There is one very prominent feature in our modern world, and no, I'm not talking about the preponderance of hideous tattoos. Rather, I refer to the common occurrence of addictions.
It seems there are addictions to most anything and everything, nowadays. There are the age old famous ones: alcohol and drugs. And some almost-as-old ones: gambling and tobacco. But we've got all sorts of new varieties, too, such as pornography, video games, television, sports, and movies.
One, however, is particularly American in character, and has reached not only into most households, but all the way up into the Whitehouse-hold. This particular addiction is a "credit addiction."
Nancy Pearcy once said, "We have to remember that morality is always derivative – it stems from one's worldview." It seems that somewhere along the line, including the egghead super-geek economists in Washington, we got way off track onto an incorrect world view. From such a vaunted and jaundiced perspective, people came to believe that debt was good, that credit was normal, and that being in the red was a sign that you weren't dead. But this "buy it before you can afford it" world view is wrong.
Sad.
Credit cards and sub-prime mortgages, car payments and government-sponsored student loans, interest free terms and no-money-down real estate, lines of credit and second mortgages, revolving credit and margin investing, and on and on and on. Give it all to us, and we'll still sleep soundly at night. No problem. Just don't take the credit punch bowl away, because we can't go very long between gulps.
Where did so many Americans get the idea that buying something they don't really need with money they don't have is okay to do? How do they justify it? What kind of a materialistic, instant-gratification world view is this?
Here's a secret to financial security: If you don't have the money to buy it, you can't afford it.
Here's how bad it has gotten. We Americans live in the most prosperous land the world has ever seen. The average "broke" American is by far wealthier than almost all the upper middle class from the rest of the world. We live in more square feet, eat more meat, have more devices of comfort, more electronic entertainments, and overall just more "stuff" than anybody else in the world. YET, we are massively in debt. There are now over 20 million Americans who are "upside down" in their home mortgages! The average total outstanding credit card balance for an American family is upwards of $8,000!
The land of the FEE and the home of the KNAVE.
We have been sold an incorrect world view by banks and the credit industry that make millions off the indebtedness of average people. Easy credit, easy money, and easy living offered at bargain rates by pinstripe panhandlers with fat bonuses and government connections, who place an ever-tightening noose around our unsuspecting necks. The government blesses it, Wall Street packages it, the media touts it, and the sheeple buy it.
Meantime, countries like China have effectively supplied our stupidity by working for peanuts, saving 25% of what they make, and living in shacks, receiving trillions of our dollars that they could choose to dump on the open market at any time.
It's embarrassing.
I know, I know, you're a victim. I might as well get that out of the way right now, because every time I ever write anything that even approaches the hard-cold truth, someone gets offended and emails me with a "How dare you" letter. (Whoever said "Truth is sweet to the ears" has never heard much of it!) I understand that tragedies happen. I understand illness and accidents and deaths. But those are a small, tiny, little, wee-bitty fraction of the reasons for the overall, systemic amount of debt out there in our land. Our credit malaise isn't the result of a few tragedies within our system, but rather a systematic amount of tragedies in our spending behavior.
You don't need that new car, or that new flat-screen TV, or the Starbuck's coffee, or that dinner out, or that i-phone, or that XBOX, or those designer clothes, or those manicured nails, or . . . or . . . or . . . unless, that is, you can afford them! And you'll know, straight up, if you can afford them by checking your savings and seeing if you've got way more than the purchase price available in there. If not, then, NOPE, you can't afford it.
Pretty simple.
Unless, that is, you've bought into the world view of credit addiction.
Which leads us to our mighty government. Perhaps here we find a clue to the answer to my question concerning exactly where Americans got the idea that it is okay to spend like a bunch of blind machine-gunners trying to empty their ammunition boxes as fast as possible. You see, our government has somehow convinced the American people that spending more than one has is normal, fiscally responsible, and monetarily astute. After all, that's exactly how Uncle Sam does it. Shouldn't it work the same way for the average household?
No. It shouldn't, and it doesn't.
And, oh yeah, it doesn't work that way for Uncle Sam, either.
Just as millions of people are getting hit with the results of credit addiction, soon, the United States government will, too. Only there's no mom and dad with a basement for Uncle Sam to move back into when he loses his house. There's only China, and they look like they've heard just about enough out of our public officials.
Break the cycle. Kill the addiction. Sell the junk. Don't buy until you can afford it, and even then, wait 24 hours before making the purchase just to be sure.
Oh yeah, and any chance you get to talk to a public official, you might want to check him or her into the nearest twelve-step program.
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