Today's news bulletin carried the headline that Australians have the highest personal debt on record with household debt now higher than what the entire country earns annually. Household debt includes mortgages, personal loans and credit cards.
I could rant on and on about 'don't buy what you can't afford' and 'living simply' and my current bug-bear 'the commercialization of Christmas' (and yes I know the debt figures don't include the Christmas spend) but I think I would be blowing in the wind.
Suffice to say that any potential lessons to be learned from the infamous GFC seem to have been lost - maybe we really did need to have a deep recession to make people listen.
3 comments:
you know, i think as well as overwhelming pressure from society to over spend,
there is also a severe lack of financial education out there.
i mean, where do people get their money knowledge from?
school?
their parents?
the banks?
these places all pass on antiquated information that only serves to encourage MORE bad debt and MORE financial ignorance.
5% of the population have 90% of the wealth.
so obviously schools, parents and banks do not have the information worth knowing.
parents can only pass on what they know, so they can be excused.
but schools - they teach what they want people to believe in order to keep schools in positions of power.
that is:
go to school
study hard
get into a good uni
get a job
work hard
spend more than you make
etc etc.
if people were independently wealthy they would not need to go to school in order to succeed, would they?
and banks - don't even get me started!
i don't think i have all the answers.
i just think that ignorance has a lot to answer for.
ps:
i really have to stop leaving entire blog posts in your comments!
Oh soapbox away - there is no word limit here lol
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