Smart solutions to avoid a debt trap

Picture this – there is some festival or celebration in your home and you are pressed for cash, what would you do? Many of us would opt to pay for it through our credit card or a personal loan or buy stuff through buy now pay later (BNPL) schemes and push the worry to a forward date. We may even be consistent with our repayments, but have you thought about what this culture of instant gratification is doing to your long-term financial situation? Also is delayed gratification a better option?

Prableen Bajpai, Founder of FinFix Research & Analytics, believes that credit cards can get a lot of people into a spiral where people get used to a certain money which is not there in their bank.

“In the last one year there has been a staggering 118 percent increase in credit card spends. On one side this is good because debt to some extent greases the economy but there is another side to it. The credit card providers make money when there is a delayed payment, the interest rates they charge are like 18-24 percent, but there is also defaulting. So credit cards can actually get a lot of people into a spiral where people get used to a certain money which is not there in the bank. So this can lead to situations where there is increased amount of debt in your personal books.”

According to Bajpai, the concept of delayed gratification goes a long way in all aspects of life and saves us from jeopardising our expenses.

“Delayed gratification is an ability to give up immediate gains for something in the future. This concept emerges from a study which was done by Stanford University and this concept goes a long way in all aspects of life. Today we are in a world where we are being convinced that debt is good and instant gratification is what makes us happy, but it is definitely something which jeopardises our expenses.”