If you have even blinked at the news in the past few weeks, you could not have missed the national debt talks. For those who have been living under a rock for the past few months, I’ll update you. (Too harsh? I feel like I cannot escape the debt talks, so if you have, that is quite a feat.) The United States government has been borrowing money to keep the country running. This money has been used to keep many social programs going like Medicaid, Medicare and social security, as well as many other things we need to keep our country nice. The problem is we have been borrowing so much money, we are now facing a big problem. We do not have enough money to pay it back. And we might default on our loans. What does this mean for our economy? Financial crisis.
Some government officials would like to raise our debt ceiling. Right now we have a limit to how much debt the country should take on, and unfortunately, we have reached it. So some would like to increase the amount and borrow more money. Others want to cut many programs to make up for the deficit. However, those cuts would mean that services that directly serve the people in our country would be gone immediately. So who is right?
I can’t answer that question. If it was that easy, it would be solved by now. There are two many sides to this problem and it seems as if someone will lose regardless of the choices. Cuts vs tax increases. Both choices benefit different people, making it impossible to satisfy all interested parties (which is all of us. This will indeed affect every U.S. citizen).
The government budget makes me think of my own budget but just in a lot fewer dollars. While the country is almost $4 trillion in debt, I am only a couple thousand in debt for school loans. But it made me think a lot about my philosophy of spending and I think the government should have instituted something like this ages ago.
Set a budget and stick to it. There should be budgets for every project or plan. The budget is determined by how much income is received (i.e. our tax dollars) and how much it will take to complete each project/need. Each project or need should be ranked, those that are most important will receive money first. (for me, that would be housing and food, for the country, similar programs might be considered.) Then figure out other necessities like finding health insurance, saving for schooling, clothing, etc. Anything extra should be saved for bigger expenses that only come around once in a while like buying a house, medical bills, etc. If there is a project that will go over the projected budget, it will have to wait.
My biggest budget philosophy is that I do not spend more than I make. And that has kept me out of a lot of financial trouble.