(03) 9020 2905Oh, too easy, Batman!
When outgoings are more than incomings … when you work harder and harder every month, but still go backwards … when your credit card has that hideous, melted-plastic smell from overuse …
Like an intergalactic trip on board the Starship Enterprise, avoiding financial “dark matter” can be difficult. For Gen Xers, the black holes that drain your bank balance tend to be … the four C’s – cars, credit cards, clothes and consumables.
Regarding cars, how much dough did you do with your dealer? If you paid more than half a year’s household salary for all cars in the driveway, then you’ve certainly spent wa-a-ay too much on assets that are plummeting in value.
Cars are financial bloodsuckers. Leaches. Vampires! (Even if some are as pretty as Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy.)
New cars lose 30 per cent of whatever you paid for them, as soon as you do. Then comes the non-deductible cost of interest and servicing.
Credit cards cause too many problems and should be issued with financial health warnings. If you’ve not paying off your plastic fantastic in full every month – and are therefore paying interest – then you’re living beyond your means, pure and simple.
Sure, clothes maketh the man. But they also swalloweth his savings. How many items in your wardrobe have you worn less than 10 times?
And then there’s consumables … your impressive DVD collection, the iPod, the iPad, the expensive buy-now-pay-later furniture that you didn’t quite get paid off before the mega-interest bill struck you.
Identifying your financial black hole should be easy. Now, what are you going to do about it?
Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and principal adviser with Castellan Financial Consulting.