Here’s a somewhat rambling end-of-day post about something that’s near and dear to my heart — credit cards!
Lately, it seems like I can’t turn on my radio without hearing someone offering help for credit-strapped consumers. Let the record show that my own credit card debt load far exceeds what the recommended amount is. And there is no way I’m going to pay it off in a year. I don’t care what kind of magical schemes they’re selling. I’m not going to come up with half my annual salary to pay off those balances.
Now (and I apologize in advance for my snarkiness), the popular response to carrying that much credit card debt is a well-conditioned horror. Everyone – from my parents (I quit telling them how much I make and how much I owe about 10 years ago), to the government, to my bank, to my peers, to strangers I stand next to at the post office – is avidly anti-credit-card-debt. Who isn’t? Paying up to 29% APR to people who are prone to cut your available credit without warning and just ’cause they can really sucks.
And our current popular culture is chock-full of gurus, financial “advisors” and online/broadcast marketers who are telling us in no uncertain terms that we need to be credit-free. For the sake of our savings. For the sake of our peace of mind. For the sake of our children (that’s always a compelling reason). For the sake of our retirement. And for three low installments of $129.95 (plus shipping and handling), they’ll tell us just how we can do that in less than a year!
But I’ve had it with all the personal finance pomposity. I’m sick and tired of all those “money people” lecturing me about how bad credit cards are, how much they threaten my safety, how zealouslyI should avoid them. I’m sick and tired of people who supposedly know all about money (and many of them do, because they have an awful lot of it) telling me how I should handle mine. I don’t have an awful lot of it, and I sincerely doubt I ever will — being RICH is just not that big of a priority with me, and any extra money I have, I tend to give away to organizations that are defending the defenseless or spend on occasional vacations and computer stuff… and my house. I’m tired of people who operate at higher financial levels thinking that their rules apply to me, down here in the “pedestrian zone” of personal finance. I’m sick of people preaching budget-budget-budget, as though anal-retentively socking away $25 a week is going to dramatically impact my long-term prospects.
I’ve got news for those folks – in case they hadn’t realized it by now – people like me don’t live by the same rules that people like them do. If they haven’t gotten that simple fact through their thick skulls, either their math isn’t nearly as good as mine – which is frightening – or they don’t have a clue how people like me really live, or they are actively concealing the truth about money management, so they can sell little shreds of hope to those of us whom they assume know precious little… after all, if we were that knowledgeable and smart, we’d be rich like them, right?
Anyway, even if I did put away $25/week for 52 weeks a year, I would save $1,300, which is nothing to sneeze at. And if I earn 5.5% on this amount (compounded monthly) like I do on my ING Direct savings account, after a year I would have $1,336.38. Not bad – that’s the magic of compounding, where every month your total balance (including interest) gets compounded.
But let’s remember, that’s a little over $100/month I’d be putting away. And in these tight times, there are about 1,336 other places I can think to put that money. And like the trickles of water that carved out the Grand Canyon, those places and reasons have a way of seriously eroding my savings. Or it can take just one or two ill-fated twists — like car repairs after being rear-ended in holiday traffic, or veterinarian bills when one of my pets gets in a fight with a stray animal or falls ill.
Now, if I want to be a little more modest — and realistic — and calculate for $25/month, at the end of a year at 5.5% compounded monthly, I’ll have $308.74 in the bank. Great. That should just barely cover the emergency dental work I need that my insurance doesn’t cover.
Note: I used the savings calculator over at Bankrate.com for these calculations.
There are countless sudden low-scale financial crises that can crop up over the course of a year, which are unpredictable, unavoidable, and immediate. Indeed, there have been more sudden extreme needs for cold, hard cash that have cropped up in my life on a regular basis over the past 20 years. Many an event has been as extreme as it has been sudden and unexpected. Car accidents. Medical and dental emergencies. Getting laid off. Health-related relocations to cleaner and safer parts of the country. Family crises that require immediate travel. Veterinary bills. You name it, I’ve probably whipped out the plastic to pay for it.
Never were these events foreseen. Many of them might have looked predictable to the trained eye, but trust me, if I’d been able to see ahead and take steps to avoid them, I most certainly would have. Unfortunately, being human and all, and living in a country that simultaneously doesn’t favor paying a living wage and demands that we all “play our part” as active consumers, the proverbial cards are well-stacked against me and my kind. And make no mistake, the cards are stacked. Anyone who tells you otherwise is sitting across the table from you in the dealer’s seat.
I don’t want to be a whiner and blame the rest of the world for my troubles. I’m big into personal responsibility. But at some point, the gross inequity of power and influence starts to get a little ridiculous. At every turn, the American middle and working classes are constantly prodded to buy-buy-buy… and all the while, our employers keep telling us they can’t afford to raise our pay… and we’re being lectured from every corner about how we shouldn’t borrow more than we earn. It’s a recipe for disaster, mental illness, systemic infrastructure collapse, or all of the above.
