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The rise in costs of all essential commodities is making things difficult. Money is for spending and it should be spent for a good cause. Extraordinary expenditure should be incurred only on special occasions like weddings of children or construction of house.
 
It needs to be understood that financial difficulties are only the result of very simple and impulsive, sentimental mistakes. You have to save for potential illness or any other emergency that might occur in future.

Start saving Now!

Don’t spend on things that your don’t really need. If you are desirous of buying something and are eager about it, just control the urge and hold on for a second and think – do I really need it? You might avoid it. Indiscriminate buying also creates clutter at home. It is the spending habits that lead you to debt.

Everyone uses the credit card in US, irrespective of the cost of the item.  A credit card is a good facility only so long as you are able to honor the bills monthly. What some people do is they pay the minimum required to ‘escape’ the month and the balance is carried forward to the next month. Thereby, they are spending their future savings and mortgaging their life and this monstrous credit card encourages them to spend more than they can really afford. Instead they should try to pay more than the minimum to repay the debt and get rid of the accumulating interest.

 During the past year, credit card debt has ballooned rapidly. The growing reliance on plastic may explain why revolving debt – most of which is on credit cards – rose at an annual rate of 7.8%, to a record $943.5 billion, in 2007 compared with a 6.1% the year before, according to the US Federal Reserve.

The financial problems aggravated after the recession set in. People had bought houses through loans and today the value of the house is less than the balance amount they owe to the banks. Now, they are trying to sell them – but buyers are not available at that price. Anticipating foreclosures, Americans are defaulting on the home mortgage and are now paying their credit card bills because they will have to use the plastic money the next month also – on gas and to lay food on the table. This problem is taking shape in other countries also.

One evening while driving in Seattle, I saw a board above a shop- ‘encash your salary cheque’. The shop was providing a facility where you take an advance on your salary cheque for the month.  Such people live in debt through their life   because next month they will have to do the same thing. And then there is this advertisement popping up on NC News network -“If you are more than three thousand dollars in debt – please contact us – phone……

Make saving a habit while you are young.

Ravi Matah

Tags: Credit Card, Debt, Expenses, Finance, Mortgage, Recession, Savings

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.