RIDING A SLIPPERY SLOPE ON A PLASTIC CARD

Enough of the Olympics! For a day at least.

I’d just like to take a short hop-skip-and-jump back to Monday’s entry on the ‘Arsehole’ minister. Thinking about it, I soon came round to my parents’ maxim: Live within your means. It really as simple as that. No credit; no credit crunch.

The only trouble is, it’s not that simple any more.

My parents drummed it into me; Mrs N’s parents drummed it into her. Live within your means. And they did. Except the new-fangled telly, of course. We have to have a telly; it’s educational, it’s entertainment, it’s the Coronation, it’s the Cup Final. Okay, we’ll have a telly on HP – but that’s all.

Mrs N and I bought some furniture and a telly on Hire Purchase. And, of course, everyone buys a car on ‘finance’ (now it’s a plan, not the much-maligned HP). But that’s it. We bought one item at a time on HP; the payments were comfortable. The mortgage had to wait; until we’d gone through enough hoops.

Not having kids, I shall have to ‘borrow’ my mate Frank’s to continue with the next step. He and his missus drummed it into their children: Live within your means. Okay, a little HP, a finance plan for the car, an achievable mortgage. Whoa, whoa … stop there! Credit card? Who said anything about a credit card?

And there you have it – the start of a slippery slope, just right for whizzing down on a little plastic card. You want it now? Of course you can have it now. Just pay off as much as you like every month, as long as it’s at least the bank’s minimum. Just like HP. Except, unlike HP, if you pay only the minimum the debt keeps getting bigger.

And there you have it: a generation that thinks the ‘live now pay later’ lifestyle is a lifestyle to aspire to. Why wait – you only die.

Snag is, you might die of worry, depression, heart attack, stroke, suicide, whatever, well before you should. That’s the true price of not living within your means.

Don’t do it! Let’s make the banks suffer for a change!