Find Financial Freedom

I read in The Times today that Barrack Obama, the newly installed US President is angered by the amount of money, reported to be $18.4 billion (around £12.8 billion), that has been paid out in bonuses by Wall Street banks.

I’m not surprised Obama is angry about it, the current economic woes of the world are to be placed firmly at the feet of greedy bankers who made a complete hash of the financial system, so exactly what have they got to be congratulating themselves for by paying such lavish bonuses?

It doesn’t surprise me though, I’ve never been a corporate animal, always choosing to be self employed and therefore self reliant. I bet that most of the bankers who are getting these bonuses are puffed up self important idiots, that think they deserve it, but also probably can’t live without it, as they’ve most likely got used to absurd amounts of money passing through their fingers.

It doesn’t just stop with the corporate world though, in this country the government is just as bad. They’ve had 11 years under Gordon Brown where money was no object, so they’ve never stopped and thought twice about overspending as that just means a bigger budget next time.

I went to the doctors today and couldn’t help but think that the local council have spent a fortune building a brand new medical centre, it’s all very nice and shiny, but what was wrong with the old surgery? It seems to me that the attitude in most areas of business, be it large corporate or even state, seems to be spend now, make everything nice and shiny and worry about the cost (and the burden of paying the cost over decades doesn’t come into the equation).

It begs the question, will anyone learn from the credit crunch? Or will we all just go back to borrowing money without thought for the consequence once the banks ease the constipation of credit that has happened since they all lost lots of money by lending to people they knew would never be able to pay it back?

I plan to never use credit again, as I wrote about in my article life without credit. So far I’ve managed six months without borrowing any money. Admittedly I’ve not made any major purchases, such as a new car, holiday or house, but I’m starting to feel a shift in my attitude from being someone that was used to having the ability to buy on credit, to now thinking carefully about what I spend my money on. I just hope that the credit crunch will alter the attitudes of some of the people of this country, otherwise we will simply cycle between boom and bust in perpetuity, no matter what Gordon Brown thinks…

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