Avoiding Debt

the-walking-debt-how-consumers-are-like-zombies

In this post, I play with the idea that high consumers are like zombies, and explain why you should escape the insanity and take on the role of the purposeful hero.

People who let debt accumulate without thought are like zombies.

George Romero made the connection between mindless consumerism and undead hoards in Dawn of the Dead, where zombies swarm the mall with no real purpose other than to consume. The video game Dead Rising went there too, where players fight off the dead in a mall in the town of Willamette, Colorado. Let’s explore zombies as consumers a bit further…

Zombies stumble through their (after)lives without direction and without purpose.

Zombies exist as one of the massive throngs of beings just like them, unable to think critically—or to think at all—about their surroundings or their existence.

Without questioning it, zombies consume anything and everything within their grasp.

Wandering aimlessly and consuming mindlessly are pretty much all zombies do.

When zombies are in the presence of a threat or danger, they are unable to recognize it as such, and walk right toward it. They unknowingly stumble into traps laid for them and are easily captured.

People who fall prey to the temptations of a high consumption, high debt lifestyle often end up a lot like the zombies in our scenario.

 

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going-to-graduate-school-don't-make-the-same-financial-mistakes-I-did

In this post I explain how I took out almost $15,000 in loans that I didn’t need during my first year of graduate school. Here’s my story and three things you can learn from it.

I pursued a PhD because I’ve always been successful in school, because I love to learn, and because I was deeply interested in a field of study. But having attended a small, public liberal arts university as an undergraduate, there was a lot I didn’t know about the PhD trajectory at a large research institution. This post outlines some of the financial mistakes I made because I wasn’t fully aware of the academic norms and options available to me as a PhD student. In sharing my story I hope others can learn from my experiences and make more informed choices for themselves. To my fellow graduate students, my advice is this: do research, forgive yourself, and develop a plan. Let’s take those one-by-one…

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