Lessons in Economy: My Debt is Bigger than Yours

Is it just me or have we really become a society where we don't have anything to brag about anymore, discussing our debts in the bar with our friends, the one with with bigger debt always wins the argument. It seems as if the only thing in this world left is money and for some reason, it's not ours, but the banks, the big screwed up financial institutions own it.

I bet most of us, when asked directly if we want to talk about money, would answer No. Yet, most of our conversations reach a topic where's money involved. No, we don't want to talk about it, no, we don't even have it. But by the end of the evening under the bar table, we still end up talking about it.

The reason is quite simple really, we all agree that money is not important in life, it's only important as far as living your life goes and getting you things you want. Money is something we only need indirectly. We want to eat, we want to drink, we want to travel, we want to look good, we want to ... we want to do whatever we want to do. But when we see it's becoming more and more difficult to do what we want to do, we start thinking why? And while we don't want to think about money, we end up doing that, because money is on our mind simply because we don't have it.

Yours Truly is fortunately one of the lucky ones who don't have a mortgage, I still pay rent. Most of you, at least couple of years ago, would have said it's stupid. And it probably was, partly still is, but I seriously don't want my own home at this point, especially if it means owing banks or anything/anyone else shitloads of money. Besides, even without a mortgage, I still have credit cards which have always been used to their limit and some other credits. Even me, someone without a loan for a home end up paying a sum to the banks in form of interest, a sum that every year would allow me to drink two weeks in a row. Well, now it definitely depends on what you're drinking and how much and where you are based, but imagine something like 150 beers in a bar. Should give you enough for two weeks, especially if you want a day or two to rest within that timeframe as well.

If you pay mortgage, calculate the money you're paying to the banks, just to cover interest rates. I should say I have no idea how much you're paying, but I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up with two month's worth of drinking capital.

I'm not really talking about the financial crisis, things happen. The truth is that, while maybe in a slightly better form, the beer part would still remain the same. Instead of going out for a beer or a glass of wine you'd pay that money to the banks even without the financial crisis.

We can blame it on the banks, we can blame it on the system, we can blame Bush, Obama, the entire Chinese nation, or we can stop for a bit to realise that we were the ones who took these loans, we were the ones causing it to ourselves, we are the ones making it possible for the banks to pretty much own us.

So who's really to blame? Economy that was screwed up by the financial institutions or ourselves for wanting nice things? I'm not saying loans are bad, but...isn't there a limit somewhere? Isn't it correct to say that not everyone should take a loan, not everyone should even own a home. Where there is demand there is offer. Imagine if people stopped buying houses. One could say that it would crush the economy and real estate market yet once again, but I don't think that so said small people are the only ones who need to change. Why couldn't the real estate market change and build more apartments and houses for rent, no quick money here but within 30 years, they might even earn more. Who knows, my maths sucks big time. Never mind...

Money is our big bad elephant we don't want to think about, but if it goes missing in the middle of New York City, I'm just saying, you just can not do a thing but think about it all the time. The quick fix is to get rid of the elephant and finally get a normal pet I guess.