Tainted Wisdom

The other day, I examined my checking account and was perplexed by how low my average daily balance had become. I went through my statement’s detail to figure out how and where I’d been spending more. I discovered I was being frugal as ever, but my utilities, gasoline, and grocery costs had gone way up. I wasn’t consuming more. Everything was just more expensive.

I’m starting to feel like I’m living paycheck to paycheck, which is something I haven’t felt in over a decade. I earn a respectable living and my mortgage balance is less than my gross annual income. The car I’m driving is 15 years old. I have no other debt and I max my 401k. Funny how everyone I know who is making half my salary drives nicer, newer cars, lives in bigger houses, and goes out to eat more often than I do. How do they do it?

I hear on the news we are not in a recession, but one might be coming. God help us when it comes, because it’s bad enough right now.

So, money is tighter. Sometimes we’re more prosperous, sometimes not. I can live with that. At least I thought I could live with it until I realized part of the reason I’m suffering greater financial stress. Until quite recently, everywhere I looked, I saw nice, shiny cars, SUVs zooming to and fro as if possessed with madness, and luxurious subdivisions sprouting up overnight in every direction. Credit card applications were stuffing my mailbox full, and mall parking lots were filled to the brim, teeming:

The people out there making less money than me, but living in bigger houses and driving nicer cars have been stealing from me by living beyond their means.

BORROWED MONEY. CREDIT.

It’s simple economics. Borrowing money puts more money into the economy. The more money there is in the economy, the less each dollar is worth. So, while I’ve been putting hard-earned dollars away, driving a used car, and living in a modest house, the credit pigs out there have not been saving a nickel, have been living high on the hog, driving Hummers, living in mansions, singing and dancing the ridiculous songs of the nouveau riche. Now I pay more for things because they have eaten more than their share on credit, leaving my fair portion much smaller. My hard-earned money has been devalued!

My only solace will be watching all the pigs slaughtered in the coming years of economic woe. Now that they are fattened up on my dime, it is time to meet the butcher.