ECONOMICS 101: Do not spend what you do not have. Live within your means. I believe in living beneath my means. That means budget your money and save money from each paycheck. The problem is, many in America do not understand delayed gratification. They want something and they want it now! It is refreshing to save for something and have the money when the time comes to buy it. Washington, D.C. has failed Economics 101. COLLEGE LOANS: College students signed a Promissory Note when they got the loans. Wonder what the root word of Promissory is, and what does it mean? No student loan forgiveness. They owe it, they should pay it. The government should NOT do a bail out. FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE (and Biden just said today free 4-year college):. How utterly stupid! People only appreciate something if they have something in it. If college is free (someone has to pay) for all, what incentive is there to get up, go to class, study, work hard and eventually graduate. None at all. That just makes it very easy for someone to start college, do poorly, not attend classes, and then drop out. How does that benefit society? THE NATIONAL DEBT is somewhere north of $20 trillion. People do not really understand a trillion. If you pay back a million dollars at $1 a second, that would take a little less than 12 days. To pay back a billion dollars at $1 a second will take 32 years. To pay back a trillion dollars at $1 a second will take 32,000 years. The D.C. establishment likes to throw around big numbers. We as a nation are so far in debt I doubt we will ever get it paid off. Of course, the president and others would say I don’t really understand the economics of the situation. Yes, I do. If I used the same strategy with my personal finances, I would not last long. The same philosophy should apply in Congress. Quit spending! I reject all the big spending plans Biden is proposing now. He likes to say “invest” in this or that. Invest means spend. Just say NO to big spending. We do not need it. We cannot spend our way into prosperity. Big government is the problem, not the solution. Robert Sadler Marietta Today's breaking news and more in your inbox