Indebted Young Adults

A friend, after reading my last post about the legacies of different generations, sent me an MSN article saying that while the young adult generation may not be fully following in the footsteps of their parents' generation, they are following and going further than their parents in one area: DEBT.

School loans are a big focus of the article, but they also talk about credit cards, which I want to focus on for this blog post. Now, I am not anti-credit card. I have 4 in my wallet right now. But one is a check card, another is a business check card (for my small website company), the third is a Discover card, and the last a MasterCard. My wife and I use the check cards for day-to-day purchases (I rarely carry cash anymore). But the Discover and MasterCard we only use to purchase things for church to get reimbursed on or things that we know we can pay for when the bill comes. We never carry a balance over.

You see, my wife and I view all that we own as coming from and belonging to God. That means my income, my house, even the food we eat together as a family is God's, and my role is to handle His money in the way I think He wants it to be handled. And I struggle with the idea that God would want me using His money to pay credit card interest. And so we don't carry a balance.

You do not need to live your financial life exactly as we do, but I am thankful that I don't have credit card loans hanging over my head. If you are a young adult with a lot of loans, I would encourage you to ruthlessly eliminate your debts, especially high-interest-rate credit card debt. That might mean some sacrifice - no movies, cheap ice cream, sharing a house with LOTS of people to keep housing payments low, carpooling (or riding your bike). But the freedom you will experience and the ability to use those funds to give to things that are in line with the heart of God is wonderful.

If you need some help in this area, I'd suggest starting with Crown Financial Ministries. Another resource you might look into is Dave Ramsey who's featured in the young adult magazine Relevant each month.