Finances, Life and Frustration

So, a lot of things are interesting to me about people - whether it is people who save up money for unnecessary things while they are paying monthly notes on their “gap” auto insurance, people who spend/save up an un-Godly amount of money on their hobby(ies) while they are currently paying only minimum payments on a credit card/student loan or any other debt they may owe, or even people who talk out one side of their face about what they want in life (say, down the road in the next 5-10 years) yet, the way they live and spend their money reflects the complete opposite of what they say.

I, for one, am like any other human being on this earth. When I have an extra 20 bucks, you better bet your bottom I’m just as eager to head to the make-up isle at Walgreens to buy every shade of eye shadow they have on display, just so it can all sit in my make-up bag and never get used. There is just something about having that little extra unplanned money on-hand; your psyche automatically gives you a running list of nonsense things you do not need, and it says you have to purchase them at that very moment. Most people are not disciplined enough to act like they would if they never had received the extra money at all. And by doing that, I mean do any of the following: put the extra money away in your savings account, pay that much more on your credit card bill this month, pay that much more on your house note, or help eliminate one of your many monthly bills.

I struggled with this for sooooo long. The many phone calls to mom - “Gah, I just don’t know where my money is going. I thought I had my credit card paid off. And my student loan is only a couple hundred dollars less than it was when I first started paying, and I’ve been paying for over a YEAR!” I remember the talk, and I will never forget the disappointment that came with “Welcome to adulthood.”

Now - let me elaborate on and explain my intro-sentence. People have bills; there are very few people in this world who work everything out to a tee in order to be dang-near debt-free. What bothers me is the fact that there are grown people out there who have the mind-set of (and actually believe they aren’t losing money) “My minimum balance is only $25…so that’s all I pay each month.”  Don’t get me wrong, I myself have had to back down to paying only the minimum balance on a bill before - quite a few times. But it wasn’t while I was putting my extra money aside for frivolous things I didn’t need. And it wasn’t while I was creating more debt for myself because of something I ‘wanted’ and could live without.  Sometimes you have to back down to minimum payments - I get it. But the reason people think that is all they have to pay with no penalty, just confuses the crap out of me.



Now, if you are married, and you and your spouse choose to live and spend the way you do, then more power to you. But I’ll always remember one thing my parents told me – as long as you are single and looking for a soul mate to spend the rest of your life with, make sure what’s on your checklist for him, are things you can also live up to. Financial smarts and stability is on my list, and I have to treat things as if that’s on his list too. So by saying that, I understand a statement will tell me the minimum is all I’m required to pay, but I now read my statements as “minimum balance is $25 because we want to receive triple the amount of the full bill out of you.” I understand what an extra $20 or $30 a month on a 4-5% interest loan will do, how many years it will cut off the back and how much interest it is saving me in the long run. And when I make my payments with my extra included, I could think “Man, I sure could take that $20 or $30 and go buy me something.” Instead, I think of my future and the person I will be with - I think of how I will offer more for them than the obligation of taking on my unnecessary debt just because I wanted to spend my money stupidly and in-the-moment. I have found that I’m one of very few who think about someone else other myself; let alone the future with them in it.

This takes me back again, to putting needs before wants. There are a lot of people in this world who put their wants ahead of their needs, even ahead of others’ needs. And most of those people know that when or if times get tough, they can fall back on someone else. And that’s good to have. But it’s also better to think with your own brain and do everything you can to take care of your own self. No one owes you anything - especially if you aren’t cutting just a few corners to eliminate a little of the struggle that someone else may have to take on one day at your expense.



...free of my debt.

I guess this is just another opportunity for me to thank my parents for what they did. You may not be perfect, and neither am I; but I sure am glad I was raised the way I was. The way this world is headed, in my opinion, it is blatantly obvious that the major problems today are due to what is lacking in the home.

"The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage,
but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty."

Proverbs 21:5