Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Money management

A new study from the UK shows that far too many Britons spend beyond their means every month:
A third of Britons are unable to make their wages last an entire month, with 34% running out of money five days before payday, research revealed today.

As a consequence, the research claims, the average Briton spends 23 days every year living in the red...

The bank said that this poor budgeting is proving expensive for consumers, who often borrow at an average overdraft rate of 12.6% and unauthorised rate of 24.3%. Almost a third of consumers paid an average £27 in penalty charges over the year.

Much as I'd like to think Canadians do a better job handling their money, there doesn't seem any particular reason to draw a distinction between residents of the two countries. And overdrafts and penalty charges may be the least of a consumer's problems compared to the rates charged for a payday loan in an effort to avoid them.

Not to repeat myself too much, but there's no reason for individual fiscal situations to follow radically different principles than those followed by government. In either case, an occasional deficit is sometimes unavoidable when things don't go as planned for a period of time. But a systemic deficit is never a reasonable outcome, as the cost of poor planning only makes a money crunch worse in the long run. The sad part is that over a third of the UK's population either hasn't realized that fact, or is unable to act based on it.

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