[Curtain rises on the kitchen of an American couple]
“Honey, you just put another $1,000 on the credit card for that scam children’s charity. Our credit card debt is now over $10,000!”
“But sweetheart, $5,000 of our credit card debt is from purchases you made. Remember the $2,000 in lottery tickets that you thought would make us rich?”
“Yes, honey, but that was different… Anyway, don’t you believe we should pay off the credit card instead of making partial payments each month that drive us further into debt?”
“Absolutely! But we don’t have the money to pay off the card. That’s why we’ve been making partial payments.”
“But if we agreed to stop buying stupid stuff, we could eventually pay it off.”
“True, but we can’t agree on what ‘stupid stuff’ is.”
“Hmm… OK, here’s what we’ll do. We won’t pay any bills until we agree on how to spend our money going forward.”
“But sweetheart, our creditors won’t go for that. They’ll just add penalties that will make our situation even worse!”
“That doesn’t matter. I refuse to pay our bills until you agree with me about how we’ll cut our spending.”
“Whoa, hold on. I agree we need a plan going forward, but refusing to pay our bills could ruin our credit and overwhelm us with penalties.”
“I don’t care! You’ve got to stop spending so much!”
— Steve Bacon, Bakersfield
