Which headlines are you reading in the paper or online these days? Which are alarming and which are putting you in fear and giving you anxieties? ….Probably all of them. There seems to be this heavy cloud above our nation these days, whether it be for our economy or our election or even the war. YIKES….where do we turn? Here are some of the headlines the past week: “Stocks Loses Ground Amid Financial Uncertainty”, “Dollar sinks sharply to euro”, “Bailout Bill Passes–Now the Hard Part”, “IMF predicts a Recession”, “US Retails Report Decreased September Sales”, “Retirement Account loses near $3 trillion”, it goes on and on. People are panicking, people are hopeless, people are looking to bankruptcy, to bailouts. What is this world coming to?
Ultimately we put ourselves in this position, didn’t we? We signed those papers, didn’t we? The papers that allowed us to own the SUV we drive and then can’t afford the gas, gas is too expensive. (Was that the problem? The price of gas?) The papers that got us into this house that’s too big, the payments made for just the interest so that we could pay against the loan later…and boy, are we *paying* later (now)!?! The papers that allowed us to use that big screen TV today and not have a payment for 6 months-6 months is now and we can’t seem to collect the first payment. We signed the papers/receipts for that extravagant dinner (a year ago) that we thought we deserved and we are still paying for it.
It’s really sad because all the nation is looking for the government and the leaders to bail us out. Our nation is trillion (?) dollars in debt and they’re going to bail us out. We’re going to have our kids pay for OUR debt. We’re using all our natural resources and expect our kids to pick up the slack. How selfish is that?!
My wish is that each and every one of us own up to our responsibilities. You signed the loan papers to your car, pay your monthly debt each month. You signed your home loan papers, pay your mortgage. If you have to, look into refinancing, look into something. Don’t look to the government, don’t look to bankruptcy. Get through it, buckle up and take one step, one payment at a time. Go to a financial advisor and get some good advice. Own up to it, people.
