Are You an Indentured Servant?

Owing Money is a Way of Life in America

Let’s talk money, shall we?

There are lots of people writing about investing, finances, money management, crypto currencies, and retirement these days. Everyone’s an expert.

Yet, something doesn’t add up if you ask me, no pun intended.

When I mention debt, things get kinda quiet, but I still think it’s worth mentioning. After all, the percentage of Americans in debt is around 80%. That means that 8 in 10 Americans have some form of consumer debt. What’s the average amount of debt that Americans carry, sometimes to their graves?

Roughly, $38,000 not including a mortgage.

Not including a mortgage. Now that’s a bit disturbing. I personally have relatives and friends who make a decent living, but are still head over heels in debt. So, this way of life isn’t just something that happens to the poor. In fact, the working poor aren’t who I’m writing about today. I’m writing about the middle class who trade their personal freedom every damn day for a life of indentured servitude. They work day in and day out only to turn around and give their entire paychecks to their creditors. They’re literally drowning in debt.

Dentists do it, doctors do it, even movie stars do it. Let’s do it. Let’s go in debt.

Personally, I think that the American economy depends on my debt making someone else rich. Whether it’s the bankstahs or producers of goods, businessmen or real estate agents, they’re all trying to sell you something. One way we measure the economy is by a growing GDP.

We must sell more next year than this year.

So, through advertising, a great way to create cultural values, Americans have been convinced that bigger is better and that the more you buy the more impressive you become. Even when we can’t afford it, we’re told we deserve it. There’s so much to want and not enough money to go around, so we live above our means no matter how much we make, and the rest is history.

I don’t understand this.

I never have. I don’t care how much a person makes if you subtract their debt from their assets and you’re left with zero, then they have no money.

They’re poor. They’re living on borrowed time.

I’ve seen people lose their homes, cars, and businesses. I’ve seen people lose their jobs and have no money set aside to get them through hard times. The experts tell us that we should have enough money saved to cover our bills for at least three months preferably six if God forbid we lost our jobs.

So many people are living right on the edge.

Once again, I’m not talking about the working poor although in all fairness I was once the working poor and there were lots of things that I didn't buy or do for years until I could get on my feet. Saving money is not easy. Living within our means is hard to do.

Saying no to ourselves sucks.

I’m not rich now and never was, but I’m no longer destitute. I put myself through college and worked as a fifth grade teacher for 22 years and as an administrator for six years. When we were raising our kids, we rarely ate out or went on vacations, had no booze in the house, and only bought used cars. We lived in our house while we were building it for many years. My kids rarely got new toys or clothes except at Xmas and birthdays.

This was the way we were raised back in the day, and we grew up and used that model to dig ourselves out of poverty.

I kind of chuckle when financial advisors suggest that people should invest their money. What money, I ask? If most people are in debt, then they have no money, not really.

Recently my friend who’s a dentist had to borrow money from his 93 year old mom who lives solely on social security.

She still manages to save money every year. How? She lives in a small, one bathroom ranch. It’s the same modest house that her and her husband built over seventy years ago. She never worked and her husband wasn’t a professional. He worked his whole life in a local factory. Everything that she has, however, she owns. A lot of it is well used but she owns it. She has zero outstanding debt. No debt and low, low overhead!

That’s her secret.

Yet, her son who is close to retirement age and has had a lifetime of making really good money had to borrow money from her. I’ve watched him live high on the hog for years and wondered what the heck. Now I know what the heck,

My suspicions were right.

The middle class trend these days is to go into retirement in debt. Three out of every ten seniors devote more than 40% of their monthly income to debt and a quarter have a mortgage with more than 20 years remaining on it. In fact, I keep hearing about seniors who purchase their dream homes when they retire. Really? When do Americans ever have enough? Even though more than half of today’s senior citizens say they intend to enter retirement debt free, only about 25% of retirees are debt free.

This makes no sense.

I live my life in retirement as though tomorrow I could lose my pension or my husband could lose his social security. With that scenario becoming more and more possible, we strive to keep our overhead as low as possible. So low that we could survive on two part time jobs at minimum wage if need be. Our savings remain untouched. We deliberately moved to a less expensive part of the country after retirement. No financial advisor ever presented any of these strategies to us. We simply chose an entirely different path than many people.

We chose to pay our way out of indentured servitude as soon as possible.

It’s a crazy world, Master Jack. One which I’ve tried to escape since I became an adult. Seriously! I’ve been observing what other people do and trying to learn from their mistakes most of my life. One thing that I finally understood is that money management starts with a basic understanding that having it all is NOT a good thing. When a person adopts the American drive to consume anything and everything in their paths, they just signed a contract to remain an indentured servant for years to come.

That’s when I set my goals on NOT having it all and keeping it small and managable.

Less stuff means more freedom. No debt is freedom. The path to an easier life is one free of clutter and debt. My goal became to live small and stay debt free as early in life as possible. It’s hard work. In fact, to reach that goal requires just as much drive as it takes to make money. I contend that the rewards are equally satisfying. For the last 20 plus years I’ve lived debt free. No mortgage, car payments, student loans, credit card debt, or bank loans of any kind. I don’t give a f*ck about my credit rating. I never intend to borrow money again. If I can’t pay cash for it, I’ll do without.

Yet, living in misery to most Americans is the mere idea of NOT buying STUFF.

I’ve often wondered what would happen to America if tomorrow people only bought what they really needed for a few years. Would our economy crash? Certainly we’d have to sit down and rethink our goals in life, redefine our values, and recreate a society that places importance on different things.

How would we know who to admire if they weren’t sporting a new car, vacationing in the hottest spots, partying with the best booze, dining out nonstop, building the biggest homes, and living THE life.

The American Dream has long been touted as the be all and end all of the greatest country in the world, but I’m not convinced that what we’ve been told we should want is actually what we need.

Maybe the American Dream is actually The American Nightmare.

Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.