Youth delinquency: debt sold as income
Diario TAG reports that over 40% of young people in Chaco are delinquent on cards and microcredits.
In an article in Diario TAG it is reported that more than 40% of young people in Chaco are delinquent on cards and microcredits. I read that data on youth delinquency and I don't think of irresponsibility: I think of a business.
That is the point I want to put on the table. When four out of ten end up in the red, the easy explanation —"they don't know how to manage themselves"— falls short. I prefer to look at the other side of the counter.
The real product is you
A loan is almost never sold as debt; it is sold as relief. The first card arrives with a friendly limit. The microcredit by app is approved in minutes, without paperwork. Interest-free installments make the price seem the same as always, just spread out.
«A fixed installment is a boss who collects first.»
I think that's the detail. The phone or the trip are the excuse. The product is you: your future income, your paycheck, your bonus. The lender doesn't expect everyone to fail; they calculate that some will fail and charge enough to keep the business profitable. Delinquency doesn't break the model. It is part of the model.
None of this makes you stupid. It makes you part of a market that studied very well how a 20-year-old reacts to an offer that lasts 24 hours.
What the Bible calls slavery
Scripture does not treat money as a topic apart from faith. "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender" (Proverbs 22:7, ESV). Slave, it says. It sounds exaggerated until you check how much of your month is already committed before it begins.
Next to that warning is the other side: "But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world" (1 Timothy 6:6-7, ESV). Contentment does not mean conformism or resignation. It is knowing that what I have today does not define me.
I say it without guilt and without a sermon. The question is not whether you are bad for owing money. The question is who is in charge of your month. Freedom does not begin when you earn more, but when you decide where what you already earn goes. A fixed installment is a boss who collects first.
Count your fixed installments today
Here is the practical step, and it takes no more than ten minutes. Open the notes on your phone and write down all the fixed installments for this month: card, app, phone plan, subscriptions. Add them up. Then mark which ones correspond to something you already consumed and no longer have in your hand.
That number is your real level of freedom this month. If it makes you uncomfortable, don't run to ask for another credit to cover it: cut back or renegotiate something this month. And if the weight is bigger than you can carry alone, tell someone you trust this week. Debt grows in silence; it weakens when you say it out loud.
How many of your installments this month are for things you no longer use?
Sources
- #deuda juvenil
- #tarjetas de crédito
- #microcréditos
- #contentamiento
- #mayordomía
- #finanzas personales
- #Proverbios 22:7
