Frustrated and unorganized when you pay your bills? Here’s how to make it easier….

Ever wondered why the cash in your hand is called a bill? Here’s my spin on it….

What if we’ve been led to believe money we THINK is an asset is really just a liability (debt)?

Imagine giving your teenager a credit card. After the bills come in you realize your teenager was undisciplined and didn’t want to stop charging when the card maxed out.

The bills come in but are more than you can pay. You get past due and go into collection. You have to file bankruptcy and get sued. That’s the end of it, right? Just take the card away from your kid. It’s over. You’re safe.

But that darn teenager starts printing his own credit cards and putting your name on them. He’s going into debt and using your name to do it. He’s promising you’ll make the monthly payments in the future. But you’re tapped out. You’ve run out of income to pay.

So how does your kid keep spending and convince the bank to keep lending? He finds someone else’s parents to make the payments. And he continues the process over and over.

He gets to spend and never be responsible for the debt. He’s getting money for nothing. The bank is making profit on the interest and your teen is happy because the spending is endless. Eventually your teen will run out of parents willing to make his payments, right? Yes he will. But not until enough parents get sick and tired of not being able to pay their bills.

Congress is your teenager. The Federal Reserve Bank is the credit card company. You and your fellow taxpayers are the parents willing to make the credit card payments for spoiled, undisciplined child. The Federal Reserve bank and Congress don’t care who makes the payments as long as the payments are made.

Did I forget to mention the credit card “bills” your teenager keeps running up are the same as the dollar “bills” you hold in your purse or wallet?

To Your Financial Education,
Greg Whitaker
Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved

Think making more money will solve your financial problems? Think again…

8.5 years in the lending business and you almost can’t not think about money on a daily basis. At least that’s the case for me. By day I help people borrow money and realize home ownership. In my spare time I teach financial wellness and promote financial literacy.

If I’ve learned anything in these past years in the lending industry, it’s this: people will probably always borrow money. That means people will always go to banks to get it. When I first started getting out of debt as quickly as possible in 2006, there was a seeming conflict of interest inside me. Here I am helping people get into debt for a paycheck. And here I am at the same time getting rid of my own debt as fast as possible.

It took some time to reconcile those two seemingly opposite points of view. Debt, yes or no? I’ve gained some wisdom in the last 6 years not only from my own life experience but also from people older and wiser.

A kernel of wisdom I recently picked up was from the son-in-law of a mentor. He’s been a financial educator and financial literacy advocate for years. He said, “There is no good debt/bad debt, there’s only necessary debt.” The biggest example being borrowing money to buy a home. Not many people can save up enough cash to buy a home without a loan.

A friend recently said one of THE most profound things I’ve ever heard. It related to my working in the lending industry and at the same time teaching people rapid debt elimination. My friend simply said this, “Helping people get what they want is not immoral.” That’s a bombshell of wisdom each person must reconcile on their own terms.

And in my confession as a mortgage banker I leave you with this: Debt is neither good nor evil, only thinking makes it so. I can’t express how big this concept is. Most struggle through it from cradle to grave. I’ve made my peace with this one.

To Your Financial Freedom,
Greg Whitaker