Jan 24th, 2010
The Math is Simple, the Discipline Isn’t
One of my coworkers, a divorcee with adult children who, like me, works multiple jobs, was asking about taking out a home equity loan to pay off some credit card debt. My response: it’s more important to reduce spending to live within your means than it is to pay this off in this manner, because all that’s happening is debt is being shifted from one pile to the other.
“But I can’t make ends meet.”
And that’s what it came down to. I could sit down with my coworker and go over every single bit of her budget to try to find areas to cut–piano lessons, gym memberships, cell phones for her adult kids–and none of it would matter if she didn’t have the discipline to actually do it.
A budget, after all, is just a plan; if she can’t follow through, it doesn’t matter how the math looks. What counts is the discipline to keep spending in check, and if she doesn’t have that, no amount of loans or plans will help.
[...] The Math is Simple, the Discipline Isn t [...]