Because I work in a sit-down restaurant, I encounter many customers who pay for their meals with credit. Most of them seem fairly affluent, but every now and then, I get people who don't look as though they can really afford to be eating what they pay for when they sign the dotted line.
According to the Federal Reserve, personal revolving credit debt soared to $792 billion in April of this year. In 2003, nearly 1.7 million American households filed for bankruptcy, according to an article on the Web site of the debt settlement firm Hoffman, Brinker and Roberts, Inc. On Aug. 14, 2002, former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin delivered a speech before a meeting of Junior Achievement for New Mexico in which she said that 82 percent of high school seniors had failed a quiz examining their knowledge of personal finance issues, including credit.
These grim statistics point to a problem detailed in the 1997 documentary "Affluenza": Americans buy too much stuff. According to the documentary, Americans save only 4 percent of their monthly earnings. The Japanese, by comparison, save 60 percent of theirs.
This brings to mind the case of "Karyn." Karyn, who operates the Web site www.savekaryn.com, had a problem. In her words, that problem was "Too many lattes at Starbucks. Too many BCBG tops. Too many great Gucci purses." Karyn was lucky enough to be able to use her Web site as a sort of personal debt relief charity and get herself out of debt in 20 weeks. However, most people in debt are not so lucky, and many Americans risk falling into the same trap she did.
In fact, according to the Media Awareness Network, Americans see an average 3,000 ads a day, all saying one thing: Buy more stuff. And college students are not immune.
Opening the section of Visa's Web site on student credit cards, a viewer is greeted with a photo of a tech-savvy female college student with her laptop and credit card, presumably about to make an on-line purchase. To the photo's left is an introductory statement that reads, "It's easy to start spending responsibly and build a good credit history." Translation: "As a college student, you're a marketing statistic, so we're giving you a way to buy more stuff."
In a society in which the quality of a person's life is measured by how much he or she owns, the clarion call to buy more and more can weigh down on us. Sometimes, the majors we choose in college reflect our desires to get rich and acquire more material wealth. After graduating with degrees in the more lucrative fields, presuming that we aren't saddled with huge student loan debts, we go and spend eight hours a day in climate-controlled office blocks working jobs we don't genuinely enjoy. In return, we get oversized houses, new cars and all the latest gadgets.
A comfortable lifestyle and a sustainable lifestyle are not mutually exclusive, however. Though being a starving student may make "the good life" tempting, it's important to bear in mind the financial, psychological and environmental costs associated with a life of luxury. I'm not advocating living a bare-bones lifestyle, but I do encourage living a life that doesn't involve a gigantic house, a gas-guzzling car and weekly shopping extravaganzas.
With student loan debt such a huge problem for college graduates, perhaps the best way to avoid sinking deeper into the dungeon of bad credit is to avoid racking it up in the first place.
Write to Alaric at
ajdearment@bsu.edu
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