Hi folks! We here at Debtor’s Prison are pleased to introduce Rebecca Smith who has been kind enough to write a guest column.  We are impressed with Rebecca’s work and hope she will write for us again.

REBECCA SMITH

The latest chapter of a painful story that began years ago was the debt fight that continued in the capital of the nation and the ensuing credit downgrade by the Standard & Poor’s.  In the last decade, the banks, consumers and the homeowners became bloated with too much leverage or borrowed a huge amount of money and this resulted in a drastic shrinkage of credit throughout the entire economy, a particular phenomenon that is financially known as ‘deleveraging’. Apart from the big picture, the consumers too were worried about the ways in which they can seek debt relief so as to stay out of the debt cycle.

The present situation of the US is nothing new and the government has been grappling with such issues and has also been throwing billions to dollars to provide a quick cure from such problems. Even after continuous meetings and steps taken to assess and improve the current state of the US economy, there has been no positive result that is noticeable. Though the labor market reports were slightly positive in the month of July and August, 2011, yet there has been no such noticeable increase in the growth of jobs within the market that could alleviate the spurring unemployment level. Gut-wrenching market plunges, accompanied by multiple negative aspects of the economy show that the economy is losing steam. Despite all such nerve-wracking events within the US economy, very few expect the policymakers to reveal some new stimulus plans to rejuvenate the lost shine of the nation.

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I try and give you folks a lark with some good-old fashioned bro humor. I had a great story about a bro who opened a puppy rental stand who paid this slam piece to jerk off guys she saw walking said puppies and suggest that for paying off high interest private loans. But you people need help. Serious help. So instead I am going to explain to you something you should have learned growing up watching sports.

Now here is how I know there are no sports fans on this site. One if there were ballets among you you’d have gotten scholarships. Two if you could converse about sports with people you’d be less miserable at work, more pleasant to be around, less likely to lose your job and more likely to find a new one if you do.  And before you get started yes I am going to make a sports analogy BUT I am going to explain it so even those who think Jordan was the greatest football player because he scored the most runs in history can understand.

You are playing a game, say basketball, (round ball, bounces, played indoors) and your opponent is debt. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game (aka the amount of time you want/reasonable amount of time to take to pay off your loans is) wins. Debt is winning by the amount you owe, aided by crooked refs we’ll call interest.
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 happen to be a fan of a certain football team mullying about a 500 record give or take a win midway through the season. Do I want those bums thinking well, at least we’re not at the bottom of the league, and win or lose I’m still a millionaire or do I want them to have tunnel vision on their next opponent and doing what they have to do to make the playoffs? Man, fuck perspective, what you need is FOCUS.

I’m an asshole, I admit. But there is another reason I spend what I want, fuck who I want and take whatever I have the opportunity to take. I deserve it, true, but the fact remains that if I spend my life balancing my budget or trying to define the nature of my relationship with the Princess or deciding if I SHOULD do what I CAN do then I wouldn’t be FOCUSED on getting ahead.

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It is natural to hate people whom you believe have been given more than they deserve. I will be the first to admit that I take comfort in the fact that my loans at least shield me from the stigma that my achievements must be due to Affirmative Action. I get to join the student loan club, a race neutral organization and it endears me to my own people who associate a large part of their identity with struggle. Lonely indeed are the members of the darker nation who know no indebtedness for they are almost universally despised. And that’s a shame.

Recently I received a number of posted and unposted comments from medical types who are getting their tuition bill footed by the family. One of them, rather than being overly defensive simply wrote that it was done for him so that he could do it for his own kids one day and that there was no sense in paying all of that exorbitant interest. I found that to be an interesting notion.  Are we as Americans an extended family?

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Hi Kids. People have been commenting that there has been less useful information and more paranoia, idiocy and douche-baggery in recent posts SO yours truly has decided to start at the beginning with this simple principle: You are taxed on what you make, and you pay interest on what you borrow. If this simple truth does not inform your big picture than you are hopelessly at risk of over borrowing.

Now I know what you’re thinking, if you got into a school good enough to merit borrowing to attend, then you should be able to add and subtract right? I am sure each of us has made decisions that are different from what we would have chosen as our answer if our situation had been presented to us as a word problem on the SAT.

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