“Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.” American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw made this observation roughly 150 years ago. The trap’s gotten a lot deeper and easier to fall into since then. Four people describe how they fell into the trap of debt — and how they slowly but successfully managed to claw their way out.
It starts innocently enough. You don’t have cash to pay for that stunning sweater set so you put it on the credit card. You can’t pay the grocery bill with a check so you put it on the credit card. Electric bill? There’s always the local gemach.
The catch comes when the expenses grow and the credit card’s not being paid off each month. You need to buy a car or a home and there isn’t enough cash to make the down payment. Whether you’re borrowing from the bank from the credit card company or from gemachim you may be trapped in an endless cycle of financial debt.
Is there any way out of the mess? Although it may seem impossible there are families who have succeeded in defeating the debt monster using a combination of ingenuity determination and sheer hard work. Here are their stories.
Yitzchak: Holding Your Head High
Penny pinchers may shudder at Yitzchak’s story but he shares it without a trace of embarrassment. As a former kollel guy turned business owner he admits that debt never bothered him as a kid. “My parents were always in debt and so was I. I constantly owed $25 to this guy $45 to that one.”
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