Paying for something you can’t afford. Ring a bell? You dig into your wallet and pullout that flashy master card, which has “debt-ridden” all over it. You slide that card or insert it into the machine – little do you know what you’ve just done.
Debt, which is a merciless master, is a fatal enemy of the savings habit.
Poverty, alone, is sufficient to kill off ambition, destroy self-confidence and destroy hope. If we look at it from a realistic perspective, imagine a man. His name is Joe and he makes $12,000 a year. His wife, on the other hand, has terrible spending habits and lives a $20,000 year lifestyle. Therefore, the poor fellow is about $8,000 dollars in debt a year. He has two girls and one boy who wants to go to college, but now that’s impossible because of the father’s debts. The result makes the entire family miserable.
It’s a terrible thing to go through life like a prisoner in chains, bound down like you’re in solitary confinement. The accumulation of debts is a habit. It starts in a small way and grows into enormous proportions slowly over time.
Most men and women develop that notorious habit of spending and unfortunately they never come to their senses in time to save themselves, because spending is like quicksand. It’s slow, but once it grabs hold of your legs, you have no way out. You sink deeper and deeper until you’re way in over your head before suffocating. Good metaphor, ey?
The Fear of Poverty is one of the most destructive of the six basic fears I’ve mentioned in my previous podcasts because it destroys self-confidence, ambition, and sinks you straight into oblivion. On top of that, this particular fear can attract The Fear of Ill Health, and then that can attract The Fear of Old Age. Before you know it, your hair is full of grey by the age of 40. Does any of this ring a bell for you guys? Here, I’ll throw in a story how attaching identity to money is the absolute worst thing you can do.
A young man worked for National Bank of New York City long ago. Because he had that destructive habit of spending, the debtors/creditors would follow him around like a rat nipping at your heels to embarrass and humiliate him. Kind of like in America where the debtors start calling your job? It gets worse. They followed him from city-to-city when he was trying to just escape them until he had accumulated enough money to pay off his indebtedness. Sure enough, they found him again…..and one cold night he leaped off one of the top building on Broadway straight to his demise.
Debt had claimed another victim.
Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/11794402
Arsenio's ESL Podcast 
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