For those of you numbed with all the wonderful business news as of late, this'll come as a nice little wake-up call.
IT'S ALL OUR FAULT!
The Housing crisis? The Business bail-outs? The general gloom and doom that seems to be hitting Wall Street? Our fault! High Taxes? Lower standards of living? Our fault, too!
Health Care Crisis? Credit Card Debt? Look in the mirror and you'll find the problem.
I'm serious! We are rocketing away from being the independent, self-reliant pioneers of our forefathers and becoming co-dependent crybabies. We've abandoned our sense of accountability for feel-good politics and talking heads promising "Change".
Want proof? Okay.
Housing Crisis... Sub-prime mortages. People borrowing more than they can afford because the rates were so low. What they forgot to do was look at the fact those interest rates were VARIABLE, meaning they change. So when rates changed upwards, people had to pay more, and they got in debt deeper and deeper til the banks started to foreclose.
Debt... Two words, credit cards. I used to work at Citi, so I know all about interest rates, penalties, and the like. When I got a credit card eariler this summer, you best believe I made DAMN SURE I read the fine print.
Some people figure it's free money and charge like the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. And with about the same results, too! The average American has $6000 of credit card debt. And you can forget making the Minimum Payments. That only pays for the interest and a miniscule part of the actual debt. So if you're making minimum payments, you're paying through quite a few orifices for years! But hey, it's free money!
Priorities... It's funny... When times are good, money is secondary to our desires and impulses. It is only when we find ourselves in financial straits that we really take a look at our finiancial priorities. Hell, it happened to me and it was a damn good wake-up call. But some others are oblivious to this fact and continue to spend, and charge, and blow their money on wants and not on needs (like health insurance, mortgage payments, retirement, etc.).
Then when the crap hits the fan, they cry poor and ask the taxpayers for a handout!
I realize there are some people with real problems, and this is not geared toward them. But when you are making millions of dollars a year and you're crying poor, perhaps you best re-think the need for 15 houses and 200 cars! It's called living on a budget, people. Try it sometime. You just might surprise yourself. I sure as hell did!
Health Care... People complain that our health care system is in the tubes. Despite the fact we are among the world's leaders in medical innovation. Granted, not every job provides health care. But if that's the case, shouldn't you include at least some major medical coverage in your budget or better yet, find a different job? Or perhaps you can get medical coverage, only to turn it down because you can't swing that and your Jet Ski payments. Hello? Priorities, anyone?
And speaking of which, one of the biggest health issues today is obesity. Now granted, I wasn't always the picture of health, but I'm getting in much better shape and nipping this thing in the bud before I develop real problems. How many times a week do you eat fast food? When's the last time you turned off the TV and took a walk around the block? We're due for a major health care crisis and it's our own making. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
These are but a few of the issues. I could go about more but the simple fact is there is no politician, government program, or politcal party that is going to solve all this crap. The solution lies within us and our resolve to improve our finances, our lives, our way of life.
THAT'S when we'll have REAL change in this country... change for the BETTER!
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