2003-03-26 - 3:18 p.m.
I keep thinking of today as Freedom Day. It doesn�t have anything to do with Iraq or the flag or the potatoes formerly known as French fries. Is seems like there should have been a trumpet or at least a drum roll when I slipped the envelope into the slot at the post office: my last payment on a mountain of debt. Today, except for half of a mortgage, I am debt free.
Debt is such an insidious thing. It sneaks up all small and tame, offering to be our friend. It whispers extravagant promises and rewards us for believing: Life doesn�t have to be so hard. You don�t have to do without anything that makes you happy. And then when it has us cornered, is sheds the disguise and becomes the wolf at the door, huffing and puffing.
I spent most of my early adult years flying by the seat of my financial pants, living a funky student or post-student lifestyle, never making enough money to even get credit. (And you had to qualify back then, unlike now when credit card companies are trying to lure even teenagers into the joys of debt.) Then for a number of years I was married to a man who, although solvent, was so parsimonious he stressed over leaving lights on, or holding the refrigerator door open a few extra seconds, and refused to use even an ATM card on the basis that it encouraged unplanned spending. After I left him, not only did I play fast and loose with light switches and refrigerator doors, I acquired a wallet full of lovely little gold and platinum cards.
It isn�t like I didn�t know better. You don�t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you are paying a premium for whatever you buy once all that interest is tacked on, and if you only make the minimum payment you will be in debt for the rest of your natural life. But of course nobody starts out with the intention of getting in over their head. It happens slowly, and unevenly. For a while I kept the balances small, nothing I couldn�t buckle down and pay off in a few months. But there always seemed to be some good reason to put off the buckle down part, and add just one more thing. Like these really cute shoes are ON SALE and this is the last pair in my size�.
Piper and I bought our house seven years ago, and along with it came a whole home-owner�s encyclopedia of reasons to spend money. The house was in a state of neglect and it seemed too sad to wait and save up for each needed improvement. Investing in your home is not a terrible thing to do, but we didn�t exactly approach it in a systematic way. We just dreamed up big projects, got all excited, and then ran out and bought everything we needed, financed by Mr. Gold and Mr. Platinum.
After a while, the balances start getting big and looking a little scary, so you plunk down bigger payments. And then just when you�re broke and hanging on for payday, something happens: the car breaks down or the furnace goes out, and you have no choice but to add it to the card, too. And then Christmas comes along, and birthdays, and you have to do those, and�.Since I�m charging it anyway, why not get something really nice?
Pretty soon we started jokingly referring to it as �the national debt� but it was one of those laugh-to-keep-from-crying jokes, because the thing had taken on a monstrous life of its own. It gobbled all the money we fed it and never seemed to get any smaller.
The ironic thing is that a big balance doesn�t always deter you from spending. In fact, spending becomes almost easier, especially if you are the sort of a head-in-the-sand person I can be. I already owe thousands of dollars. What difference will another fifty bucks make? Unfortunately, I wracked up some �what the hell� debt on top of my more rational debt there at the end. It was just too frightening to face the full implications of owing so much money, but meanwhile this CD or stack of books or new shoes made me forget about it for a while.
I think debt management has a lot in common with weight management. If you are 100 pounds overweight it is hard to deny yourself a cookie. Not because you don�t know that cookies are contributing to the problem or keeping you from your goal. But because you know that you will have to resist years of cookies to do any good, and it is just too discouraging to start today. Can�t we just wait to start years of deprivation on Monday� or next month? The hardest habits to control are those in which you cannot go �cold turkey.� You can�t just give up using money, any more than you can give up eating food. You have to do the very unglamorous, lonely work of learning to be moderate.
I don�t know what exactly turned the ship around, but I think it was just realizing how the debt had stolen our freedom. The debt kept us working at jobs we didn�t love because they paid more than the interesting ones and it figured in every scheme we had for improving our lives, a grinning specter ready to kill our plans. The debt payments made the difference between living comfortably and living frugally, but that is what we have been doing for about three and a half years, along with applying any money from free-lance jobs, tax refunds and windfalls (gifts) to debt as well. One of the hardest things I did was to take a gift from my mother (She gave my sister a diamond ring and gave my brother and me each a cash gift of equal value, just to be fair�she�s nice like that) and send it in to the credit card company. I wanted so badly to buy something special, or to save it for a trip. But no, I kept telling myself that the money wasn�t real until I bought back my freedom from financial slavery.
The responsibility for this debacle is all mine, and I have it firmly on my shoulders. But I can�t resist pointing out that some other entities are culpable, too. Mine is not an isolated story. If I really thought I was the stupidest person in the world, I would probably be too embarrassed to admit it, but I know it happens to a lot of other people. I blame credit card companies for a whole host of things: bait and switch ploys, hidden charges, constantly changing due dates to increase the likelihood that you will make a late payment thereby incurring a fee. It is bad enough that someone like me can get into debt, but at least I am gainfully employed and able to crawl out of the quagmire I got myself into. But it is immoral to aggressively market easy credit to college students (They have tables set up at every student event and applications in every issue of the student paper at the university where I work.) I have seen students drop out of school because they got into debt and had to go to work to pay off the credit cards instead of paying their tuition.
Yes, it is a choice. But this particular choice conforms to everything our society tells us to do, everything we are encouraged in a thousand ways to be. We are supposed to look good, with nice clothes and professional haircuts and exotically scented products that express our personalities. We are supposed to keep up on the latest movies and music and try out the new trendy restaurants. It is almost impossible to live without a computer, and they become obsolete every few years. We surround ourselves with well-designed, high quality items because it seems wrong somehow to settle for less. We buy nice gifts for those we love �because we care.� We take vacations because we are �fun� and drive nice cars because we are �worth it.� On TV even characters who are supposed to be young or poor still seem to have all the right stuff. We learn that all these things are needs, yet we are shielded from the key piece of information: where does the money for all of this come from, and what happens when you don�t have it and can�t get it? I am not surprised that so many young people make the choice to try and have it all. And so many women, too, like me , a little retarded in our financial development by being patronized for so long, set out to prove we could �live well� beyond our means.
Not getting into debt (and getting out) involves making choices based on value and need�yes, and sometimes delight�instead of emotion or reaction or circumstance. It involves learning or re-learning the four magic words: I can�t afford it.
So today seemed like a momentous occasion. I tried to think of a way to make it memorable, but all I did was walk the four blocks to the post office instead of driving, carrying the envelope in my hand. I slipped it into the mail slot and listened for it to fall, smiled at the grumpy post office ladies, and then turned around and walked back to the office in the cool spring wind. The magnolia tree by the sidewalk is in full bloom and the sweet scent enfolded me as I walked into its aura, a sensation I hadn�t noticed on my way there. And this, I realize, is enough. The absence of the dark cloud of debt makes room for magnolias� and whatever else may come along, in a future that, from now on, belongs to me.
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