Why not "Earn What you get" in life??

[DevineMommie]

This financial fiasco in our country has everyone pointing fingers. It seems so many are dead set on blaming our government and the so called fat cats.  But do we have any part in this blame? Honestly had the average citizen lived by the age old saying that "you earn what you get" then we could have avoided this whole mess. We want to blame the lenders and the freezing of the credit market just on the banks. But no one seems to be admitting that the banks major hit came when the average Joe(s) could no longer pay.  Maybe not just the banks made bad decisions but even average Joe's were guilty of abusing lending practices.

I don't care how you slice it life happens to all of us and about 5% of this country has hit their financial rock bottom. I would guess a lot more of us are about to start following suite. We have to look at the whole picture here and quit trying to gray it so much.

It's time to look at our values not our wallets and ask "What created this idea that lifestyle equated to what you had?"  That we all needed to have stuff to be respected or be acceptable?  Sadly this mentality isn't new but the easy credit, over the last five years was. Abundant credit just made it simple to indulge our personal egos and we didn't think about the consequences until we could no longer afford the house, pay the credit cards or the car payment. Then when the stuffing hit the fan we passed the buck to the banks and the banks just as quickly handed it to Uncle Sam. The funny thing is we don't seem to realize that Uncle Sam's responsibility now means it's our responsibility again!  This is truly a game of hot potato that doesn't seem to have an end.

At some point we decided that real money didn't matter if you had plastic in your wallet or an average to good credit score. Easy credit which equalled easy money ended the idea that we must earn what we get.   Too many kept indulging; we gave our kids cell phones or the latest electronic gadget like it was dime store candy, then we indulged ourselves with cars,homes, jewelry or whatever suited our hearts desire. We just kept those revolving credit lines revolving. Then boom something happened and we couldn't pay for all this junk we committed to.  "So what were just one person, it won't hurt anyone else?" 

Not true, when millions of people hit the same wall and suddenly credit dries up and real money is back in play. The lifestyle crumbles quickly because we forgot what our budget really was.  Citizens, banks and government collectively followed this flawed spending pattern. More perplexing then that is our answer to correcting it is to do it some more. Our idea of a fix is to Free the credit back up by injected more credit into the credit market by offering credit to those who already can't pay?  Whether it's the bank, the insurance company or the Average Joe with the mortgage that just readjusted.  The whole problem is credit, but credit will fix the problem?  

 I'm sorry that's just more financial stupidity.  We all need to take our lumps and work though this mess. We do this by tightening our belts and getting the excess weight off. We get rid of things we can't afford. If it's a business then they go into protected bankruptcy, then they can retain their employees and restructure their business plan or sell off.  It really is that simple. 

If it's the average Joe we look at what we have and decide what is absolutly necessary and what is desired. We sell anything that restricts us from breathing financially and we restructure as well. We go back to basics: Housing, food, transportation, and utilities. Then when we have those under control we move on to phase two: paying for all the crap we couldn't afford in the first place. The we swallow a hard pill and live on our real incomes and save.  But we'll never get their if we keep passing the blame.  

Accepting personal responisibilty is truly the elephant in the room, the only thing is it just crapped on all of us and now we are all left to clean it up. 

 

[Manicmondaymomm]

Nov. 14, 2008 at 4:43 PM

Hey, what a novel idea!