My household has more than its share of student and credit card debt. I didn’t expect my salary to be frozen for half a decade, and I assumed the spending was a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Bad assumption. Two months ago, I got a notice from my student loan company telling me that my monthly payment was about to double. It took a minute, but I thought back to the day I agreed to those repayment terms. By the time my payment obligations spike, I remember thinking, I’ll be so flush that it won’t even be an issue….
There have been many far more serious victims of the Great Recession and the anemic recovery than me, of course ”” people who have lost their jobs, their homes, breadwinners who have lost a defining sense of self. Although I have never felt more than a step or two away, I still have a home and I still have a job.
But too often there has not been a distinction made between the victims and people, like me ”” among the majority of Americans who are not unemployed or underemployed, but didn’t act as prudently as they should have ”” who made poor decisions.
Wow…a Millennial who takes some personal responsibility, that’s quite refreshing.
Not just a Millennial, I too realize I was living a lie. I got myself into 19,00 in debt thinking the economy will grow I always will have a job, keep up with the Jones. At least, I refused to listen to my father to his dying day: I refused to buy into the real estate boom, knowing I would not afford it. I am tired of hearing wall street or the rich is the fault. I do fault politicians on both sides who think we can stimulate the economy by government and consumer debt, still I was the one who singed the papers.
Lord have mercy on me.
It’s a balance: They do need to take personal responsibility but we also have to recognize that a lot of these “financial instruments” are stacked overwhelmingly in favor of the huge lending institutions. They aren’t the least bit fair or forgiving to the 18-year-old who has dreams and eagerly signs his life away to try to achieve them. Let’s be honest — how many of us had the foresight and maturity now required when we went off to university? I surely didn’t but, blessedly, things were simpler and cheaper back then.