Hello everyone, this is my first post here. I’ve been thinking about something that’s been bothering me for a while, and I’m curious to hear what others think. It seems like every job I look into pays far below the cost of living, yet the employees seem happy and never ask for raises. Whenever I’ve brought up the issue of paying a living wage to management, they insist that they already do, and say I’m the only one with a problem. I couldn’t understand it for the longest time.
But I think I’ve started to figure it out…
It seems like a lot of employees are making up the difference in bad pay by using debt—credit cards, loans, etc.—as much as possible. Someone might be earning below the poverty line, but they can still get a new car loan, and the manager can point to that as a sign of success! Or they’ll use credit cards to go on vacations. When they max out their own debt, they turn to their parents, who have better credit, to help pay it down by taking on debt themselves, like home loans.
I’ve seen this happen so often. Yet I was raised to be debt-free as much as possible. Only recently did I realize that carrying too much debt, especially credit card debt, is now so common that not having debt makes you an outlier. It’s almost as if not carrying debt is frowned upon, and I’m convinced it makes me less employable.
This is a huge problem because I need to survive on my own—without help from anyone—and the jobs out there just don’t match up. When you think about it, employers might prefer someone in debt because it keeps them tied to the job, similar to indentured servitude.
And I include student loan debt in this as well.
EDIT: I realize I might have misunderstood the purpose of this forum. I thought it was a place where people live debt-free, but it seems more like a place where people dealing with debt seek help. I get it now—mods, feel free to delete this if it’s not appropriate.
