I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Debt as a Character Flaw

This feeling has been brewing in my brain for quite a while now. Maybe it is the constant day-to-day toiling of paying down debt. Maybe it is the talking about it I do on a regular basis here on the blog. Whatever it is, its been building up more and more each day. I feel like having debt is seen as some kind of character flaw, and I’m not sure I accept that.

I think I’m just tired of beating myself up for being in debt in the first place. It is like the mistake that just keeps on giving. The crazy part of it to me is, some of it I didn’t even view as a mistake at the time at all. Maybe that makes me naive, maybe that makes me under-educated, maybe it just makes me just plain dumb. I think about being over $30,000 in debt and I feel like an idiot for being in this position. But I think it is time to take a step back and look a little more objectively at my situation and really evaluate how much of my overriding guilt I’m actually entitled to. Is debt really indicative of some sort of character flaw?

First off, a bit over $12,000 of the current debt had nothing to do with me. I had nothing to do with my spouse’s student loans, so I can stop carrying around any guilt over that segment of our debt, at least. That knocks down the debt total assigned to me quite a bit. Moving on.

Next, my own student loans. My student loans are tied to my undergraduate degree. One might say that I wasted a whole lot of time and money to go to college and then graduate school for degrees I hardly use. They may be right. And the ~$12,000 remaining on my student loan may be a large price to pay for the experience of college. The question of if my degree is worth the money spent is one that could be debated for a long time, so I’ll leave that for another discussion. Accepting the “attending college” part and focusing on just the paying for college part, I wasn’t shown any other alternative at the time than taking out the student loans. They were presented as part of my financial aid package and honestly, I wasn’t given another option. Yes, indeed, I might have known better and realized I didn’t *have* to take out the loans - but I was 18 and a wee bit sheltered from personal finance reality. And I wouldn’t have been able to go to college then if I hadn’t taken out the loans, after all. I think the time to let go of any guilt I still carry for decisions I made when I was 18 has come. Very soon that will be half a lifetime ago. The debt is still to be reckoned with but the guilt over incurring it needs to stop.

Which leads to the car. I’ll accept a wee bit of guilt about that, but only a wee bit. In my social reality, someone who actually pays cash for their car is rare and remarked upon excessively. I did a lot of things right about the car - we bought what we needed and could afford, and no more, and we bought used and negotiated for the best deal we felt possible. Yes, theoretically we could have saved up the money and paid cash. But I am going to classify this debt more as a starting point and learning experience versus a source of guilt and a reminder of a mistake. We could have made much worse choices when it came to the car.

And finally, the debt that might actually be looked at as a character flaw - the credit card debt. I can’t live within my means. I have a spending problem. I don’t know how to spend less than I earn. All these things could possibly be very true… half a decade ago. I fully admit I made a lot of mistakes when it came to credit card usage. I don’t shirk my responsibility in that or try to pretend none of it was my fault. As everything though, the credit card debt is more complex than it might seem. Once there was a little debt, it became a cycle that was hard to escape. And when my spouse lost his job - we didn’t have a plan B. No backup plan for what we’d do without his income. that was our fault, and I accept that. But I’m not as horrified by my credit card debt when I remember that a large part of it was incurred during my spouse’s unemployment to pay for food and keep the lights on versus we went out and bought tons of electronics or furnishings with it. Still not a good thing. Still not the best choices. But not necessarily a character flaw.

All in all, I think I’m beginning to see our debt as a reminder of some not so great choices, but also, our commitment to reducing it, and our refusal to take on more debt, as growth. Admitting I have so much debt does still sort of feel like a black mark on my character in some way, but the progress we are making and the plan that we have feels more like a reflection on the strength of my character versus a flaw. Or maybe I’m just tired of feeling guilty for making some stupid choices in the past. I don’t reject responsibility. But I may reject that reflects badly on my character.

Either way, at some point I am sure I will look back on this and know that it took a lot of determination, steadfastness, and ingenuity to overcome this obstacle. And even if the obstacle was of my own making, those sound less like flaws and more like characteristics I would be honored to possess. On to the character building we go…. one penny at a time.

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