I'm going to complain a bit. And why shouldn't I? Not
everything is prefect. There are many issues and challenges in the frum world,
BH, we all have our stories. I want to focus on credit card debt. I believe
this issue one many of us struggle with, rely upon and many times feel like we
are being buried under it.
A young man and woman get married, at times with not much
idea how to make a living and find themselves with a bit of wedding money and a
few months to figure out a parnasa. Many times the lady will conceive a baby BH
and take herself out of the workforce. Now the young man has a few years to
figure out her how in the world he's going to cover not only food, rent and
clothing which is no small feat in one of most expensive cities in the world to
live in which is Crown Heights, BH, but also to start covering the never ending
and always growing tuition. There have been plenty of articles about tuition
lately so no reason to keep beating a dead horse and speak it again at this
point.
There quickly comes a point when there is simply not enough
cash to cover everything. Again, we are working with a single family income,
usually not too much higher education and plenty of children, may they multiply
further. How do you cover the deficit? Very easily, cover it with credit card
debt. And why wouldn't you? Low interest rates, points to fly for free, it
sounds like a great deal. It is in fact a great deal if you have the flow of
money coming in every month to cover the balances. But in our case the couple
took out debt to cover monthly expenses that they don't have any other way to
cover otherwise. Fast forward a few years and the debt has climbed to ten,
twenty or thirty grand. The monthly interest and minimum payments are a between
$200 to $600 dollars and it has become impossible to keep up with maintaining
the credit card debt. So the way to get out of it at this point I’ll leave for
the comment section to discuss but there is no easy way out as far as I know
of.
In my humble opinion I think that Jewish Schools should not
accept credit cards as payment for tuition. If someone doesn’t have cash to pay
for schooling that means there is not enough money to cover rent and food
expenses at home and have to supplement tuition with credit card debt.
Schooling is important but so is eating and having a home. This is a recipe for
disaster.
There is much to say about all this but I would like to ask
G-d Almighty, for who impossible doesn’t exist to bless the Jewish people with
plenty of money to cover all the expenses and then some, as well as health and
children. We should all see Moshiach come and take us out of golus this Elul so
we can spend Rosh Hashana with Moshiach in Jerusalem.
Josh Greenstein
(Not the author’s real name)
