Retiring a Debt?

A classic rant from 2007 about spending too much and going into debt.

Retiring a Debt Plan

So what do you do when you retire a debt? I have heard a bunch of folks make the following interesting remarks when they have retired a major debt (car loan, credit card debt, student loan, or mortgage):

• “Now I can afford to go on vacation”
• “We can order those new drapes for the living room”
• “We can afford to buy a new car”

All of these statements have the common theme of putting yourself BACK into debt after climbing out of a debt hole.

To quote a well-known philosopher,

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!!“

 If you have worked hard enough to retire a debt, celebrate that, but don’t use it as an excuse to tie yourself back up in debt! Adding debt load is not your goal, and shuffling debt load shouldn’t be either.

Figure out what you can do with the extra money to save, or try to retire another debt (after you have had a modest celebration of retiring this debt). Seems obvious to me, but then again, maybe I have done the same?

Buy, Buy, Buy!!!

Seems spending has recovered in the Retail area, as we can see from this graph.

The increases in Ontario (+2.0%) and Quebec (+0.6%) accounted for almost the entire advance in retail sales, with the automotive sector mainly responsible for this increase. The increase in August in Ontario almost totally offset the decline in July, which followed the strongest quarterly growth since the first quarter of 2002. In Quebec, growth in retail sales cancelled out most of the decline in July, which followed the strongest quarterly growth since the second quarter of 2001.

So spending on Cars in Ontario and Quebec are helping things along? I guess this is good, but what will these numbers say in the next few months with the sudden explosion of cross border shopping? My bet is a steep drop.