By Ted Gargiulo – It started with an electronic sewing machine. I was earning $4.50 an hour at the time, back in 1983. My wife’s old appliance had outlived its usefulness. We couldn’t afford a new one. So we charged it. Our rationale was that the machine would pay for itself by saving us from having to buy additional merchandise (clothes, drapes, gifts) which we also couldn’t afford.
You know the story. Other purchases followed. New accounts were opened. All those necessities our initial acquisition was supposed to keep us from amassing? We amassed them anyway. The unpaid balances grew, as did the interest. Our new modern work saver would to have to put in a lot of overtime just to pull its weight. As it turned out, I was the one doing the overtime, while my wife’s machine did what I wished I could have done: It stayed home and rested.
Nothing takes the sting out of making value judgments as effectively as credit. My wife and I never realized how much we needed a credit card until we charged our first item. Nor did we realize how inadequate one card was until we had several to rely upon. Soon, we were charging everything from gas to groceries to medical bills, even our rent when finances got really tough. We got to where we were using VISA to make payments on our other credit cards. Once we borrowed from VISA to pay VISA.
How could two intelligent people like us become so entrenched in this losing battle? How does anybody? Do we think that our debts will slip into some cosmic worm hole if cast far enough into the future? Or that working and paying bills will take on a sweet savor of hilarity somewhere across that vast, make-believe gulf that separates “now” from “later?” Maybe the taste of tomorrow’s prizes today will prove to be the elusive console-all hitherto missing in our life’s bland endeavors.
The world has only to wave that laminated crown before us, and our priorities shift gears, practically overnight. We embrace it, savor its power, taste of its fruit. And behold: our eyes are opened! Sooner or later, everything becomes necessary in a world that says that all things are possible. It all seems so…easy!
But oh, how quickly those “must haves” diminish in value once we get used to thinking of them as our own! Does it not seem perverse to be making payments on a set of furniture you’ve already grown tired of looking at? Or on a pair of shoes you threw out a year ago? How about paying for the repair of a car you no longer own? And will the Spirit of Christmas Past console you in 2012 when you have to drag your decrepit body into work at 6 am on a Sunday to help pay for it? I think not.
The problem with “REAP FIRST, SOW LATER” is that a man cannot be nourished by hindsight. There were times when I wished I could give back everything I’d ever charged in exchange for a debt-free existence. What madness! Even supposing that former transactions could be undone, what tangible effects could any of us possibly give back, or bear to part with at this point? What would we wear? What would we drive? Goods and services become absorbed into our sense of ownership long before they’re paid for. They define who we are, or what we imagine ourselves to be. They clothe our nakedness. I don’t exactly cherish my drawers, but I’m loathe to discard them.
Happy to say, my income has risen considerably since the days of the sewing machine. We’ve paid off and/or cut up a dozen or so charge cards over the years, replaced them, then repeated the process several times. Eventually, we whittled our “super fund” down to one or two primary accounts, three at the most…okay, maybe four…to be used only when necessary.
Experience has chastened us, taught us discipline, patience, humility and self-control. We’ve grown. Granted, our standard of living has also grown. We earn more, we spend more, we live better. And why the heck shouldn’t we? After all we’ve been through, that’s the least we deserve! It might seem as though we’re making the same blunders as before. What’s different is the wisdom and expertise with which we make them. We respect ourselves for what we’ve accomplished. The banks respect us too for the same reasons. Indeed, they’ll see to it that we never grow weary of respecting our famished, deluded little selves. Their tactics haven’t changed, not in 30 years, not in a thousand. Alas, ours haven’t either.
It’s a wise man who anticipates a hangover before he drinks, or who can remember the last one without having to relive it. Resolutions made on the “morning after” are cheap and easy to come by. Likewise, it would be easy for us renounce our love of material possessions and expensive pastimes after we’ve had our fill of them. But that feeling of fullness rarely overtakes us. Wolfish excess is so often clothed in sheepish moderation. If we persuade ourselves that a limited indulgence is allowable, or that certain acquisitions are necessary for survival, then how much is enough? Exactly when does one more little drink become one too many? It may be the stress and grind of living beyond our means, of working for goals with which we can no longer identify, that gives us consumers that lean and hungry edge—and the gnawing sense of incompleteness that the economy thrives on.
“Enough!” we cry in a moment of sober passion. Yet, no sooner does one desire ferment than three new ones spring up to take its place. We look the dragon squarely in the teeth and strike yet another pact.
The system may have seduced us. But it’s a system made in our image.
I cannot condemn; I can only confess. On paper, I’m a critic. In the marketplace, I’m easy.
