A Room of one's own...

...And I'll pay for it later. Make that a holiday, a car, some new clothes, some concert tickets, the prescription I can't afford right now, the monthly bills I can't afford to pay, the meal out I shouldn't be eating, drinks with friends, birthday presents, christmas presents...

If I go back over my Credit card statements from the last six or seven years that I have owned them the biggest purchases I will find will be plane tickets. Every single last holiday has been paid for by credit. Everything else is small. Meaningless. Insignificant and fleeting. Except of course the presents bought and the times I paid to see friends when I couldn't actually afford to. The honesty is I have never really been able to afford to do any of those things. And I chose a job which means I probably never will. But I have friends and family who didn't chose that lifestyle. Who work hard for very little reward, often without any pleasure. And very few of them have managed without credit also. But is it because we couldn't manage without credit or because the attitude to credit changed just as my generation were hitting the age of 'Freedom'? And also the attitude to 'Haves'. Everything must be now. I can't answer those questions. Can anyone? All I can say is as far as I can see for my generation the boom only meant that life was less affordable for those at the bottom and that made credit desirable, possibly necessary but someone from the fifties post war era will argue life was tough then and credit was not available and yet they managed. And there is no denying that. Although what does 'Managed' actually mean? I look at my Granddad. A man who experienced one time where he had to rely on a hand out (in the form of accommodation) from others and made a pact with himself that he would never be in that situation again. And so he lived a life of complete Frugality (is that a word?). He never spent a penny he didn't have and he rarely spent a penny he did have. And he watched his sons grow up into extremely successful business men in the IT age with total incomprehension of their lifestyles. Money was comfortable. In fact, money didn't appear to factor in their daily worries. I'm sure they would both disagree with this statement but I think granddad viewed it as such. He never understood how my Mum and Dad paid for things as he couldn't comprehend earning so much that life could be that comfortable. And there were differing levels between his sons. The one who thoroughly enjoyed his job and the trappings and the one who worked more out of a necessity and desire to create stability for his family than for anything material. But both were comfortable. One splurged, the other created a lifestyle more lasting. I come from the seed of the splurger. On both sides. So it's in my genes. But I can see where the difference between the brothers comes. It comes mainly from the work. My Dad loves his job. I cannot imagine him ever stopping. And although he of course talks of retiring I don't think he ever would entirely. I imagine he will always have his finger somewhere in that pie. So why not enjoy the trappings that come with it when they are there and be more frugal when they are not? If there is no desire to get the hell out of you're work you worry less about saving for that day. I imagine. And with all that said my Dad does have to be more frugal now, he is as affected as anyone else by things now and he is a contractor which means he never knows where the next job is coming from. My uncle however never quite fit in the role. The job was THE job of his day. It was new and secure and paid well (eventually). But it never got his heart. That was always elsewhere. And now, happily, he is using the relative stability his job has afforded him to explore the things he wants to do. Well, he was before the crunch hit. Two people of the same generation, in the same job, with completely different lifestyles and attitudes to their work. But neither could have lived like their father. And Granddad (with the exception of my friend Laura and maybe my cousin Jenny) is the only person I know who never paid for anything without credit. Actually, Laura doesn't qualify as she has a mortgage. Granddad never owned his house. And even if he had saved until he could buy one outright I expect he never would have. Although he claimed he would buy a bungalow if he'd won the lottery. But winning money and spending it is also different to saving and then spending it. I suspect the latter is harder to do. 

I'm 27, with debt the value of a rather nice car. A car I'd never have purchased if I had saved the money as it would be silly to spend that amount when I could have something cheaper. My debt represents what I would quantify as 'Lifestyle' over six or seven years but also it has at times been necessity. Like the times it's paid off my rent, and even ironically it's paid for the minimum payments on my credit cards. And it is a lot but when I look at the work I have done over those past years, I've been working full time, sometimes in permanent contracts but mostly in temporary contracts. And for the latter few years more than one job at a time. Very rarely less than a 40 - 50 hour week. Getting nowhere with my actual work (acting) and even at times turning work down because I couldn't afford the weeks without pay that the job required. And I realise that actually I have not been greedy and careless. I have simply tried to strike a work life balance of some kind and survive. And I am not the only person I know in the exact same scenario. Why has my generation got so much debt? Partly because credit became so freely available but also because the boom was always a big con. Only the rich got richer. Everything in the last ten years has gone up at way above the rate of inflation, and therefore wages, but the government can keep inflation low because it uses things to calculate it that have nothing to do with our actual day to day living expenses which were steadily ignored. All that ever mattered to me was the cost of clothes, travel, food, essentials, gas, water, electricity, rent, petrol, the arts etc. As a temporary employee I have not had a wage increase in three years. Not even the rate of inflation(!) standard 3%. So how was I to survive without credit? Well I'm about to find out as my credit card (number two) has officially died. Just as my phone bill hit £228 for last month. I earn 300 euros a month. Singing for my supper is the new credit card. The phone bill is my homesick error. Lesson. Learnt. Lucky for me I took money off my credit card as an emergency fund/christmas present fund. And that, combined with a chunk of this months wage is covering it. So Christmas is cancelled. Plus I now know that part of my new lifestyle is not having the luxury of talking to my loved ones when I need/want to. Or at all. The naughties. Boom generation. 

The scariest part for me is credit card number two (with a substantial limit) took only six months to die. What I have to remember is that it happened in the year the world crashed taking anyone who had no financial stability with it. So maybe I shouldn't beat myself up too much. Because this year I haven't come close to earning £15,000 which I think is the bare minimum anyone needs to survive in this day and age. £18,000 if you live in London. 

Of course life is possible without credit for my generation but can we also have 'Lifestyle' without it? Can anyone today? 

Now go cheer yourselves up and stop bringing my mood down...