{"id":189,"date":"2014-08-22T16:34:32","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T06:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janineprince.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2015-01-30T14:26:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T04:26:19","slug":"desires-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janineprince.com\/home\/desires-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Desire’s dark side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lustful affairs bring consequences. The lovechild of the compulsion to consume<\/a> is the unwanted bastard offspring Debt.<\/p>\n

Oh Debt. We are\u00a0not\u00a0shy about conceiving you.<\/p>\n

Australians lead the world with an average household debt (which includes mortgages) footprint of 1.8 \u2013 this means that people are spending nearly twice what they earn. All of their income and 80% of a whole \u2018nother wage. Staggering. (ref ABS Data May 2014<\/a> )\u00a0 No really.<\/p>\n

\u2018Yeah\u2019 you say \u2018but that\u2019s including houses and everybody knows that the Australian housing market is overvalued. That’s why I rent!\u2019 Ok fine.
\nAustralians owe billions on credit cards, about $4 400 per person.<\/p>\n

Just for fun, this clock (ASIC Moneysmart<\/a> ) shows how much\u00a0Australians currently owe on the plastic.\u00a0Your factoid for today is that 49% of those who carry $5,000 or more in credit card debt have a degree or a diploma<\/a>. Oh wait, last one!\u00a0Two in five people have no idea what interest rate they are paying on their card (and that was in March 2013<\/a>!\u00a0).<\/p>\n

\"Charles<\/a><\/p>\n

Much as those figures stimulate the curiosity and sound all newsy they actually distract from the human story that sits behind them. It is all too easy to evaluate yourself immediately against those figures so you can dismiss them. Relief \u2013 ‘mine\u2019s lower!\u2019 Or to judge \u2013 \u2018how could they let it get to that?!\u2019 I chose to include them because they\u2019re real. Most Australians of age have one or more credit cards. They owe money on them that potentially they will never ever actually pay out. Or like dieters who know better, they yo-yo in and out of debt on the cards in tides of recrimination and stoic, forced budgets.<\/p>\n

None of us is alone with our debt baby. We live in culture where it is normal to carry debt. That\u2019s what we call it, not \u2018tortured by\u2019 or \u2018enslaved by\u2019 an endless burden. No, we just casually \u2018carry\u2019 it. We consider it part of the \u2018cost of living\u2019. Everyone does it. Those who do not have a credit card have an uneasy aura of either a do-gooder or a bankrupt (depending a bit on the tone of voice used to convey the information) but are a bit creepy either way. Not someone you\u2019re going to listen to anyway.<\/p>\n

Would you listen to yourself though? If your future self could tunnel through the time vortex and whisper in your ear, what would they say to you about how you left them holding the crying, hungry baby? Can the future you remember the emergency purchase or convenience of takeaway dinner or the money you saved by buying on sale with credit? Did you ever fall in love with a book that you simply must have only to get it home and put it on top of the pile of other books you haven\u2019t yet read? I did. Many times.<\/p>\n

When ANZ handed my debt over to a hard-nosed collection agency and I had to own up to my past indiscretions there was no way I could remember a single thing that had been so important it had to be bought with that card. My past self had blithely given me a big stinking problem to deal with and I hated her for it. If that\u2019s not a perfect example of provisional living <\/a>going bad, I don\u2019t know what is. I don\u2019t know that I would have listened to future me though, if I had tried to deny those lustful urges. In the end, it was an affair that took me years to recover from.<\/p>\n

Why do we assume that our future selves will somehow have more resources, more ability to deal with the consequences of our actions? Because we\u2019ve inadvertently subscribed to the doctrine of progress<\/a>. We do it in our personal lives, we do it in our communities when we build houses on every next block of land, leaving no space for anything else. We do it as a nation when we use every bit of energy we can grab because \u2018they will figure out a new technology soon and we\u2019ll all have limitless lives and won\u2019t have to work\u2019 or something that sounds like winning the \u2018infinite planet lotto\u2019. Not going to happen. Addictive and easy, sure, but not real.<\/p>\n

The reality is that it is impossible to be free when we are in the thrall of endless compound interest on debt. In the next quiet moment you have to yourself, ask your future self what it is that you both want most out of life.<\/p>\n

It is not going to be more debt.<\/p>\n

Kiss your loved ones and plan a different way forward. We\u2019ve got a lot ahead of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lustful affairs bring consequences. The lovechild of the compulsion to consume is the unwanted bastard offspring Debt. Oh Debt. We are\u00a0not\u00a0shy about conceiving you. Australians lead the world with an average household debt (which includes mortgages) footprint of 1.8 \u2013 this means that people are spending nearly twice what they earn. All of their income […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7,4,1],"tags":[8,36,45,47,40,41,38,46,43,9,44,30,29,39],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-is-a-verb","category-not-writing","category-thinking","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-choice","tag-consumption","tag-debt","tag-denial","tag-failure","tag-freedom","tag-less","tag-lust","tag-simplify","tag-stuff","tag-tides","tag-time","tag-wealth"],"yoast_head":"\nDesire's dark side - Janine Prince<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/janineprince.com\/home\/desires-dark-side\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Desire's dark side - Janine Prince\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lustful affairs bring consequences. 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