The image above represents something very important to me and I’m sure to most working people. For the first time since about 2000 I have no credit card debt. I paid off my last outstanding credit card in February and felt so ecstatic I almost had an orgasm! Key word – “almost”. But it’s still a great feeling. Credit card debt has been one of my vices – along with alcohol and road rage. Then again credit card debt has been the vice of many Americans. Currently Americans hold approximately USD 1.13 trillion in credit card debt; an expense that worsened with the 2008 economic downturn and even more so with the COVID-19 pandemic. (Ironically a Republican was president of the United States at the start of each fiasco, which may or may not factor into it – but that’s a different matter.)
I remember paying off a massive amount of credit card debt in 1998, along with the truck loan I had at the time. And I was able to stay debt free until I lost my job at a bank in 2001. Odd how those two things often coincide, isn’t it?
I always used to tell myself I just needed to earn more money. I struggled constantly when I worked for that bank and I kept saying I should return to college and earn a degree. I finally did that in 2007. But after graduating in December 2008, the engineering company I was working for then couldn’t afford much in the way of salary increases because of – wait for it – the sudden economic downturn. Damn! Then I got laid off in the fall of 2010 and struggled somewhat as I tried to make my freelance technical writing career flourish.
But by then, I’d learned an even more important lesson: you don’t always solve money problems with money. Indeed some people earn six and seven figure annual salaries and are always in debt. It’s true, for the most part, that middle class incomes have shrunk considerably since the late 1970s; that is, in relation to the overall cost of living. A few years ago economic statisticians finally confirmed what the rest of us lowly working class drones already knew – “trickle down” economics doesn’t work! It never has and it never will. Yet conservative politicians keep pushing that theory onto the masses, and many people keep falling for it. That’s why I say my brain is too big to be conservative – with all due respect to my conservative friends and relatives.
In high school I was forced to take algebra and geometry and later wondered what purpose either discipline served. Other than knowing the shortest distance between two objects is a straight line, I feel that the ability to balance a checkbook and figure out percentages (so you know how much to tip the bartender) are the only truly essential math. Budgeting should be included. It’s good to know how long a light year is, but it’s more important to realize that it’s not worth having a savings account if you have more in credit card debt. Two plus two is so hard for some folks to figure out.
Regardless I’m glad I don’t have to wait for that zombie apocalypse to wipe out my credit card debt. Reality is often better.
Chief Writing Wolf 