Do Not Take Out The First Decent Loan You Are Offered

First Published Date : August 26, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

The fact that it is nigh-on impossible for most people to buy a house without borrowing at least some of the cost these days has hardened some of us to the question of debt. It would not be wrong to say that a large amount of the consumer debt which is strangling companies and individuals right now is a result of people saying “Well, we are all in debt these days anyway – what harm will it do to add a little bit more?”. We have become hardened to debt – and even those of us who seek to avoid debt altogether are conscious that this has happened. Just for clarification, becoming hardened to debt does not mean ignoring it altogether. Rather, it means that we accept it will exist and we try to live the best way we can while recognising the fact.

One consequence of becoming hardened to debt as a society is that there has been a certain amount of slippage where wastefulness is concerned. Being ready to accept debt – as we all must be, eventually – should not mean being wasteful. If we are debt conscious, we can minimise the damage done to our finances by debt. If we are wasteful, we run the risk of doing something which is essentially the equivalent of accepting that there will always be a little bit of mess in our house, and inviting a family of horses to live in our kitchen in recognition of the fact. Yes, you can live with debt. No, you cannot live indefinitely with several debts getting in the way of everything you do and making a mess of things.

It doesn’t even need to be the case that you regularly miss loan payments for you to qualify as wasteful – although the amount of extra cash you will need to pay to make up for that certainly qualifies. Another wasteful thing to do as regards credit accounts is to take out the first decent loan you are offered without doing a little bit of shopping around first. There are so many banks out there who offer mortgages, and other institutions besides who will loan money for the purpose of buying a house. Even when people take into account that the bank will own a stake in the house for the duration of the loan account, they are often still all too happy to settle for a “decent” mortgage, when a little bit of time spent researching would have freed them up to the tune of hundreds of dollars per month.

Being wasteful costs us a lot of money when we are young, and some people never really learn the lesson. Sure, it’s fun to let go every so often, but that’s what ball games, clubs and friends are for. A mortgage shouldn’t be a case of “yeah, this will do!”. It needs to be a matter of “yes, this is the right one”. You’ll be paying it off for a quarter of a century or more, most likely, so it requires some attention.

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