Financial Prison
Today I was reading my own story of how I got out of debt over at Bible Money Matters and I realized that there are many Hispanics that are in my shoes. Not my current debt free shoes, but the shoes that left $20,000 footprints everywhere I went. I was a debt man walking. Those shoes are easy to fill because of how easy it is to take out a loan.
One car can take you back several years. I know a lot of Hispanics driving brand new cars right out of high school and during college. This does not make sense to me. In fact its the kind of situation that makes you think, wow their mom and dad must make good money since they pay for their own car and the cars of their children. This comes off judgemental but its true and they grow up never feeling how bad debt hurts a family until they have their own.
I would go as far as to say that many Hispanics are not getting married these days because they simply cannot afford to or they would rather stay single longer so they can live and buy whatever they want, living at home or with 3 or 4 roommates. Some are 1 roommate away from financial disaster because if 1 moves out the rent for everyone goes up.
See most of us grew up with families that helped each other. If I had an uncle that was sick, several families would pitch in and pay the rent or necessities, but it was because they were either day laborers or they didn’t get paid time off from work. These days people need help paying their bills because they lost their job and they drive brand new cars and live in fenced in neighborhoods.
The fenced in neighborhood becomes the financial prison for those who cannot afford to live there. We need to break free from this time of spending behavior and live on less than we make.
I think this is true in a lot of communities. I appreciate your story and your passion to help others break free from the debtor’s prison.
It seems that this is a more fatal illness than the H1N1 flu. The virus of materialism is killing the personal finance of many people