First off, I'd like to mention that I totally forgot my roommate had gone to the island for the next little while and I was at home wondering why she still hadn't gotten back from work yet. I feel dumb now. A shame.
But that's not what I've been meaning to talk about for a while, now has it?
AD GRATIAM:
I try to live a fairly simple life with very few expenses. I can appreciate my situation enough for that, so I never push my luck with things if I can help it. Always been like that since I was young and had an old allowance of my very own. If I wasn't saving it for some damn stupid tabletop miniatures hobby, it was generally going towards food or into the bank. I never pushed my luck with that.
So naturally, I was always a little unimpressed any time a friend would ask to "borrow a buck" for a can of pepsi or "a few bucks" for Wendy's or something. Let's face it, it's nothing to do with "lending" money - that money's gone and is never coming back to me. The question was always "can you give me a buck for a pepsi?", bottom line. So that never impressed me.
Bigger sense . . . easiest way to get out of debt? Never be in debt in the first place. That's easy now, and one day it might not be so easy (seeing my mom get three boys through school and such probably didn't hurt things). But for now, if I can help it, I'll never try to put myself in a position where I owe someone something if I can help it.
Self-sufficiency is a wondrous thing.
Pretty much the same deal with bills and the like so far. I pretty much only ever use my credit card for gas money because it's a bit of a chore to keep on top of that one and I never set up my banking for it (my work pay goes into a different unrelated bank account, so I can't transfer directly). But I pretty much always have money on my Visa so I don't have to worry about paying up bills later.
So okay, I like to live cheap, and as such I'll probably never ask anyone for money unless I really, really, really need to (though if I'm lucky, that won't come up any time soon no matter how often my grandma offers). Where does that put me with others?
It's pretty straight-forward. I'll never ask any big favours of you, so if you can, try not to ask too many big favours from me. I'm already a pretty generous guy as is; if you want to ask for help or to do something no strings attached, I'm probably fairly likely to do it anyway. If you ask me for something that might require down the road some sort of payback, though, well . . . let's not get ourselves indebted to each other too quickly, now. It's not a responsibility I'd want hanging over my head, and it's not something I want from you either.
It's such a common part of speech, isn't it? "Thanks, I owe you one!" or "Can you do me a favour?" It's not that I'm specifically against the actual words or anything - sometimes words are just words, which is totally against how I usually speak, but that's besides the point.
It sucks to be indebted to someone else. Bottom line. It's not something I'd wish for myself or for anyone else if they can help it.
