The Whole Truth

With the news coming through that the New York Times is starting (as some feared) to charge for content online comes the obvious point: “how easy it is to spend money, whilst not thinking”.

In a world plagued by how easy it is to spend money which is not yours i.e. loans, credit cards, overdrafts, comes in my mind the question “Where is the line to draw at spending money whilst not thinking? How many of us use products which are simply online and essentially not real. As I look around on the internet I notice that Youtube the famous free video sharing site is also to start charging for premium content such as films and what not. Last night I was thoroughly bored and decided to look at the videos offered by my digital tv, internet and phone subscription, I’m frankly one, appalled by the selection offered and two the price of renting a simple video for the obscene prices.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on how easy it is to spend money without thinking and frankly I am victim to this as much as the next person. I am easy led and sold products based on either the aesthetics of the product or the silly “deals” given with the majority of products, sold for one motive: to entice the potential customer to enter into either a short term contract or a lifetime commitment.

When it comes to commitment to the new product, the majority of us after a few months simply want to change, but thanks to the contract which we signed a few months back we are stuck with a product that we simply do not want. There are a few harebrained ideas which can allow to have the product without a contract and they are listed below:

• Borrowing money from a savings account. At some point we all do this and it tends to end messily with you never putting the money back in for that “rainy day”
• Buying the Product on Credit. When it comes to some purchases this is perhaps the only manageable way, but means you end up (as I found) paying stupid interest rates on things at the time you could live without then, but now cant. ARGH!

Not true but would be nice.

Really we perhaps all need to think about how we spend, be that online or not. As its extremely easy to just spend for the sake of it. Sort it out folks!

As some Psychology Bod said on About a perfect financial world:

In a perfect world, we would all avoid too much credit card debt and would never have to deal with the desperation of being unable to meet our credit card payment obligations. We’d never have creditors hounding us for payment. We’d never know the frustration of not being able to afford what we really want because every extra penny has to go towards keeping up with the minimum payments on our credit cards.

For more reading on the New York Times and Youtube money making schemes visit here