Finance Travels

I spent my last couple of lunch breaks watching Maxed Out over Netflix’s “Watch Now”. For those who haven’t heard of this movie, it’s basically a Michael Moore style documentary focusing on the credit card and consumer debt industries. I was hoping a lot more from this movie, such as suggestions on what we can do about reducing consumer debt as a society and a focus on personal responsibility. This movie basically bashes the credit card industry and the Bush administration for allowing consumers to become so debt ridden as they are today. While I’m definitely no fan of Bush (I honestly believe he’s the worst president in the history of our nation), and I’m also hate dealing with credit card companies, this movie places the blame on the wrong people.

The problem with our society today is that people feel that they have to have the latest and greatest in everything. Cars is under 2 years old? Buy a new one. House only has 1:2 bathroom to person ration? Move into one you can’t afford. Sure, the credit card companies are extending debt to those who can manage it least but they aren’t holding a gun to your head and telling you to spend-spend-spend.

Perhaps I’m taking an overly-simplistic view of the problem, but I just can’t understand how people are unable to realize that their financial actions have repercussions (good or bad) and that they need to think before buying on credit.

Considering how uneventful May has been, I’m quite happy with a $5,049 gain. Yet another positive returns from the market have increased all of our stock accounts, especially my 401(k). My credit card balance is a bit higher than I typically like, but I have to attribute that to higher gas prices and going over budget on our monthly grocery bill.

The one thing that I really was happy about the most this month was that we managed to lower our monthly expenses by almost 10% from April. I’m pretty sure we can continue that trend and do even better in June.

Note:  As I was calculating this month’s report, i had found an error made in previous reports.  Last month, I failed to add my Mercury Sable as an asset.  This accounts for about a $3,395 increase, and has been added to this month’s report.  My monthly total for April of 2007 was misstated by the above amount.