Page 16 RAIN The Seven Laws of Money The Seven ,Laws ofMoney, Michael Phillips, Word Wheel, . 1974, $3.95.. • • Word Wheel·· 540 Santa Cruz Ave. Menlo Park, CA 9402 5 By delving into the murky depths of how our beliefs and dealings with money have dominated and distorted our lives, The Seven Laws ofMoney has helped start the coUapse of one of our biggest paper tigers. The book is filled with wisdom for understanding and using money and about living in the real world, of which money is a mere shadow. The seven laws may sound somewhat flip and irrelevant at first, but keep coming to mind just as our experiences show us what they mean. • Do It! Money Will Come When You Are Do'ing th_e Right Thing • Money Has Its Own Rules: Records, Budgets, Saving, Borrowing • Money Is a Dream: A Fantasy as,Alluring as the Pied 'Piper • Money Is a Nightmare: In Jail, Robbery, Fear of ,- Poverty • You Can Never Really Give Money Away • You Can Never Really Receive Money as a Gift • There Are Worlds Without Money Its fragments probe and move around and through the realities beneath money like Zen koans. Anecdotes, poems, commen- • taries, how-to information, and accounting of personal experiences all draw to the surface of our consciousnesfs a·new awareness of ourselves and how we deal with each other. Seven Laws has been a seed of the new briarpatch economics emerging from the cracks of our society. More on that in a later issue. "When you open a checking account, open it with the largest amount of money you possibly can. I'm not kidding! Even if the average balance in your account is.only going to be $Sp, try to borrow a friend's $10,000 (home down payment)J or one day so you can use it to open,your account. You dpn't have t6 go that far, but anything over a cquple of thousand dollars looks good. You can withdraw most of the mone.i,a few days after•the account is opened.' Really! The reason for this is that the bank records your opening balance on your signature card (and often ~n other places, too), believing that it is representative of your financial status. I did a study when I was a banker and found absolutely no correlation between opening balances and th1e kind of bal~nces that ,appeared later on in. the same account. It's such a strong tra-. dition to do it this way (at least a hundred years old) that bankers still judge people by their opening balance. Try it; the branch manager w.ill smile on yqu forever more. "It may seem middle-class to have credit, but if you have it you need less money. 'Credit' is the ability to borrow, and if your credit is good you don't need savings-or at least you need le s savings. Savings are generally for emerg·encies, but if you have credit you can use it in an emergency instead of your savings, and.pay it back later. For example, if you're busted in Marrakech and a $500 bribe will get you out, you can get an-"advance" on your American Express card. "All it takes to establish credit is a little time and a little stability. You need one job, one address, a phone and a checking account for one year. Having decided to establish a good credit rating and already having a job and an address, wait four months and then apply for a gasoline credit card. Next apply for credit at a luxury store (they give credit very readily because their' losses on credit are covered by the high mark-up on their merchandise). After six months•apply at Sears or Macy's or,a similar middle-price-range nation.al store. Thei~ credit is the very hardest to get and can really get you the rest. Us.e these credit ac~ounts once .or twice and pay promptly. After from seven to nine months you can apply for Master Charge or Bankamericard (not both at the same time), When you get them your credit is really established (after a few months, you can ask by letter to have your credit card borrowing amount raised).,Now you are free-yo1:1 can, get a new job as often as you wish and move as often as you feel like it; your credit is established. Just remember to pay your accounts promptly, and never have a run-in with a jewelry store! Most bad credit ratings are put in the credit rating computers by jewelry stores-the $300-diamondstudded-watch-type places. "Credit is dependent mostly on stability. Your 'Stability is measmed by the time you stay with a job (they check), the time you lfave lived at your present and previous residence, whether or not you have a phone (bad debrors usually avoid having their own phone), and by your checking account. Be sure not to overdraw your checking account more than once or twice a year; sometimes your bank may'keep track of it, and sometimes the word gets around to other banks. "Lastly, if you need a loan, shop around. Tbe bigger the loan, the more important this i,s. Banks are not monolithic;, each branch is different. Some .have loan officers or managers who are liberal, smart and understanding; others have insensitive bores who retired at age twenty-four when they joined the ba~k. Ask around. If you need a loan for a specialized purpose-say an organic restaurant or to import merchandise from Zanzibar-finq someorie who got a similar loan and go to.their lender. Specialized knowledge and good experience on past loans are what encourage a lender to make additional loans in esoteric areas." (pp. 55-5 6) "There is no tipping in Japan. It made me ~ealize what tips mean. We tell ourselves that tips are rewards for doing a good jo\:;>, a reward-punishment thing. Then why do we only· have tips in job categories where people are expected to be servile-say taxi drivers and waiters, as compared to plumbers or doctor~? It's because this is a vestige of slavery experie'nces and of our contempt for certain ways of earning a living, not reward-punishment." (p. 182) •
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