Getting yourself in debt is as easy as 1 2 3, but getting out of debt takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of self discipline. Credit cards, check books, debit cards, ATM machines, and the ease of borrowing money makes getting in debt, for most people, the one thing in life that comes easy.
Everyone wants your money and they want you to owe them. As long as you owe them, they own a piece of you. There is a verse to an old song by Tennessee Ernie Ford that goes like this:
•You load sixteen tons, what do you get
•Another day older and deeper in debt
•Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
•I owe my soul to the company store
The fact is that once debt is created, it is up to the debtor, or borrower, to pay it off, which is harder to do than it may seem. With compound interest, minimum payments, and the ease of creating more debt, the average person may become stuck for years trying to undo what it took only a few minutes to get into.
Spending money is encouraged today, because it keeps the economy moving. Supposedly, when money is being spent, it helps with the creation of new jobs. This makes sense if you can control your spending but there are a lot of people, even the government, who can't get a handle on paying off it's debt.
When you hear the phase "balancing the budget," try to remember the first time you heard it. That was probably years ago and it's still not balanced. The reason: People just cannot stop spending because there is always something to buy and they spend freely to get it with money they don't have, thus creating new debt.
If the government cannot balance it's budget, and they have thousands of financial wizards working for the cause, you know the average person is going to have problems getting out of debt.
For some people, spending is an addiction and breaking the habit means taking tough measures. Getting out of debt means that you will have to tighten your financial belt but it is a lot easier said than done.
A job loss, an illness, an unforseen trip, or other unplanned or unexpected events, may make it necessary to spend additional money or to charge it on a credit card, so that is why you should expect the unexpected.
But it is not the unexpected that get us in trouble. We should blame our financial troubles on ourselves. We get accustomed to living a certain lifestyle and don't have the willpower to let that lifestyle go so we can rein in our spending.
Listening to other people tell you to spend your money is what advertisements are all about. You are told to spend your money, and how to spend it, from the time you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night.
But you can't blame the advertisers because they are not forcing you to buy anything. They just let you know what is available and then leave it up to you to make the decision.
If you understand why it is so hard to get out of debt, you might not be so easily swayed to get into it in the first place.