Hi Everyone,

A couple of weeks ago my Mom shared this wonderful recipe for spinach salad. Spinach, pineapple, strawberries, cranberries, cashews, pasta, what a wonderful combination. And very simple to make. We eat it once a week at our house. The original recipe called for dressing the salad with a delightful yogurt based orange-poppy seed dressing. But we set the dressing on the side and let each person decide how much they would like to use.

This salad and the dressing is so much like personal finance. Like the dressing at the Clark house each of us gets the opportunity to choose how much savings we do and how much debt we pile up. The salad tastes yummy with or without the dressing. It’s not the same with savings and debt. No matter how you slice it if you’ve got a savings plan going and are consistently contributing to it every month that’s going to a winner. Debt is another story. Do you pay off the credit cards you have every month or is there a balance that gets left unpaid? If there’s a balance and it’s not at least declining every month it means that you’re not living below your means. There’s nothing yummy about that.

I know that some of you will be asking me for the recipe to this wonderful salad. I’m ahead of you this time. CLICK HERE to go to “The Corner” blog on our website and you’ll see the SALAD RECIPE.