The long chronicle of Debt part4

And then, suddenly, painfully, the end will come - it was the 1990s.

Something happened in 1990. It is difficult to imagine how things could be as well a dozen years and very bad in the next. Perhaps there is a rule which says that the surplus that the decade ahead will be bad as the first was good. If this is true, we are in for a ride in the next ten years! In any event, it has been and remains perplexed.
Companies have started to reduce on behalf of more globally competitive. People saddled with debt incurred from reckless spending in the 1980s, suddenly find themselves unemployed. One of the qualities associated with the debt emerged: patience.

They learned the hard way that the debt is very patient. It constantly hangs around the outer edges of the evaluation of your financial plan until it detects a weakness, and moves to kill it.

And to go to kill he did. Many people have not only lost their jobs, but some also lost their homes, unable to pay their mortgages on unemployment insurance. Since much of their disposable income has been servicing the debt outstanding, they have no savings to fall back on. The divorce rate has skyrocketed. Bankruptcies have been at record levels. It was horrible.

These are the insidious consequences of thinking in the short term, instant gratification, the elements of the "E Factor". The bottom 80 - percent of the population in terms of financial capacity, are affected by this disease in varying degrees while the top 20 percent seem to have more control over their expenditure. 20 per cent of group seems to be able to recognize the difference between a need and necessity, and not easily influenced by advertising gimmicks, designed to appeal to their weaknesses. This group knows that the wrong decisions taken today can have long-term like they know that wise decisions can accumulate over time to pay dividends.

I am certainly not suggesting that we all live our lives to respond to needs. After all, life is to be loved, and I think some people go too far in their savings, to gather wealth never have a chance to enjoy. Can not be a middle ground? Can we live and enjoy life, while continuing to save for later, our years? I think we can.

It is a matter of choice, I think. Nobody forces us to pay the debt. It is our own choice. The choices we make in our youth, our environment and accumulate to produce a result in recent years. Sometimes the result is magnificent, it is certainly for those in the top 20 percent of the group. Sometimes the result is tragic, and too much of this is the case.
There is a saying: "If you take a step forward, you can see enough to go further."

As we age, we can see our last years in the home (just everything else is off-topic). I can tell you, at the age of forty-eight hours, I can now see quite clearly sixty. I do not mind admitting that it is a little scary. Suddenly, the cumulative effect of errors that I did in my youth (and let's face it, we all do them) is looming. As the saying goes, regret weighs tons, discipline weighs ounces. "If I had injected the early disciplines, I would not be carrying this heavy burden." This is the complaint of too many people.

A difficult to learn, is not it? The past can not be changed. I have seen too many terrible consequences of debt, and I wonder why, as a society, we can not do better.

Other part
The long chronicle of Debt part1
The long chronicle of Debt part2
The long chronicle of Debt part3
The long chronicle of Debt part4