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Avoiding the Debt Mentality

May 23, 2008 by Admin 

Avoiding the Debt Mentality developing blood clots while on coumadin

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Sometimes when one really wants something, he or she will pay for it even when he or she doesn’t have enough money. Debt can be defined as borrowing from one’s future income to pay for one’s current needs or wants. Obviously this person doesn’t have the money right now, so he or she turns to his or her favorite medium of taking out a loan. To keep things simple and for the purposes of this discussion, let’s call this person Pep.

Then what happens? Normally a person with this attitude would tend to repeat this cycle over and over again. Whether it is a want or a need, it seems that Pep would always turn to debt as a solution to getting what he needs or wants. Because of this repetitious cycle of wanting something Pep can’t afford, the whole scenario turns into a snowball effect that keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Then our hero Pep falls into the debt trap. Now that situation is something that can be quite tricky to get out of.

As a friend of Pep, what can we tell him? There are a lot. I want to tell him to change his name, but that’s not why we’re here. We can tell Pep that he should live within his means. Let’s have an example. Now Pep is a supervisor of a large company that sells marbles, but he is in no shape to buy a sports car right now. His income is not that high and the costs of owning a car just zoomed up (high gasoline prices, etc…). However he can afford nice comfortable car that operates with high fuel efficiency. Maybe that’s what Pep should get. But wait a minute? Does Pep really need a car? Maybe he doesn’t even need one. Maybe he needs to the money for something else. The key here is to only buy something that one can pay from money that he or she has available.

We can check out the equation below and try to understand this better.

Income – Expenses = Extra Money or Debt

If Pep’s Expenses are lower than Income than he gets extra money. He can either save or invest this. But if Expenses become higher than Income the result is debt. Pep needs to loan money to cover his expenses. So he should only live within his means and only get in to debt when the situation is unavoidable.

What Pep should really be asking himself is, “How can I afford it?” Pep should really look into ways on how he can earn more money. If we look at the equation above, we can see that a higher income and fixed expenses would mean more extra money. That’s money that Pep can use to buy his wants and needs. That’s money that Pep can use to make even more money. But that’s another topic.

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