The Script of Life

Got this from International Marketing Group Materials

If we track the life of average educated people, the financial script often goes like this:

The child goes to school, graduates, finds a job and soon has some money to spend. The young adult now can afford to rent an apartment, buy a TV set, new clothes, some furniture and of course a car. And now the bills begin to come.

One day, the adult meets someone special, sparks fly, they fall in love and get married. For a while life is blissful because two can live cheaply as one. They now have two incomes, only one rent to pay, and they can afford to set a few peso aside to buy the dream of all young couples, their own home.

They find their dream home, pull the money from savings and use it for a down payment on the house, and they have a housing loan. Because they have a new house, they need new furnishings. So they find a furniture store that advertises those magic words “No money down, easy installment payments.”

Life is wonderful and they throw a party and have all their friends over to see their new house, new car, new furniture and new appliances. They are now deeply in debt for the rest of their lives. Then the first child arrives.

The average, well educated, hard working couple after dropping the child off at nursery school, must now put their nose to the grindstone and go to work. They become trapped by the need for job security simply because, on average, they are less than three months away from financial bankruptcy.

From these people you often hear, “I can’t afford to quit. I have bills to pay.” Or a modification of a song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.”

~Till then