The system truly is totally schizoid, at odds with its conflicted self, and seemingly incapable of any sort of sustainable, consistently coherent cultural message. Sure, we’re supposed to be Good Americans by being good consumers. But heaven forbid we be paid what we need to live on, or have access to adequate medical coverage for the procedures and the tests that we are assured are absolutely necessary for us to stay alive and healthy. And God forbid we charge it — or don’t charge it. If someone could tell me, once and for all, what exactly I’m supposed to do, to keep America strong with my wallet, I’d be deeply grateful.
Now, on the whole, I’m doing pretty well for myself. Credit card debt notwithstanding, I’m making decent pay. But countless other Americans are not, and that’s what tweaks me to no end. Because we are all — no matter how much money we are making — are under constant pressure, these days, to manage our money better. Money we only wish we had. Money we’re sure we had just a few weeks ago, which has mysteriously disappeared. It’s so maddening. I’ve got siblings whose whole families are working more than one job, each, and they’re struggling. It’s stupid, for such good, hard-working people to suffer so much, and live in constant fear of Losing Everything, while our lawmakers languish in Washington with their cushy benefits plans, pontificate about how to be Patriotic, and vote through legislation they haven’t even read.
What the hell can people at the bottom of the barrel do? On the one hand, our country pats us on the back for being responsibly contributing citizens by spending like crazy… while our political, social, and thought leaders keep lecturing us about doing more with what little we have, and not being such irresponsible, greedy gits. Their pulpits are the television, the internet, the radio, the bookshelves. And they just keep preaching away. Sinner, put down your credit cards! Repent! Come to your senses and lay your burden of debt down…
Indeed, there is a quasi-religious fervor to this anti-credit craze. People are spinning the mortgage lending crisis into a sort of anti-credit virtual run on banks, with all these hawkers standing at proverbial street corners shouting that The End is Nigh, and it’s all the fault of “easy credit”, so zero out your balances, bite the consumer bullet, and “live more simply so that others may simply live” (as though my doing without plastic is going to save Darfur or put roofs over the heads of homeless Katrina victims).
But it’s an overly emotional message they’re sending, and it’s at complete and total odds with the reality many of us live with — that we’re just getting by, no matter how much or little money we’re making, and even if we did rob Peter, it wouldn’t be enough to pay Paul. And then Peter would come looking for us and break our kneecaps with a lead pipe.
And as much as people love to tout the benefits of everyday budgeting and personal money management, for some of us, that level of attention to detail to our pitiful little pile of coins is unrealistic, if not impossible.Again, I don’t want to blame the rest of the world for my money woes, but I actually have had certain issues that prevented me from handling financial complexities in a sustained way. I do the best I can, and I’m learning how to do it better all the time, but back when I fell in 2004, I was about as far from being able to make wise money decisions, as a color blind person is from being able to dress models for New York Fashion Week. Sometimes, you just can’t make good money management decisions, no matter how hard you try. Especially when you’re dealing with a neurological condition that hides your own limitations from you.
Yes, some of us — perhaps more of us than care to admit it — are genuinely challenged, when it comes to handling money with facility and grace. And when I think back on all the screw-ups I’ve made about money, these gung-ho messages about dispensing with credit cards just irk me. They’re just so idealistic, so pie-in-the-sky, so insistent that credit cards can be just gotten rid of, like that.
Now, I don’t dispute that there may be some useful strategies for doing away with debt out there, but how many of them are for real? So much of the marketing is driven by raw emotion — fear – fear – more fear — I have to wonder if folks are able to truly use their heads when they take panic-instigated steps. And in the long run, might not some of those schemes to get rid of debt actually be more trouble than they’re worth? Some of the most beloved schemes involve additional mortgages on your house… and by now, most of us know where that can lead.
So, I don’t know what the answer to all of this is. All I know is, I’m in deep with Citibank, Chase, Discover, Sears, and Bank of America, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon. I can only hope that someone somewhere on down the line I’m able to dig out from underneath these creditors of mine and keep some of my money for myself. I am very grateful that they hauled my ass out of hot water, time and time again. I’m grateful for the dental work, the prescription drugs, the veterinary services, and the emergency plane tickets they’ve all made possible. And now that they’ve managed to keep me alive and a viable member of society, I can pay my debt to them… like I pay my debts to society in general… gradually, sometimes grudgingly, but with a certain sense of duty and the hope that perhaps the resources I’m putting into them will help someone else on down the line. Someone like the customer service rep on the line who’s asking me when they can expect my next payment.
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. I, who had been in the financial services industry for a decade or so, who was studying to become a financial advisor, who had been all about money for years and years and years… who knew about all sorts of common sense investment and savings vehicles… I had literally forgotten to keep track of my finances. And I had forgotten to stash a large lump sum I’d received in a secure interest-bearing savings account.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 