My household has more than its share of student and credit card debt. I didn’t expect my salary to be frozen for half a decade, and I assumed the spending was a temporary solution to a temporary problem. Bad assumption. Two months ago, I got a notice from my student loan company telling me that my monthly payment was about to double. It took a minute, but I thought back to the day I agreed to those repayment terms. By the time my payment obligations spike, I remember thinking, I’ll be so flush that it won’t even be an issue....

There have been many far more serious victims of the Great Recession and the anemic recovery than me, of course — people who have lost their jobs, their homes, breadwinners who have lost a defining sense of self. Although I have never felt more than a step or two away, I still have a home and I still have a job.

But too often there has not been a distinction made between the victims and people, like me — among the majority of Americans who are not unemployed or underemployed, but didn’t act as prudently as they should have — who made poor decisions.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

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