DON'T BE EMBARRASSED BY DEBT—YOU'RE NOT ALONE

Heavy debt can trigger a lot of unpleasant emotions. Embarrassment is one of the most common and most dangerous feelings we can experience.
Whether you have to look your kid in the face and tell them you can’t afford to sign them up for their favorite sport this year or your credit card gets rejected by some disdainful teenage teller at the mall because it’s maxed out, debt problems can make the toughest adult turn red in the face and feel like hiding.
This response is natural, but it’s also dangerous because it just makes us want to run away instead of deal with the problem. Americans, in particular, are very secretive about their personal finances, and embarrassment can send them deeper into hiding.
One way to beat your embarrassment so that you can begin to grab the debt bull by the horns is to understand that you are not alone. If you have significant debt, you’re not even in the minority. You’re in the same big boat as most of your countrymen. Here are just a few of the latest indicators:
By age 65, 96% of Americans will either be dead or dead broke! Only 3% will reach financial independence, while only 1% will become rich.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a staggering 70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
The American Bankruptcy Institute lists over 2 million bankruptcies in 2005, a huge 30% increase over 2004 and more than 98% were personal. In the first three months of 2007, bankruptcies were up 66% over the same period last year.
Are you a woman with kids? Then, look out! According to the 2003 book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers & Fathers Are Going Broke, having a child is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse. – Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren and Health Benefits Consultant Amelia Warren Tyagi
This isn’t to say that you should just throw up your hands and sit back because everybody has these problems, but it does mean that there are some pretty wide-spread forces at work that helped you get where you are today. Some of these economic, political, and social forces have quietly slipped into our daily lives. And the better we understand who and what is behind this rampant explosion of personal debt, the better we can begin to bring our personal finances under control and get back on the road to financial freedom.


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