The  health care industry has been forever criticized as not being a proactive health care provider, they are seen as reactive to the needs of patients.  Research now shows that it costs us (yes, us) a lot less to provide proactive healthcare services than treatment (reactive) services.  It is much easier to educate people than to treat them once they are sick.

Now let’s take this concept and way of thinking and apply it to bail outs. 

In the USA today, they are suffering an unimaginable amount of debt that is, in essence, crippling their economy.  For years, the USA partied it up, living life to its fullest, spending money hand over fist, and enjoyed being the powerhouse  nation.  Surely, no one ever really sat down and closely examined the balance sheet to notice that the rate of spend vs. the revenues being generated didn’t balance.  Or let’s face it, they knew the facts but felt that being in the position they were in, it really didn’t matter.   They are, afterall, The United States of America, the country all other countries want to be, right?  This stuff won’t hurt us!  Well unfortunately, we all must pay the piper at some point.

We see this all the time in our own lives as well.  A good friend of mine had (and probably still does have) every credit card out there and those credit card companies love her.  She’d spend to the max., get credit limit increases, than explode into a terrible mess once the creditors started calling (cause there is no way she could afford all this), and she’d run to her Mom and Dad pleading that this was the last time she’d do this, and every time she asked, they obliged.  At first it angered me that she would constantly do this and get her parents to bail her out but now I realize the idiot in this scenario was not her, it was her parents.

Sure, we all want to drive fancy cars, live in nice big homes, vacation every year to luxurious places, own a thousand pairs of shoes, but guess what, those things cost money and for many of us, we just don’t have the money to support the lifestyle we think we deserve.  The key words in the last sentence is what “we think we deserve”.  For many of us, we grew up getting whatever we wanted because our parents went without and they vowed that they would never let their kids feel that way – well look what that has done.

Like the focus of healthcare, shifting from treatment to prevention, we too must focus on the source of our problems, not the fall-out from it.  I have said it before, and I will say it again.  People my age and younger are living in what I once heard it referred to as the “Leon’s Generation”.  Instant gratification, get it now, pay it off later or ask Mom and Dad to pay it off for us.  Long gone are the days that we mowed lawns all summer  to save up to buy a TV or to take that trip to Europe.  Instead, many people feel they are owed something and if they kick and scream and cry hard enough, our parents will bail us out.    For some people, spending is an addiction.  Let me ask you this - would you ever give your kids $500 to run out and support their cocaine habit?  No.  So why is this any different?  It is all about being responsible and for some reason, this is not a value we are instilling in our younger generation anymore. 

Fortunately for the USA, they don’t have parents to bail them out and they are now being forced to inflict a strict diet on their economy if they want to bounce back from this.  My advice to all you parents out there who think you are helping your kids by just bailing them out whenever they need resources, realize one thing - you are the problem, not the other way around.  Instead of paying off your kid’s debt, invest in financial planning courses for your son or daughter – I guarantee you that investment will reap its rewards year after year.  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  It is time that we support, aid and educate those that need our help and make bail-outs a thing of the past - but that’s just My Four Cents.

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