three articles that illustrate unlimited wants and limited resources

Needs && Wants !!

Limited resources, unlimited wants and needs

One Sunday, our family was eating a "gourmet" lunch off the dollar menu at a fast-food restaurant. My daughter Jaley asked, "Can I have some chocolate ice cream?" I immediately answered, "No," and she complained. Those situations put us fathers in a bad position, where we're forced to choose between potentially spoiling them by giving in to their every request, or trying to figure out how to keep them from embarrassing us in public with screaming fits. For a while, my daughters really worked me over. The bigger concept I see at work in these situations is one that too few people today appreciate: scarcity. Scarcity describes the condition of limited resources, and unlimited wants and needs. My daughter Jaley only has a certain amount of money, but there are many toys she wants to buy-limited resources, but unlimited options. Her limited amount of resources forces her to stop and think about which items she wants more, and as she gets older my desire is that she learns to consider bigger priorities that are behind those desires. A big-picture definition of scarcity is quite different from the definition that we see in everyday life. From a larger -- or perhaps a more basic -- perspective, we are living in a condition of what you could call unlimited resources. Compared to the material things that many of our parents and grandparents had, we have more than enough for every need that we have and many things we want, although we often think about our "wants" as "needs." We should be viewing our needs as limited. What do we really need to exist in this world? Food, water and shelter (clothing and a roof over heads). If we understand that our needs are limited, we can be content with what we have!

Then there's the prevailing view of scarcity that we see (through advertising), which says that we never have enough to keep up with our ever-increasing wants and needs. We are encouraged to keep attaining more and more, but we're forced to make difficult decisions based on limited resources. Many people in our culture do not let limited funds stop them from spending anyway; they simply use a credit card and go into debt rather than having the self-discipline to wait to get what they want. Our children see evidence of this approach all around them, in their friends and in the media. We need to teach our children about scarcity. They need to learn to make good choices with the money they have, and they need to understand the dangers of not making good choices. How can we do that? Use an allowance as a teaching tool. Surveys show that only 27% of Americans give their kids allowance. Give your children an allowance so they can begin to make choices and learn about limited resources. For those grocery-store situations, my wife and I learned this approach to help them distinguish between their wants and needs. (Actually, it's an idea I learned recently, but my wife has been using it for quite a while.) We realized that kids will grasp scarcity much more easily when they're working with their own money.So, my wife and I discussed a different approach when our daughters ask us to buy things for them. We simply say, "Sure, you can have that ice cream. You can use your allowance to pay for it." What usually happens is that my daughters will think for just a few seconds before blurting out, "I guess I don't want any." They quickly figure out that the ice cream, candy, or new toy is a want and not a need. And the best part is that they make those decisions themselves, so there is usually no complaining.And even if they say, "Okay, I'll buy it with my allowance," I know that's only delaying the learning opportunity. In a few days or weeks, they won't have enough money for something else they want, and I'll just say, "Hmm. I guess you spent your money on other things." Over time, they learn that their money is limited, and that they need to make good choices about how they spend it.One side note as I have continued to use this practice with my daughters I have come to realize another benefit. If your children do not money to utilize and you are not willing to purchase whatever your child is desiring you need to be able to explain why. "Because I said so" is not an answer. Because is a term that means "for the reason following." If you say because you need to follow with some type of reason or you leave your child wondering. If you stop with because and you allow the child to fill in the blank and you may not like their answer. Imagine your child finishing your sentence this way. Daddy or mommy is not going to but that toy for me today because they do not love me, they do not like me or I am not good enough. The next time you purchase that toy for your child they think daddy or mommy bought this for me because this is how they show me they love me, they like me or I am good enough. None of us would desire to create any situation that would produce these thoughts from our children. Being prepared to respond to your children is incredibly important.

summary: I think this is good artical becuase it shows how you can teach your kids form wants and needs.

He found out if you tell your kids buy it your self the think about it "do i really need this" this is because

they dont want to spend there money , the want to keep there money. I think this is so good to teach them from needs and wants , an every cleaver.

So you want to become wealthy? While there is no single road to getting there, it's a sure bet that one principle is in place for those who keep their wealth over a lifetime. Live beneath your means. Spend less than you make. Don't spend more than you can afford. It doesn't come any simpler than this. If you want to create wealth, you have to learn to do this. It doesn't matter if you make $10,000 a year or $1 million, if you don't learn how to master the step of spending less than you earn, you'll never create lasting wealth.

While the concept is simple, chances are you are not following it. In all likelihood, you are living paycheck to paycheck, treading water. No matter how hard you try, you never seem to get ahead. Even when the raises come, the money still disappears just as fast. If this sounds like your situation, you probably have not mastered the difference between needs and wants.

