The older I get the more apparent it becomes that there are usually right ways and wrong ways to do things. It also becomes more obvious that the majority of people like to choose the latter of the two. I’m all for saving time/money, but only when the consequences of my actions make sense. Before I go any further, I need to share this story that I saw on the news with you. A soon to be bride wanted to lose weight before her wedding. Instead of dieting and exercising, she decides to spend $1500 to go on the feeding-tube diet. For those of you that haven’t heard of this trendy diet, it consists of shoving feeding tubes down your nose to get nutrients. The woman lost 10 pounds in eight days by doing this.
The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of this was that the loss of her fat was worth $150 a pound. I don’t know about you, but that seems a little outrageous to me! When will our society realize that you can’t just throw money at your problems to make them disappear? The next thing that came to me was that all that weight will come right back. It’s like those people you used to see on the TV show Survivor. They would be skin and bones by the end of it, but as soon as they started eating again they fattened right up. My last thought was that this is what’s wrong with our country! People will spend $150 a pound to lose weight! Not only was she willing to spend it, but she probably preferred it to eating healthy and exercising. If this is the new trend for soon to be brides I should just call it quits now.
Okay, I’m done ranting. The point behind my rant is that we all need to think about the consequences of our actions. This is true in all aspects of life (but I’ll relate it to personal finance since that’s what my blog’s about) . I Googled “consequences” and it brought me to a bunch of parenting website. The pages were titled things like “The 10 Best Ways to Teach Your Child Consequences”. The funny thing is a lot of adults still need to learn about consequences. We teach children to put their b-day money in the piggy bank, but we spend it right away. Our society has accepted the fact that people make mistakes, but it’s almost like we hold ourselves to a lower standard because of that acceptance. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy: we are going to screw up so it’s ok not to care about it. When people make purchases, they have the attitude buy now and worry about paying for it later. The short sightedness of our society will be our demise. Luckily for us, we still have a chance to change. I used to be one of those short sighted people, and if I can change anyone can. Do you agree with me on this, or am I totally off base?
Chris Neighbors 