Column: This Side of The Fence; Staying out of debt
I come from a fairly frugal family. Well, at least my grandpa is like that. He’s a banker from back in day that never really made a lot of money, but did OK because he learned to make what he had count.
I remember as a child sitting with my grandpa on the swing in the backyard talking about my financial future. He always asked me if I was saving my money, and I always said yes, although in my younger years my version of life savings was the jar of pennies sitting on my dresser at home.
With no money to speak of, these chit-chats were only marginally useful. However, during one of these financial check-ups my grandfather gave me, what I still to this day consider one of the soundest pieces of advice I have ever received. He said, “Mikaylie, the secret to financial happiness is simple. If you make $20,000 a year and spend $19,999, that is happiness. But if you make $20,000 a year and spend $20,001, that is misery.”
As I have progressed through my college years, these words have hit home. I have never been overly wealthy. I don’t drive a fancy car or wear designer jeans or anything like that, but I have managed, with a little help and a lot of hard work, to have everything I need and more while attending Utah State.
I have been able, thus far, to pay for school without having to go into debt. Of course, this option is not available to every student. Sometimes debt is necessary to get things done. But, as students, it is important to keep debt in the back of our minds, especially in relation to credit cards.
According to Incharge Debt Solutions, a non-profit debt counseling agency, college students on average have about $2,700 in credit card debt accumulated by the time they graduate. Around 10 percent of students owe over $7,000 on credit cards.
That is a lot of money. I wonder if students in that situation can even remember what they spent their money on. Credit card debt is the kind that sneaks up on you, a little here and a little there, until you are way over your head, and all of the sudden you’ve spent a thousand dollars and can’t remember what you bought.
This is where my grandpa’s secret to happiness comes in handy. Living within your means can solve tons of problems for students, and college is the time set aside for us to figure out how to do that. Learning to manage money properly will prevent future unpleasantness for students and their families.
However, money management can be a painful subject, mostly because it means coming up with a budget, and it’s simply a mishap that budget isn’t a four-letter word. Budgets have the reputation of limiting the spenders. Suddenly, when you’re on a budget, you can’t have everything you want.
This is both true and misleading. True, you can’t always afford everything you want if you are trying to live on a budget. But I would say that is true most of the time anyway. There are very few people on the planet that can afford whatever they want the very instance they want it. Most people have to work and save money. Of course, that’s mostly referring to the big things, cars, computers, vacations.
For the little things people like to do such as dining out and going to the theater, these are the kinds of things people make possible through budgeting. If dining out once a week is important to you, make room in your budget. Of course, this may mean you have to sacrifice some of the less important things. Your meals the rest of the week may have to be less than extravagant. But you still will be able to have what you want the most.
It is in this way that budgets aren’t limiting, but freeing. I would be willing to bet if you developed a workable budget, you would discover you actually can afford more than you thought you could. That is because budgets provide a plan, and without a plan, a lot of time and money is lost in transition. With a budget, students would be able to take care of themselves now and in the future, no matter what the future holds.
I’ve been told that college is the time to be selfish, really have fun, and spoil yourself. Part of that is very true, take care of yourself in college, have some fun, do some crazy things, but don’t let unmanageable debt and overspending be one of those things. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life working off the fun things you did in college.
Mikaylie Kartchner is a senior in print journalism. Send any comments or questions to mikayliek@cc.usu.edu.