Today I just learned that the average Canadian debt is 163% of their revenue. Even when taking into account mortgages, this is insane.
It is easy to blame our consumerism for that level of debt, but it’s not always the case, far from it. Too many student pile on debt that they will have to carry through employment for decades. Too many have to use their credit card for day-to-day living. Living in an apartment is not always an option outside of large cities, places which often require using a car because public transportation doesn’t exist. Credit preys on the poor and the weak, so I simply can’t always blame credit card users.
But for the rest, for those that don’t really need debt but insist into living above their means because they think they can get away with it, I have no sympathy whatsoever. Worse, now our economy depends on that debt and penalizes those that save up money. The trick is to increase consumers’ standards of living through some consumers goods they don’t need and houses that are too big, and when time are though they’ll just jump on credit to maintain their way of living.
I expressed my disdain for consumerism on this blog more than once. Yet I still can’t fantom why people associate so much possession of stuff with success. Or a big house. Or two or more cars. Or clothing, shoes, apparel or whatnot. Or electronic gizmos of all kind.
The input is useless stuff, the output is being abused by the banks. So I’m taking this position and promise the following: Unless my life depends on it, I will not borrow money. I will not buy more than the money I already have. So my debt will always be 0% of my revenue. When my revenue is high, I’ll save for the difficult times or my retirement, whichever happens first. When my revenue is low or non-existent, I’ll reluctantly use some of the money I saved, but only as minimally needed. There is potentially 50 years of economic catastrophe ahead of me, so now is the worst time to rack up debt.
Published on October 15, 2012 at 21:19 EDT
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