What’s the big deal with money? – Part II
Debt Slavery – A Spiritual Attack!
All that lead up and we’re going to talk about debt! YES! Why? Because debt has literally enslaved scores of people going back farther than any of us would care to admit. In contemporary American society (and likely the societies of other modernized nations) debt slavery has become more nuanced and insidious.
Before we get into an all too real scenario, let’s start with some basic numbers:
- According to the Project on Student Debt2, “Seven in 10 seniors (68%) who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2015 had student loan debt, with an average of $30,100 per borrower.”
- According to Nerdwallet3, “The average salary for a recent college graduate with a bachelor’s degree was $50,219 a year in 2015.” This is, of course, across all occupations (read – actual results may vary).
- In 2014, the Huffington Post reported the median home price to be $188,900. Note – if you live in any of the California metropolises, that’s probably a one-bedroom “condo”.
So now, the scenario. Let’s say, you just graduated from fill in your state university with a degree in business. You’re elated that you landed a great entry-level job processing reports from a cubicle with a view of the break room so you reward yourself by buying a brand new car. After all, your student loan payments don’t start for six months. You meet the spouse of your dreams at a company mixer who has done the exact same things as you (recent grad, new job, new car). You decide to get married. You think to yourself, “wow, our combined income is roughly $100,000 per year, we’re doing great!.” Then you realize you’re in a new tax bracket. Good thing you can write off the interest on the small (and I mean small) home you bought in the suburbs of fill in your metropolis. Just as you’re about half-way through the “honeymoon” period, you get your first student loan payment bills and the coupon book… tines two.
Now you start to sweat a little because you realize that to furnish your new house you obtained a couple of credit cards and took out store credit with fill in the blank overpriced furniture store. That’s okay, you can look into some relaxed student loan payment options. Then, you have your first child (because that’s what people do). Now you’re thinking, “I need an actual grown up life insurance policy and decent medical insurance.” While you’re getting your bearings, making payments on everything from the blender you bought from the infomercial to the $900 smartphone that knows you better than you know yourself, child number two comes along. While we’re at it, let’s get a dog too.
Now you’re a bona-fide grown up adult, complete with all the bills and stress to prove it. Hopefully, nothing strange happens to the real-estate market or the stock market… As luck would have it, the economy looks pretty stable and these bills are in check. You even have a tiny bit of cash for your daily caffeine fix.
One day, after picking up your two children from daycare and paying the bill ($350 per week for two kids) you start to think to yourself that working in a cubicle might not be your life’s desire. Come to think of it, you hate your commute, your job and your house. You hate your car too because it’s getting a little ragged but you’ll be at the dealership trading it in this weekend (ahh the new car – and new car loan – smell). Little do you realize, your spouse feels the same way. But what do you do? Now, you’re stuck. You have a mountain of debt, an unsustainable lifestyle and there appears to be no way out.
This is the reality for many of us who either ignored or were never taught the tenets of good financial stewardship. We find ourselves slaves to our lifestyles. We fear changes in the economy or reorganizations at work because we could find ourselves in bankruptcy or worse – homeless and unable to provide for our families. We literally go to work every day simply to feed the untenable lifestyles we have created with just a few unwise choices.
This is just one of the scenarios that can lead to heart attacks, divorce, addiction and more. The strange thing is, even knowing this, we seem to be unable to live without 250 channels of super-extra-crazy definition cable on our four super-thin televisions (because every room needs one). We can’t imagine life without the new superphone ultra. And, of course, we need our caffeine fix! Face it, we bought into the lie… We continue to buy into the lie that we deserve or are entitled to certain things because we worked so hard.
Let me ask you this, if you spend all that time in commute, in the cubicle and striving just to keep up the neighbors, what’s happening to your children? How much time are you spending with your family – the people God put under your care? How much time are you spending developing spiritually? How much time are you spending doing God’s work? Spoiler alert – it’s not just the preacher’s job! How can you do anything but run on the hamster wheel? Are you really going to run on that wheel just staying afloat until you’re sixty-five? Then what? How does that feel to think about? You spend your best years chasing a dream that cannot be attained by the prescribed methods only to retire in the hopes that you have enough energy left to enjoy your “golden years” with the spouse of your dreams you met all those years ago…
Please don’t think any of this is by accident or mistake. The enemy of your soul knows humanity well enough to know our pitfalls and weaknesses as a species. Taking you out of the fight by keeping you focused on a barely-making-it, financially (and possibly spiritually) ineffective lifestyle takes intent and planning. The enemy has had plenty of time to watch, study and plan.
If you thought this was just about money, you need to take a second look at part one of this series and make sure you read part three.
There’s good news and bad news here… The good news is, you can escape the slavery of debt and the untenable lifestyles so many of us have created. You can actually live debt free. What’s more is that I am fully convinced that this is what God wants for you. The bad news (more accurately, the news you won’t like) is that it means you are going to have to change – how you think, how you act, what you value, what you spend and likely what you believe.
I have more good news… This is completely doable. There are scores of people who have traveled the road to financial freedom before you and some of them are willing to share how they did it. Before you start looking at the links below, think about the why. If you are doing it because you love money and stuff (whether you have come to admit that yet or not) it’s time to make some big spiritual changes. If your desire is to be free and to help others (please see the next blog – The Least of These), you are in for an amazing journey.
Now to some resources…
Three places I recommend you look are www.danijohnson.com, www.daveramsey.com and www.crown.org. I’ve used and know people who use both War on Debt (www.danijohnson.com) – my go to pick – and Financial Peace University (www.daveramsey.com). Though I have not used their resources personally, I have also heard some good things from Crown Financial as well.
Don’t give up! You can do this and there is a ton of support out there for you!
