***Warning - This is my first official rant and it IS a touchy subject. Sorry if you don't like it, but hey, nobody is forcing you to read this blog.
December* is the time of year where we overeat and overspend. I know (thanks to many years of Weight Watcher meetings) that the average person gains 10 pounds during December (and I'm pretty darn close to the "average" person this year) but I have no idea how much the average person overspends. I'd like to think $100 or so per family, but if I'm being real I'd bet most families overspend by more than $500 dollars...and that's just my guess.
* I wrote this post in December and I thought and prayed a lot about it before I actually posted it.
I'm anal about our family's money. This is not to say I'm great or even better than anybody else but it to explain where I'm coming from. I do not like my budget to get out of "whack." I save money for Christmas all year long, I save a little money each month for our bi-annual car insurance payment, I save $50 a month so Tony can play baseball each spring. I am not NORMAL and I know that. I cannot imagine getting our car insurance bill and having to come up with the $700 payment if I hadn't been saving all year long. That would stress me out. I can't ""roll like that. When Tony and I worked in a restaurant we could, somewhat, "roll like that" because we could pick up extra shifts or work a little harder or stay a little later and make a little extra money, but now we both have set salaries so it wouldn't work for our family. I know how much money we make every month (almost down to the penny), so I also know how much we can spend each month. I know my financial limits. Sometimes I wish I was this anal about my food limits...then maybe I wouldn't have $40 budgeted each month for Weight Watchers.
I am, by no means, perfect with our family's money. I do, every once in a while, utilize the overdraft protection our checking account offers, I have, on occasion, carried a balance on our credit card bill and some months we (mostly because I'm lazy) eat out more than we should and I overspend our "eating out" montly budget. One time I even had a student loan sent to a "pre-collections" company because I had completely forgotten about the loan and had never made a payment on it (I was supposed to set up a payment plan when I stopped going to school, but I never did). I think the thing I do differently than some other people is I look at the problem, accept responsibility for it and figure out how I can fix it. I don't live with the financial problem, I am not in denial about it, I change it and make it better. Even if it takes a long time...and sometimes it does.
When did it become "ok" in our society to be in debt up to our eyeballs (and I'm not talking mortgages, school loans and car payments here)? When did people stop being ashamed when credit companies called them to collect money? When did overdraft protection become a "savings" account? When did not paying your mortgage become an option? Why do people use credit cards like they are cash? Why are people not proud to live within their means? Proud of what they are able to obtain, proud of the money they have earned and proud to use it responsibly without going into debt! And I'm not talking about people who have had a life changing circumstance (job loss, illness, death in the family, etc.) that has affected their finances, I'm talking about people who life outside their means on a daily basis and aren't doing anything to fix it. People who continually spend more money than they make because they want things they cannot afford.
I know there are many items
I'd Tony would like to have and I'd love to buy them for him, but the budget doesn't allow for that. I'd love to take our kids to the movies or to the snow but I can look at our budget and see that we don't have the extra $50 or $100 dollars. So while sometimes I'm sad that our children might be missing out on things, I pray that my choices and actions are speaking volumes in financial responsibility. And I am proud of that! This is not to say we don't do ANYTHING fun, because we definitely do. My children have probably been on more vacations than most children their ages, we've gotten an annual pass to the local zoo the past two years and we are getting a 2010 annual pass to the local Childrens Discovery Museum, but we purposely save money each month for things we like/want to do.
I want to live a completely debt free life because I don't like debt. This is not a reality for our family right now because we have a house payment and student loans that we are paying off monthly, but one day, before I die, I'd like to be completely debt free. I'm not saying that we won't have credit cards, because we probably always will, we will just continue to pay them off monthly. Right now we have a Royal Caribbean credit card that we use for almost everything. We pay it off monthly and it earns us cruise dollars :-). I like having a credit card in case of a big emergency or in case someplace doesn't take cash (I know, hard to believe, but it is beginning to happen at different places). I like the convenience of a credit card, but I think the convenience has gotten a lot of people in to trouble.
Sometimes I think I'd like to be a financial counselor and I think I would be good at it. It would be fun to take control of somebody else's money, tell them how to spend it, how to save it and how to get themselves out of debt. I think I would love many aspects of this job. I love the idea of helping people with their debt, teaching them how to stay out of debt and giving them back control of their money knowing they have learned how to spend it without going into debt again. I would love seeing people succeed with their money. I assume most people who are in debt probably don't really want to live their life that way. Maybe they do not know how to make the changes they want/need to make to get out of debt or maybe they feel like they can't escape because their debt is so out of control. They may be too afraid or embarassed or scared to ask for help or maybe it is easier to live with the debt than to make the changes that are necessary to fix it.
My real question is - Why are so many people willing to live their life in substantial debt and what can we, as a society, do to fix the problem? And I'm not seeking an answer from anybody, I'm just pondering. Just like I often ponder why I'm willing to make some of the dumb decisions that I make
over and over and over again. I am good with my money, but I am bad about how much time I spend on the computer, how much time I sit in front of the television, how much I overeat, how many times I yell at my children or disrespect my husband. I often have a lack of self control, it's just not in regards to my finances.
I'm not saying I want to fix the world's financial problems, but I do think that if each person took responsibility for their finances and tried to make a small change for the better then our children will have a better financial foundation to stand upon.
