Credit Card Debth

Credit Card Debth

I put on my 200$ Diesel shirt, 300$ True Religion Jeans, 175$ bright green Nike shoes, and my 65$ matching DC hat. Don’t judge me, I’m going out – it is all necessary. I splash on my Lacoste Cologne, grab a few dubs (twenty dollar bills) and make sure I have my credit cards – noice, time to go pick up some chicks at the “Thirsty Turtle.” We waltz in, of course we look the freshest, we find a group of girls – they totally dig us. “Line up the Jager bombs” I say, “ten of them.” “Eighty five dollars,” he responds. Shit… That’s when my conscience attempts to stop me, “Bro tell him that is too much, no way.” I can’t do that, I would look like an idiot, so instead of listening to my conscience, I slide into my back pocket and pull out the thing that never runs out of money, the credit card – Shizzam! “Open a tab he says?”

The funniest thing about this scenario is that we all know it is wrong, yet we all continue to repeat this type of incident, over and over and over and over and….over. Our generation has little to no respect for the idea of cost or money, we are spenders. The clothing that we glorify costs hundreds of dollars per PIECE of clothing, for what we spend on a pair of jeans and shirt we could buy an expensive suit from Macys – something just isn’t right. Yes I admit I am guilty of this too, I spend too much as well, we all do. We spend money on so many things, food, alcohol, clothes, video games, cars, car parts, car speakers, the list goes on. Everything is incredibly expensive and since no one is spending money except for our age demographic – we are targeted, and we are losing. We are all guilty of this one as well – Log into the online banking, head to checking balance, Holy Hell WTF OMG, where did my money go? I spent that much? When? Oh… on that and that and that one thing and that dinner and at the bar and this and that. Yeah, you guys all know what I am talking about – the dreaded “check the balance the night after the bar” kind of morning.

About a year ago I decided to look into a documentary about credit cards – “Maxed Out” (http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/). The movie takes you on a journey through the battered and ruined lives of those losing the battle against credit card debt. You would not believe how many people are completely overwhelmed with debt, enough to literally destroy their families and ruin their lives. They lose their homes, their cars, go into depression and more – it is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Then you end up learning about college students that were completely unaware of the debt they were getting themselves into – a few of them ending up committing suicide. As bad as I feel for these kids, everyone is poor in college – there is no need to open a bunch of credit cards. Seriously… we see the debt in our economy today and where our parents are, and we are still dipping into those habits? If you google “average college debt” the numbers are somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand dollars as we exit our college years. There is really no need to accrue more debt through stupid spending habits with our terrible plastic counterparts.

So I propose a simple fix, something to help in all of this ridiculous spending. Leave the cards at home, take out cash and take note of the balance in your account when doing so, create a spending habit or limit. If you go to the bar, bring what you WANT to spend, not what you are willing to spend – no credit card, no “OMG morning.” If you go shopping, bring what you WANT to spend as well, then when you find that 200$ shirt that you “have to have” you just can’t buy it… sucks, but you will thank me later. Best case scenario, create a spending plan, plan out groceries, fun, clothes, etc – you wouldn’t believe how much money you can save with a simple plan of action. Credit cards can’t put you into “debth” if you just don’t use them…