First, it's important to realize that wants and needs are not the same. When you read that sentence, you probably said to yourself, "Of course, everyone knows that." Again, while everyone may know this intellectually, it is a good bet that you aren't completely honest with yourself when it comes to the things you purchase.

How many times have you heard (or for that matter said yourself) "I absolutely need (fill in the blank)" when in reality the meaning was "I really want (fill in the blank)?" I can't live without those shoes...I will die if I can't have that ring...I simply have to have that car...the list can go on and on. Please don't get me wrong. These are phrases that we all use. That is why it's important to step back and remember that wants and needs are not the same.

It's important at this point to make clear that taking the time to critically look at your current lifestyle and what are the true needs versus those things that are convenient wants will go a long way in saving you money and enabling you to spend less than you make. Let's take an example of your TV. Is your TV a need or a want? Although I can hear the arguments already rationalizing why a TV is a necessary part of your life, the truth is that it is more than likely a want. In most cases, it is probably an affordable want (The exception may be if you decided you had to have that 50 inch state of the art plasma television with the price tag of a small car). The question is whether the digital cable TV, 6 premium channels, satellite dish, the on demand movies, the DVD player with movie selection, etc are all also affordable wants?

Here is a list. Take a few moments to jot down what is a need and what is a want.

1.shoes

2.designer suit

3.water

4.large apartment

5.bed

6.ice-cream

7.lottery tickets

8.car

9.entertainment center

10.club membership

11.lunch

12.concert tickets

13.trip to Hawaii

14.medicine

15.necklace

16.computer

17.daily espresso

18.cellular phone

19.golf clubs

20.furnishings

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are not completely black and white. What may be a want for one person may be a necessity for another person. For example, let's take a look at a computer. If you make your livelihood on the computer, then a computer is a necessity for you. If you only use a computer to play the latest online games, then it isn't. Knowing this, we can still make some pretty good guesses as to what are wants and what are needs from the above list for most people. Shoes (and clothing in general), water, bed, car, lunch, medicine and furnishings are good bets to be needs. Now that doesn't mean that the latest model, 4 wheel drive sport utility vehicle with all the extras counts as a need for most people, but basic transportation to make a living does.

A large apartment, computer and cellular phone may or may not qualify as a need depending on your particular circumstances while a designer suit, ice-cream, lottery tickets, entertainment center, club membership, concert tickets, trip to Hawaii, necklace, daily espresso and golf clubs all probably fall into the want section.

If you can take the time to start being honest with yourself, you will find that a lot of the things which you assumed were an absolute necessity until now are in reality nothing more than wants. Once you distinguish between the two and look at these issues objectively, you have placed yourself in the position to live within your means by simply asking yourself whether or not an item or service you are about to purchase is a need or merely a want.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/16743

summary: This artical is pretty good , beacuse it shows you want are wants and what are needs , it gives you a list of needs and wants. This artical showed me some more needs i didint even think of. It says if you want to be more wealthy , you would need to master the differance between needs an wants.

Need

want want want want want want want

artical 3

By:Michael | July 1, 2004

Feast your eyes upon this new toy: the Nikon D70. Boy, do I want it.

It just so happens that my favorite hobby (aside from writing for this site, I guess) is digital photography. My favorite hobby used to be just "photography," which I undertook with a sturdy little Pentax SLR purchased on eBay (complete with hard leather case and several telephoto lenses) at a very reasonable price. But then one day The Wife and I got religion, and the next thing you know, we're at Circuit City deciding just how we want to Go Digital. We unloaded a hefty chunk o' change on an Olympus C-2040 Zoom, as it turned out. And all of a sudden the word "digital" infiltrated (and subsequently commandeered) my favorite pastime, just as it has done in practically every other corner of modern life.

I can state unequivocally that our Olympus has taken wonderful photos since Day One. And it still does. But it is closer to a point-and-shoot than it is to a true, expandable SLR. This means you're pretty limited in a lot of important areas, such as add-on lenses and the zooming capabilities available to you.

On the other hand, where limits are concerned, the Nikon D70 is chained down by a whole lot of nothing. This camera will do everything except bake a good lasagna.

As of this writing, the D70 hasn't been on the market very long. But ever since I read my first review of it (probably in some PC magazine), I've been drooling like a little kid. For the last couple of months the D70 has been commonplace in Sunday-paper circular ads. For me, this has been nothing short of torture. At today's prices, if you buy just the body, and you'll spend about $1,000. Buy the body and the standard Nikkor lens, and you'll spend $1,300. This is most certainly not pocket change, and it most certainly is more cash than I have available — or, at least, more than I have that isn't already earmarked for other purposes. (My household Freedom Account has a subaccount for "Home Electronics," but it was intended more for semi-emergencies, like when the phone or TV or VCR blows up.)

