A Cautionary Tale

I had a conversation today with someone who shall remain nameless, but who told me they just refinanced their house to get a bunch of money to do some remodeling and pay off thousands of dollars of credit card bills. The interesting thing to me was the cavalier attitude this person had. No thought of cutting up the cards or not using them anymore. No, it was just "I am paying them off now, but if I see things I want in the future to buy or do, I am not going to restrain myself"....I mentioned to his person that my husband and I have a goal to pay off our house before my husband retires in hopefully 3 to 5 years. The reply I received was "well, we will never ever pay our house off, we've taken out a new 30 year loan and borrowed $75,000 in equity, so it just won't happen." I personally don't want to keep working when I am 70 plus, at least not at what I have been doing for a job. I want to have options. And having my house paid off and credit cards paid off is a big part of that. I have been learning the hard lesson myself of paying off a few cards but I haven't been using them lately and am focused on not using them and getting the balanced paid off for good. I hate paying interest on stuff I can't even remember buying. The person I was speaking to seemed to have the attitude of "what, me restrain myself in the future, why I can't even imagine doing that!" Meaning that they will probably just rack the cards back up. Which makes me really think long and hard about my own situation, in really working hard to get my cards paid off for good. My default shopping/money spending vices are clothes, purses, books, yarn, music DCs/Itunes, cards/stickers, lunch out a few times a week, lattes once or twice a week. I am not that big of a shoe shopper just because I have hip/foot problems and it's hard to find things that fit and are comfortable and cute so I don't tend to shoe shop a lot. But recently I cleaned out my closet with some help from a friend at church who has wonderful organizational skills and I got rid of a lot, but I still have a lot left. I am learning (slowly sometimes it seems) that I can't wear all the clothes I even have, or read all the books I own or knit from all the yarn I have, so why acquire more and more? Many times I don't want to and I get too overwhelmed by all the 'stuff' and then other times, I want the stuff...I want the new pink lipstick (nevermind that I already have four tubes of pink) or the cute colored camis, now 2 for $40 at Nordstrom, down from $28 a piece (and nevermind that I have an overflowing dresser drawer of camis in all colors). Sometimes I feel like we are living assault targets, bombarded moment by moment by advertising in every nook and corner, enticements around every bend. And to resist seems futile, easier to go the 'way of the world' and join everyone else who's massively in debt to stuff. But I really want to resist it. The stuff doesn't make you happy, in the long run, in and of itself. Many years ago, there was a VeggieTales DVD called Madame Blueberry. and one of the lines from a song was "Happiness waits at the Stuff Mart, where all you need is lots...more.....stuff......!" The sad thing is we (and I say we loosely, as a society) have bought into that way of thinking. It's overboard and overindulgence in everything....in fast food sizes, in showy cars, in the latest and greatest tech gadget....how can I be cool, how can I one up the next person, how can I have my security fix and my greed need satisfied today? I confess to looking for 'stuff' to medicate me and fix me and make me someone else or another me or a 'better' me but many times my heart's cry is to be free and simple and untangled from all the 'stuff'.