Debt

I'M FREE!!!

I went back to work part-time over 5 years ago, partly to get out of the house, and partly to get out of debt. My 10-hour a week job immediately jumped to nearly full-time and I got out of the house plenty. But it has taken me until this year to finally pay off all my personal credit card debt.

Why on earth did it take so long?

My debt wasn't excessive. Mostly it was car repairs and airplane tickets. But I just kept replenishing the debt (can you replenish a negative?). It was fun to take my kids shopping. (And there were college and mission expenses.)

I needed this quote hanging on my fridge AND my bathroom mirror:

"Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never rests; it is never laid off work; it never works reduced hours. It is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you." -J. Reuben Clark

I've asked myself many times why it is we like to shop, to acquire things, and how we all came to be so materialistic. Where did we get our "ceaseless lust for the inessential."
We shop to define ourselves.
We shop to feed our fantasies.
We shop to be accepted and belong to groups.
We shop for its sense of personal control and power.
We shop to celebrate holidays and people and events.
We shop to be up on the latest and greatest.
We shop so people will like us.
We shop for entertainment.
We shop for the attention we get.
We shop to show our position in society.
We shop to make ourselves more attractive.
We shop because we can; we have the freedom of time and money.
We shop because we don't want to miss out on the excitement of life.

We forget this basic fact:
Money is an article which may be used as a universal provider for everything--except happiness, and a universal passport to everywhere--except heaven. --Wall Street Journal

Money buys you food, but not appetite, medicine, but not health, acquaintances, but not friends. It can buy a house, but not a home, a bed, but not sleep, a clock, but not time, a book, but not wisdom, position, but not respect.

Recent studies have shown that instead of buying happiness, money sometimes buys unhappiness, dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, depression and even a greater tendency towards illness.

I don't know how much I'll change my shopping habits, but I know that I feel free--free from debt, from interest, from obligations that eat up my income. And I want to stay that way.

Being free FROM that, I am now free FOR other things.
I just have to figure out what those things are.