Debt Free - by Darylynn Starr Rank
November, 2005

I called Beth Blackwood who’s doing a workshop on “Debt Free & Financially Independent’ to  ask her what her class is about. She says it’s about eliminating our debt in the fastest way possible. Hmmmm, I think to myself. What a lovely idea. But sounds impossible. 

She says it’s not. Says there’s all this stuff we just don’t understand or know or realize about our economic state. And if we knew, if we understood, if we really understood, we could eliminate our debt in seven or eight years instead of  twenty! Imagine.

She gave me the most frightening example. Especially since my husband and I are, at this very moment, in the process of getting our sofas recovered. Frightening example: if you buy a couch—just a sort of average couch—on a typical credit card; and pay it off with the minimum monthly payment, which many of the people I know do as a matter of course (and financial statistics show that is how many of us do it), it will take you over thirty years to pay it off. Thirty years! 

And guess how much interest you’ll have paid. On average, over 8,000 dollars. Imagine! Thirty years, $8,000. And who’s going to have a celebration over paying off a thirty year old couch. (Ours is only fifteen years old and it’s in rags!)

The statistics in B.C. are appalling. The average family already owes more than they earn. And that doesn’t include all the expenses they have for actual living, you know, like food. It only includes their debt. 

Beth says there’s a lot of information that neither the banks nor the credit card companies want us to know. That would help us make better decisions. That thirty year, $8000 interest payment, is just one small example. So this is a whole different version of conspiracy theories. (Not that they wouldn’t tell us if we asked, but who the heck would have any idea of what the questions are.)

Well, we all know about how financial difficulties affect us, the stress, the relationship “discord”, bankruptcy statistics.  It’s high up there on the ‘how to end up really miserable’ list. 

So maybe knowing a whole lot more than we know is a truly good idea. Many of us spend so much of our lives burying our heads in the sand about our finances. Maybe it would be way better to go for a swim in the ocean instead.

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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