Let the world slide, let the world go;
A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
If I can’t pay, why I can owe,
And death makes equal the high and low.
According to Tahira Hira, a professor of personal finance and consumer economics at Iowa State University, a big source of money problems is that people just don’t know enough about their own financial reality:
They don’t know what they earn, they don’t know what it takes to live, and they don’t know their discretionary income.
That is so true.
Unfortunately, in my family, my wife is dead-set on managing the finances, despite the fact that her idea of financial “management” consists of writing checks when the bills come due.
I used to fight with her about that, but I’m a very sensitive person — I can’t live in an atmosphere of constant conflict — so at this point, I’ve just resigned myself to going broke peacefully . . .