Letters to the Editor
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To you holier-than-thou types: That's easy for YOU to say!
Yes, we should pay off or at least pay down our credit cards whenever possible. Yes, we shouldn't be "maxing out" our $12,000 credit line at Bloomingdale's just because we "can." However, it is unrealistic and insensitive to say that nobody should ever use consumer credit vehicles, ever, and depend only on savings, etc. If you are in a socioeconomic class that allows you to do so, HOORAY FOR YOU! I wish my friends and relatives and I were in the "upper bracket" as well.
And now, back to reality...
What happens when the car (a "nice" car, not a "junker," with a few grand left on the loan) needs several hundred bucks of repair work and your savings won't cover? They don't make "equity loans" on automobiles, you know! So the national-chain repair shop gives you an instant line of credit in order to get the wheels rolling again. Is it such a sin to accept the offer?
Or it turns out that you owe Uncle Sam a lot more in taxes than you anticipated. Yes, it's funny I suppose that the IRS now accepts tax-by-plastic. But it's not so funny if you can't come up with the scratch by April 15 and don't want to get into the hassle of paying penalties or back taxes.
And don't get me started on the various "emergency" expenses that are part and parcel of raising kids.
In other words, "Walk a mile in the other person's shoes...Clean up your own backyard...Judge not...etc."
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who has debt
I think most of us know that the majority of people in these dire, high-debt straits are there due to job loss or medical issues, and I think we all agree that's a tragedy and blah blah blah about the credit card companies and government... Let's take that as a given and talk about this actual article.
Even though young, irresponsible morons with a sense of entitlement do not make up the majority or even a large fraction of people in trouble with credit cards, I sure know a lot of them myself, and I'll bet a sizeable chunk of the Salon readership knows many of them, too. I don't know what the demographics are here, but I'll bet young, coastal, urban liberals are overrepresented, and within that group I'm sure credit card debtors who got that way through their own stupid spending habits are overrepresented as well. They are still a valid subject for an article.
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Another spin on illness/injury debt
My boyfriend and I are still $6000 in the hole from when he injured his shoulder at work, then had to fight his company in court for a year to get any workman's compensation at all. We were living on my piddling salary (which mostly went toward rent) and our credit cards. Sure, after a year of hearings he finally got the money he was owed and went back to work, but by that point we were paying nearly 30% interest on all our cards. We're still not caught up. Just adding to the "debt is not always from $3 lattes and iPods" side of the argument.
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I guess I _am_ holier than thou
If you can't pay off a couple hundred dollar car repair bill over the course of a couple months, I guess you really must be in more straitened circumstances than I am, and I apologize for sounding "holier". But my first job out of college paid $16K and I lived in Boston, which is not a cheap city, and I never ran up any credit card debt. So I _have_ walked a mile in your shoes, I just never bought "stuff" when I couldn't afford it. I wore the same clothes for years, I clipped coupons and scoured the grocery ads for specials, the whole nine yards. And that was as a 23 year old with a social life. It's not impossible.
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OMG, I feel your pain!
Good article - thanks, there is hope! Similar thing happened to me after a sudden, unexpected divorce. A year and a half of humiliating debt collection phone calls daily. No sleep. Buying practically nothing -- everything went to feed the minimum payments. The late fees piled up, and the interest rate shot up to 30% by the end. I kept it a secret from everyone because I was ashamed and overwhelmed.
Finally, one of my credit card companies did something pretty damned rotten -- they called my PARENTS (which was legally ok because I opened the account with their telephone number when I was in college .... 20 years ago.). The credit card company told told them everything!! My poor dad, who does not have that kind of money, immediately confronted me and dragged me by the hair to his credit union, where he co-signed on a loan, which will come directly from my paycheck. Needless to say, at 40 years old, this was humiliating. But, I will never, ever forget what he has done for me and I am grateful for his trust and faith in me.
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Money is freedom
At least in this country it is. You can endlessly bemoan that or deal with it.
It's not just the credit card companies that benefit from people's spendthrift ways; it's every employer, too, because there's nothing quite so obedient as a worker who has no mobility, and nothing in the bank to cover them until they find another job if you fire them, all because they drive a $30K car on a $50K/yr salary, or couldn't wait to buy the big-screen TV. They've given up their real, tangible freedom to own these things.
The whole situation changes when you're living within your means, and have buffers. You can talk calmly with your boss about what you want, knowing that you can just walk out the door if you don't get it and find a new job, without any real pain.
All in all, I think this article is rather silly, but I have to at least thank the author for not letting Mary Williams write it, because watching her cry a river of tears for herself again would be too painful to endure.
As many of the posters point out, "I partied too much, so I asked my Daddy for some money!" is less a milestone of adulthood than the author would have us believe, and hardly makes her the poster child of either the scourge of consumer debt or how best to escape it.
You Salon guys are kind of hungry for copy of any kind, aren't you? So we get what look like pages out of someone's personal journal, and call it an article? Ok, I guess... I mean, I read it for some reason or other.