In the Beginning …

Maybe I didn’t go to a great high school.  Maybe if I had, there would have been a class offered in my senior year that would have enlightened me on a subject that has now become one of the controlling factors in my life – debt.  They don’t tell you before you get your first credit card that once you get that particular party started, it can be incredibly difficult to stop.  It can be even harder to clean up the inevitable mess the morning after.

I, likely like you, have debt.  Debt is not necessarily evil.  Too much debt however, especially too much of the wrong kind of debt, if you’re not already aware, can prevent you from living the life you want.  When you’re in debt, you cannot just quit your job if you’re unhappy or take that vacation you so desperately need because you’re so unhappy – not without getting into more debt, that is.  And when you mismanage your debt, you may be putting that happiness off for a very long time.

The tricky part about debt and happiness is that most people spend more money they don’t have to make themselves feel better in the short term without realizing the long-term implications of their actions.  That used to be me.  On bad days, it still is me.  When I got my first credit card, I naturally went shopping.  I then lost my job a few weeks later.  I hadn’t spent that much on the card but before I found a new job, I had to borrow to pay back the money I had already borrowed.  Before I knew it, my debt was getting bigger than I imagined possible and I was losing more and more control over my own life.

For years, I looked the other way.  We all need to sleep and we all need to get up in the morning and get to the lives that await us each day.  This is particularly difficult when all you can do is think about how much money you owe and how many bills are currently due.  And so, many of us opt not to think about our mounting debts when really, like most challenges in life, we should be staring these rising deficits right in the face.  When we know what we’re dealing with, we can actually figure out how to deal with it.

The best way I’ve found to start noticing where all your money goes is to account for every penny spent for one month.  When you stop for gas before work, write it down.  When you pick up your morning non-fat, no-foam, pumpkin latte, write it down.  It doesn’t matter how insignificant it may seem to you at the time.  Sure, it only costs a buck to download a song online but when you download two or three every day, you’ve suddenly dropped 75 bucks on music in a month without even realizing it.

Once you see how you’re digging yourself deeper into debt on a daily basis, you can start figuring out what you truly need in your life and what you can afford to do without.  So, open those eyes; don’t be afraid.  The sooner you do so, the sooner you will actually see your freedom waiting for you at the end of the road.

About the author:

Joseph Belanger is a Toronto-based writer