Fashionably Broke! The High-Price of Convenience
September 21st, 2009
Everyday somebody shows me a way to make my life easier, less complicated, and more convenient. Ironically, everyday, I feel like my life has gotten harder and more complicated and as a result, less convenient! At the pace we’re moving, it won’t be long now before I can permanently attach myself to the couch and tune in to watch my life on autopilot!
There is a high price to be paid for our “conveniences” and I don’t think I’m the only one that is starting to notice. Eating on the run has turned North America into the land of the obese, and other countries are not far behind. Social networking is eliminating the need for face to face communication, the Internet has replaced my library card and video games have moved road hockey from the street to the family room. Have a chat with a teenager and you’ll soon discover that vowels have all but disappeared from our grammar and the entire English language has become a series of three letter abbreviations. How convenient eh?
Have you noticed what convenience is doing to your finances? Spending money is about the easiest thing to do on the planet now, and my cheque account functions eerily similar to an intravenous line from my wallet to the retail world. I can spend money in a million different ways and each one costs me money, but such an insignificant amount that I hardly even notice the leaks day to day. Genius, isn’t it? It is if you’re a bank!
How much of your money goes to services charges, late fees, administrative fees, taxes, and interest every month? Do you even know? We pay fees to take money out of the bank, and fees to put money into the bank. There are fees for paying bills on line, fees to send money to a friend via email and fees to receive that money on the other end. It’s no wonder so many Canadians find they have a lot of month left at the end of the money, right? If this were final Jeopardy, the answer would be, “only 1 in 10 Canadians own a home free and clear and Canadians hold over a trillion dollars in consumer debt,” and the question would be “What is the price of convenience?”
My parents tell me they would hate to try and raise a family in today’s world, littered with choices, temptation, and convenience. Everything can be done faster and built stronger but not everything needs to be faster and stronger. There was a time when if you didn’t have the money, you didn’t buy anything. People paid off their mortgages, and lived debt free because debt wasn’t something you bragged about at parties. Today, it’s become fashionable to be in debt, and instead of paying those debts off in a reasonable period of time, people become resigned to staying there for a lifetime, or go bankrupt and start over. Life has become a board game with a reset button.
So as life becomes easier, faster and less arduous, we are getting fatter, lazier, and more controllable. Whatever you are doing in your life that is giving you the results you are getting financially or other, it’s all justifiable. You can keep telling the world there’s not enough money, complain about the extra charges on your credit card, and continue making excuses or you can live inconveniently, get out of debt, and have peace of mind and a nice life. Just ask someone over the age of 50 what it was like to be them growing up. I feel confident predicting that their answer will be anything but “convenient”…and they probably don’t have a mortgage either.
-Chris
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