How are you helping the economy?

Each day we hear or read about the demise of the economy. As the news gets worse and worse, we get more fearful of falling into a depression. Let me just say this now: We are not in a depression and we will not be in a depression. Yes, the outlook is bad, but that is the way all recessions are. Several financial institutions controlled by the government protect our economy from falling into a depression. The thing we need to worry about, as members of Generation Y, is inflation and deflation.

Currently our economy is facing mass deflation due to the significant decrease in spending by consumers. Consumers are so fearful of an economic collapse, that they have stopped spending money, and have all of a sudden decided it was a good time to start saving. Why were these same people not saving when times were good? Why were they not socking away cash when most people were employed? The main reason is because consumers, in general, are stupid when it comes to personal finance. People live way beyond their means, and rack up enormous credit card debts on items that they cannot afford. How pathetic is it that the average college graduate comes out of college with $2000 in credit card debt? This is not the fault of the credit card companies who patrol college campuses trying to get students to sign up for credit cards by handing out free stuff. It is the fault of students, who are naive, and know little about their own finances.

Now that people are losing their jobs or on the verge of losing their jobs, they have stopped spending money. I can understand people who do not have jobs that they are not spending as much money, but there is no reason for other employed consumers to stop spending money. These people still have jobs, they just need to live within their means. Continue spending money, because if you don't, products and services lose their value, thus deflating the prices of many goods we buy each day. When you stop spending money, you are helping to drive companies out of business. How do you expect them to make money and continue employing people when they aren't making any money? It is time for people to stop being so selfish, and look start supporting the economy. You don't have to go out and buy as much, but don't completely cut yourself off where you are hurting other businesses.

Generation Y, my generation, is filled with stupid people (but not everyone) who refuse to control their own finances and expenses. They just pull out the "spend, spend, spend" mentality without ever thinking about how much money they are going to owe. Do they ever think of keeping a damn budget?? Heaven forbid you can't spend all of mommy and daddy's money, or the additional money you have. Try using your credit card like a debit card; know that you can't spend more money than you have. Is that really that hard of a concept to understand? But instead, we go out and spend more money than we have on stupid things that we can live without. For instance, who spends $100 a month on a cell phone bill?? Do you not think that that is crazy? Must you live on your cell phone and feel that you must be in reach of your email?? If you are not working for a company that demands that kind of communications access, then you don't need all of that crap!

In short, don't stop spending money because things look bad, but make sure you don't spend more money than you have, and then wonder who's fault it is when determining how you got into your current financial mess.