Catching Idle Butterflies

All about the NOW

Patience I can’t include as one of my virtues. Because of that, I have run into a few difficulties, not over my head difficulties, but enough to where I had to make sacrifices in order to get myself out of them.

I could blame society, but that’s a copout. I still had, and have, a choice to walk away.

That being said, society, especially American society, has made it easy to not exercise patience, and thereby count it as one of my good points.

I’ll look at television first, specifically commercials.

Now after the holidays and the inevitable gluttony we all partook in, television is inundated with weight loss commercials: “I went from a size 10 to a size three in only two months! All you have to do is call this number, and we’ll deliver all your meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, right to your door!” “Oh, and if that’s too much work, do we have a pill for you!”

While I’ve never fallen for these “miracle weight loss programs”, they do influence the thinking after a while that a person can shed pounds with little effort and in no time at all. It’s no wonder diets fail more often than not.

My biggest problem has been on the financial end, especially credit cards.

America is a consumer driven society. We define our self-worth by what we have, whether it be the house we own, the car we drive, or that latest must-have technological gadget (That's me. I'm a techno-junkie).

It’s a huge trap, sprung by not just the advertisers, but financial institutions. They have not only made it easy to get loans or credit cards but to use them whenever we want something (I’ll leave out the need for things as it will make this entry far too long).

Talking to a coworker the other day who had just purchased a brand new SUV admitted he bought it because he could afford the monthly payments. The ticket price was less than a momentary consideration (lets also forget the entire cost once you add in the total interest paid after 48 or 60 months is up). It was about what he could afford to spend now, from month to month. By the time it is paid off, he'll have something not worth a quarter of what he paid for it.

Credit cards are an even easier trap. When we first get one, we promise ourselves to pay it off when the bill comes. Pffft. How many times have I broken that promise? I’m too embarrassed by the number to tell you. That, and the number is too high for me to count without a calculator.

After that promise gets broken so many times, we end up staring at a bill into the thousands, the interest accruing at an exponential rate as we stare at it until tears stream down our cheeks from the sudden inability to blink.

And then what do we do when overwhelmed by credit card debt? The extreme would be declaring bankruptcy, but many times we take out a home equity loan, a second or even third mortgage. But all that does is shift the debt from one financial institution to another, albeit at a reduced interest rate. All this because we were too impatient to save that money for the things we wanted to buy.

During tax season, I always see that article about how Americans are saving less and spending more, sometimes well past their means.

This should come as no surprise. What incentive do we have to save? We don't have to wait for anything when we have a credit card (or six) with a $20,000 credit limit. We can pay it off – eventually – ignoring what we’ll end up really paying when it’s all said and done.