramsey

THE ENVELOPE BUDGETING METHOD

https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-envelope-budgeting-method.html

"Divide your fortune into four equal parts: stocks, real estate, bonds and gold coins. Be prepared to lose on one of them most of the time. During inflation, you will lose on bonds and win on gold and real-estate; during deflation, you lose on real estate and win on bonds, while your stocks will see you through both periods, though in a mixed fashion. Whenever performance differences cause a major imbalance, rebalance your fortunes back to the four equal parts.” – Jakob Fugger

CASH IS KING AND WHY THE WORLD WILL NOT GO CASHLESS

https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2023/06/cash-is-king-and-why-world-will-not-go.html

“A Family Bank is a strategy to keep wealth in your family and keep it growing… from generation to generation.”
– The Family Banking Book (forthcoming)

https://prosperitythinkers.com/infinite-banking/family-banking-101/]

One Bank for family banking

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.clayfin.com/blog/one-bank-for-your-family-banking/]

Kakeibo (家計簿) Links:

Making more money will not solve your problems if cash flow management is your problem. - Robert Kiyosaki

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/04/my-kakeibo-journal-part-1.html

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-one-wallet-economy-of-konohana.html

“He who laughs at one yen will weep at one yen.”

https://www.jrpass.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-japanese-yen-when-traveling

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/06/why-japan-still-uses-cash.html

It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. - Robert Kiyosaki

https://thesamuraiseven7.blogspot.com/2023/04/robert-kiyosaki-on-budgeting-your-income.html