The debt collectors

After I completed the transaction for my purchase, I walked to my car and noticed a stationery vehicle not far from mine and on closer inspection I saw the driver was the woman I assisted moments earlier - she’d obviously been waiting for me to arrive at my car. As soon as our eyes met, the woman gave me an affectionate nod and drove off down the road with her children restrained in the back seat of the car.

We didn’t say anything, and that small nod was evidence to me that she was grateful, if not slightly embarrassed, for my assistance on payment of her shortfall.

I reflect on this particular instance, not to reveal my altruistic side, but more to express my angst at seeing other people; businessmen and women, who saw what was happening inside the service station and chose not to help a woman, with a small amount, in financial distress.

I guess this caring part of me is more an expression of life skills gained through my parents and the fringe camp I lived in when I was a kid on the outskirts of Cunnamulla in South West Queensland. Living among 350 other displaced Indigenous people on the fringe of a prosperous white community, I observed the caring and sharing nature that was apparent each daily. The sight of neighbours and even people unfamiliar to me, coming to our home and asking for bread, milk, or tea, was not something that aroused concern.

Caring and sharing back then was routinely accepted by all members of the fringe camp out of necessity for sheer survival and I don’t recall seeing any disputes between families as a result of a favour not being returned.

Today, in our globally competitive times, things are different. Our social and economic positions resemble nothing of the days of my formative years growing up on the outskirts of town. Today it would appear that everything is about the immediacy of advancing the individual, or the immediate family, at all costs.

In the rush to keep up with societal norms: buying a home, getting the kids a good education and acquiring the latest fashion (clothes, cars, furniture, mobile phone and so on), extended family and friends become a secondary concern and their needs and wants are for them to sort out. The non-caring or sharing attitude of today’s generation has precipitated the need for some people to seek out excessive fees on offer at pawn shops when the going gets tough.

India and China’s insatiable thirst for oil, burgeoning populations and desire for more nutritious foods continue to force the price of consumables up causing financial stress. Our ability to accommodate price changes is lessened.

I don’t particularly like paying more than $100 to fill up my car with petrol, nor do I enjoy paying a third more for my groceries than I did a couple of years ago, but they are the realities of life.

I don’t know how I would’ve been able to do the things I do for my family today, if I hadn’t made the definitive life changing decision six years ago to give up drinking and gambling. The sacrifices in my family haven’t been all mine as my wife Rhonda gave up her expensive smoking habit and my son took on a casual after-school job when he turned 14. My son, Stephen junior, recently paid for his school trip to Perisher Blue ski fields from his savings, and continues to pay for his own entertainment including going to the movies and buying his own Playstation games and accessories, among other things.

There’s a lot we can all do to ward off letters from Dun & Bradstreet Debt Collection agency. If people are serious about addressing their financial woes, maybe a logical starting point might be to tackle the hardest tasks first. The problematic issues are generally the things we all say we can’t do without - our comfort habits: the cartoon of beer or cask of wine once a week, a packet of cigarettes everyday, a night on the town on weekends, a bet on the horses, a gamble on the pokies, scratchies, lotto and the “must have” latest clothing range.

Additionally, the biggest habit to break of all is the vicious cycle of lending and borrowing from high-risk family members and friends who don’t repay on time, if at all.

If you can address the expensive habits that chew up all of your disposal income then you can take the power away from the people you borrow from, including the pawnbrokers. Furthermore, if you stumble on the way to ridding yourself of those bad habits, always remember that famous saying of Publilius Syrus: “A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.”