Credit

I have the misfortune of being assigned the phone number which once belonged to a deadbeat. A deadbeat, despite the new reframing of financial responsibility since the mortgage crisis of the last 5 years, is someone who takes on financial responsibility to someone who lends him/her money and simply does not pay it back. I would be ignorant of the irresponsibility of the previous owner of my phone number from Comcast Cable if she weren't being ruthlessly pursued by an army of debt collectors. Well, actually I am being ruthlessly pursued by these indiscriminate sharks by way of endless harrassing robo-calls.

I have called back the half-dozen agencies which harrass me. I have explained that Roseanna doesn't live here and used to have my number, but no longer does. Each has promised not to bother me again. Each has passed on my number to another agency or agent within that agency. One robo-call had the nerve to tell me to hang up my own phone if I am not Roseanna because listening to their message would invade her privacy! Elizabeth Warren's senatorial campaign even called looking for Roseanna.

I imagine Roseanna lounging on a Caribbean beach with new hair color and a boy toy. That's just how my mind works. In any case, these calls bolster my belief that not participating in the credit economy is the practical humanist way to go.

I use a card for my routine purchases. I've chosen one which yields a miniscule donation to a cause I support, despite my loathing of exploitation of non-profit corporatism. I pay my balance each month. I am sure this displeases the credit card company. If storefront banking were more convenient and violent crime less common, I would use cash. I roll with the realities in my environment.

Part of my personal practice has entailed attempting to avoid any form of debt since I was an adolescent. I had parents who constantly maintained that I was indebted to them for my existence and anything I make of it. Since I was quite an unhappy child and adolescent, I often wished I could somehow return or exchange the great gift of life they had provided. I became quite adamantly independent financially. This bothered them no end, even though they were not forthcoming with an alternative financial plan. They too were very independent financially and followed their budgets rigorously to actualize their own desires, which included a vacation home and a plush retirement which included foreign travel.

Learning to live within my means and to earn whatever I needed to actualize my own plans was a tremendous task. I left home at twenty with nothing more than I managed to save throughout my education. It was not enough to last me more than a couple of months. I lived in cheap boarding houses in rundown neighborhoods. I ate from cans. But I eventually leanred how to land a job and make enough money to get by. I refused to borrow money from anyone.

Later in life I had a student loan and several mortgages. I can truly say I didn't sleep as well when I had these debts. I played the mortgage system to get to the point where I would not need one. I did not enjoy the process. I have little respect for banks and so-called "free market" capitalism. It is a complex mess of schemes and rip offs, in my opinion.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Shakespearean wisdom from Hamlet which I have always appreciated.  If more of us practiced this form of financial responsibility as well as possible in the world as it exists, society would drastically change. I believe it would change for the better.