{"id":9794,"date":"2015-06-08T05:04:30","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T09:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=9794"},"modified":"2015-06-08T05:51:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T09:51:47","slug":"questionable-financial-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=9794","title":{"rendered":"Questionable Financial Priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have blogged from time to time about the importance of having financial priorities in order<\/a> — including not carrying debt on credit cards and having an emergency fund.<\/p>\n

I was saddened on Saturday when a guy in his 40s asked someone at our local Harley dealership…
\n
\n…if he could borrow my friend’s car so he could drive to his mother’s house to get $300.<\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

This biker bought a new Harley recently. He brought his bike in for a quick service, but they decided to do the first full service which is done at about 1,000 miles. The cost for this biker’s service visit was $300. This biker didn’t have the money.<\/p>\n

I was speaking with an employee of the dealership when the biker came up to him and explained that he did not expect to have to pay so much for a service visit, and that he didn’t “have the cash on him.”<\/p>\n

If it were me, I would not be carrying around that much cash, either. That’s what credit cards are for.<\/p>\n

My friend asked the biker if he had a credit card. The biker replied, “my card got all maxed out and the bank canceled it.” He then mumbled something about having to have his mother co-sign the loan for the new Harley he was riding.<\/p>\n

Now the biker wanted to borrow my friend’s car to drive to his mother’s house to borrow $300 to pay the service fee. He pulled out his smartphone to call his mother to make sure she would be there and explain what he wanted.<\/p>\n

I dunno… there are so many things wrong with this picture.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say, if you are a middle-aged adult and your personal finances are such that you have maxed out credit, have to have a co-signer for a loan for a motorcycle, have to go to Mom to borrow money for an unexpected bill, yet support paying the ransom for a smartphone, then something’s wrong. Just my opinion, but it appears to me that the financial priorities are messed up.<\/p>\n

As I was raised, this scenario would not happen. If I could not afford to carry the expense of maintaining an expensive motorcycle, then I just would not have one. Also, this is another reason why I refer to smartphones as “wallet-suckers.” The monthly expense for data packages and phone plans are outrageous and are designed to keep rich companies and their greedy corporate officers richer.<\/p>\n

Okay, I admit, I am definitely unusual when it comes to still refusing to have a smartphone. I can afford one if I wanted one. It’s the principle of the matter. I really detest corporate greed.<\/p>\n

Enough… life is too short to have personal finances out of whack — at least by the time you are in your 40s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have blogged from time to time about the importance of having financial priorities in order — including not carrying debt on credit cards and having an emergency fund. I was saddened on Saturday when a guy in his 40s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}