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the gods love to zoom in on your weaknesses — and then sling lightning bolts at them. It's not enough that I have to have this beautiful camera hoisted in front of my covetous eyes in every Sunday paper, beckoning to me with photographic technologies heretofore unimagined. Always attached, of course, is The Lowest Price Anywhere. And it is not enough that I have to read glowing review after glowing review in every personal-computer magazine that hits my mailbox. No, the gods must tempt me even further. Because my younger sister, a budding photographer herself, just last week sold her barely-used motorcycle, the proceeds of which purchased . . .

(surprise surprise)

. . . a Nikon D70.

I got to see — no, I got to hold — the camera this past Friday. Presented with the D70 in real life, up close and personal, I was kid-giddy. Even The Wife, ever suspicious, noted the familiar buying gleam in my eyes. Folks, this camera is golden — every bit as sweet, photographically-speaking, as I had imagined. Super-sturdy case and construction. More features than I could cycle through before dinner. Endless array of lenses available. Oh, and the batch of my sister's recent D70-captured pics? Glad you asked. Well, they emanated colors so vivid that the waters, mountains, and skies might as well have been conjured by Pixar.

So how does all this relate to personal finance? Simple: Matters like this are where the rubber meets the road. Either I have developed the ability to differentiate between needs and wants, or I haven't. Either I have developed the discipline to save up money for the purchase of big items (Cameras From Heaven, for example), or I will be weak and do the weak thing that most folks do and I will head out and buy it tomorrow and probably use some sort of 12-months-no-interest setup to get the thing into my gotta-have-it-and-gotta-have-it-right-now hands.

Truly, I want to do the right thing, which in this case would be to save up some money each month toward this big-ticket purchase. (Assuming, of course, that The Wife and I decide it is a worthy luxury purchase at all.) But that would mean waiting.

And dangit, waiting is hard.

AT LEAST I HAVE COMPANY

We've all been through this: We see shiny fancy things we really, really want. We know, usually, that these shiny fancy things don't fit the jigsaw puzzle of our current finances. Thus, we have to fight like heck to fend off the urge to Just Buy It. (Well, a few of us fight like heck. Others unholster their credit cards so fast it'd make Doc Holliday jealous.) We're mortals, after all. Consumer culture is atom-powered, bright and beguiling, all-knowing and all-seeing. Advertisers and retailers have a big head start on us; they know what makes us tick, tock, borrow, and buy. In their really auspicious moments, they can make some of us buy with unbridled abandon.

But this is where goals come in. The Big Overriding Goal always floating over my head is financial security, the offshoots of that being decreased household stress and increased financial choices. If I am going to achieve these things, I have to be bigger than the retailing and advertising gurus. And, most difficult of all, I have to be bigger than my emotions. I must be disciplined. I must maintain control.

So let's assume we decide the D70 makes for a worthy purchase. Slapping it on a credit card or some other sort of payment plan is right out. That would be a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I'm already trying to make up for all of my previous stupid stupid things. So at this point, I can either:

(1) save money on a monthly basis, say, $150 per month, and buy the camera in nine months; or

(2) put the camera off even longer, instead diverting that $150/month toward my debts (if I can afford to put it toward a camera, I can afford to put it toward my debts), thus becoming debt-free (except for the mortgage) thirteen hundred dollars sooner.

I would rate both of these as fiscally-responsible decisions. But which sounds more beneficial in the long term? And which one has a direct beneficial impact on the timeline to my main goal?

Dangit again. I'm not getting any closer to my D70, am I?

WHAT WINNERS DO

As the saying goes, "Winners do what losers don't want to do." In this case, losers don't want to wait. They don't want to plan. They don't want to "do without," at least not in the name of becoming debt-free. There is nothing overtly tangible or immediately gratifying in becoming debt-free; there is definately something tangible and immediately gratifying in picking up a Nikon D70 or some such whiz-bang product. Thus, where bigtime losers would opt for the quick 'n' easy credit-card purchase of an item, the more disciplined among us might elect to save over time toward the purchase. But even those who opt for this program can be, in a sense, still losers, depending on the state of their finances at the time.

It's going to be tough, but it appears that the focus I need to regain has nothing to do with a camera. Rather, there is something I want even more than a Nikon D70, and that is NO DEBT.

I have worked and studied and planned and saved too much to get to this point and then retreat. There is no sense taking a big backward step now, if it can be avoided. And this time, it can.

I can be disciplined. I can be patient. I can have whatever Nikon I want — after I have eliminated my debt.

summary:This artical is a good one because it tells you how people these days spend there money on needs and wants , and why they do it. he teels how he wanted this new camera , and he got it now he is behind bills and stuff . you can learn alot from him.

By: jeffrey Strain

Artical 2

Summary:

Artical 1

By:Shane P Barkley

When:June 21st, 2010 06:29 PM