Do you LIKE being a slave?
Piling up credit card debt makes you a slave. You give up your freedom every time you add to the balance on your card.
When you owe debt, you are no longer working for your own financial well-being. You are working to make someone else wealthy – the credit card company.
You are their slave. You toil all day to make them rich. You’ve voluntarily become one of their minions. Does this make you mad? It should.
The Truth About Debt and Slavery
“A person held in servitude as the chattel of another,” is how Merriam-Webster defines slave.
What does it mean to be the “chattel of another”? It means you are their property, their possession. They own you. That’s what credit card debt does. It makes you the property of big banks.
They enjoy an amazing amount of control over your life. More than you probably realize. The credit score they assign you determines whether you can buy a house or rent an apartment. It heavily influences what you pay for insurance and can often determine whether you get a job or not.
If you fail to pay what you owe on your cards, then the banks can sue you and even send you to jail. They can literally take away your personal freedom. That’s what you are risking as you continue to pile on debt. Think I’m kidding or misinformed? Read Debtor Prison Is Real: Are You Headed There? for some recent examples of this happening to real people just like you and me.
On top of these risks, you volunteer to pay a 12 to 25 percent upcharge directly to them on the balance you carry on your card. What if Walmart told you that in order to shop in their store you had to pay 15% to 25% more on every purchase? Would you keep shopping there? I don’t think you would. Yet, you keep charging things to your credit cards and paying the interest every month.
It is like you have a leak in your bank account that is siphoning away your financial power and it all goes directly to them.
All of this that you are voluntarily giving up, makes you a slave. It weakens you. It limits your options. It makes you their property.
Are you mad yet? You should be.
How to Fight for Your Freedom
It is funny to me the way we carry on about freedom sometimes in this country. We “Occupy Wall Street” to make some kind of statement against the so-called “corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations.” However, at the same time, we trot over to Starbucks and swipe their card through the machine to buy another latte.
We voluntarily commit ourselves to being their slaves. They don’t coerce us into doing this. No one is holding a gun to your head telling you to buy more stuff that you don’t need.
Demonstrations are not the way to break free from this slavery. It is great that people are mad about what is going on, but this is the wrong way to make a difference.
The way you fight back is by taking personal responsibility for your finances. You stop charging stuff to your credit cards, you refuse to live beyond your means and you pay off your debt.
In this way, you can reclaim your freedom. You can liberate yourself. You can once again be the master of your future. By doing this, you will break the control they have over your life.
Stop giving the big banks power over you and lining their pockets with your hard-earned cash. If you don’t owe them anything, they can’t control you anymore. You will be free. You can make your own decisions. You can stop worrying about how you’re going to pay their bill. You can use that money for things you really want. You can be in the driver’s seat and wear the pants in your family again.
The only demonstration that is going to change what is going on in this country is the demonstration of personal financial wisdom. By refusing to volunteer to be their slave, you will force them to change their ways. You will turn things around. Fiscal responsibility starts at home and it will spread from there.
You can do this. You can get control of your finances and you can stop volunteering to be their slave. There is a ton of information out here on the Internet that can help you. You don’t have to pay a dime for it either. However, you will have to spend some time finding it and figuring out how to use it.
If you want to expedite your progress, then check out The Super-Charged Guide to Financial Freedom. It is a concise, step-by-step plan that I put together to give you everything you need to break free. It is a battle plan – an underground railroad out of financial bondage.
Are you going to fight back or will you continue to volunteer yourself as their slave? Make a decision now to take a step toward freedom.
Photo: Copyright PhotoXpress.com
Excellent article, Jeff. We are working to pay down the last of our credit card balances, are making great strides, cutting the total in half over the last couple of years. We are down to 4K owed, so the light at the end of the tunnel is becoming visible!
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A great perspective on debt and an important one for everyone to hear and recognize. Slavery is something that we look down upon but many of us open the door and walk right through without thinking about the consequences of doing just that. Take back your life, make the choice today and begin new habits: buy what you need and can afford.
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