Thursday, August 2, 2007

Pause for Reflection; Topic: Debt

[ed. note: I have written about this before, so the following will just be a synopsis.]

It was the mid-80s. I was entering my junior year in college when my father went bankrupt. Up until then (and, indeed, even today), I referred to my ATM card as my "Magic Money Card," because there was always money there (I was a ghost employee at my father's firm, making $8.00/hour, deposited--by magic--on a weekly basis). Even before that, I carried a significant amount of debt (having to do with business machinations on my father's end--a story in itself; I myself was rarely profligate with finances, a skinflint even then; did I mention that in high school I used to forego lunch to save the 75 cents my mother gave me every day?).

My college roommate still recalls the late-night phone calls from debt collectors: a literal wake-up call! Even post-graduation, living more or less for free on floors and in basements (to include a coal cellar--can you say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?), it took some doing to reduce my debts. I entered the military with $13,000 to go (sounds so small these days, but it was big back then!) and the motto "Debt Free in '93." Goal achieved, and the rest is history. In the grad skool round, I managed to MAKE money while studying. Those were the days...

In any case: here is a more extreme example, and food for thought (and reflection) on your own situation. How bad off are YOU? And, no matter how bad, you can still fix it. As my father used to say when things went wrong (or broke or were destroyed) "Anything can be fixed." What he meant was "any thing" (i.e., humans--especially human hearts--are more difficult/costly to mend/replace than situations or "stuff").

So, read on from the blog Make Love, Not Debt about one member of the pair's wicked, horrific spending addiction (and it's metamorphosis) here.

Six more stories about extreme savings.

Related topic: Greed, or Bad People Acting Badly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your dad reminds me alot of friend mine's dad and not too disimilar to Richard Kyosaki....