On Indebtedness

This kind of goes along the same vein as my last post, about my philosophy on the work-life balance; similar, but different. But my epicurean tendencies do spill over into most other areas of my life. Here is another example: debt and the many faces of indebtedness. It's obvious that someone so selfish would be an impulsive shopper and have a complete lack of self-control when it comes to buying something s/he wants, rather than needs. Guilty!

But again, here's my justification, and I think this might clarify my self-image instead of being painted as a selfish, egotistical, epicurean. I think these words about sum it up: fatality, mortality, "death and taxes". Religious/spiritual beliefs aside, whether there is or is not an afterlife is irrelevant. To throw away your life on this earth because you believe there is an afterlife is stupendously idoitistical. That's like saying "you know what, I'm going to just beat the hell out of this car, because I'm getting a new one in 3 years anyway." Who says that?

So, now that we have proven the relevance of living this life, as opposed to hedging bets on some future one, we can begin to establish that it's important to do it right. Live it up! Here's an example: why wait and save up $50 every paycheck for that new iPod until you have $300 saved to go buy it. Just charge it, and pay it back $50 out of every paycheck, and you know what, you get to play with your new iPod for the next 6 paychecks instead of pining for it. If you're going to buy something anyway, what's the flipping difference? Yeah sure, you pay a little interest, but big deal. Obviously I'm not condoning going out and buying all sorts of stuff you don't need and carrying a lot of debt, but I don't see anything wrong with satisfying your immediate obsessions, in moderation.

So, I have a bit of debt. So what. I'm happy. I'm not going to go to bed at night and get all insomniac because I have so much debt. I'm not going to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch when I could go have the #8 at Taco Bell. I haven't done my time, worked my way up the ladder, working at crap jobs like this one, just to starve myself, or waste my time cutting coupons or waiting for sales, just so I can pay off a little more debt each month. I figure if you want that new laptop bad enough that you are willing to go into more debt to acquire it, and you can afford the additional payments, then I say go for it. You're going to get it anyway, why wait, why deprive yourself now? The only thing I don't like about this philosophy o' mine is keeping track of the payments I have to make to different lenders; I do have a bad tendency of being a few days late all the time. Luckily most have a 2-month period before they'll report you to the credit bureaus, or my 700 credit score would look more like a GPA.