Frank Dialect

Day 4...Question of the day. Should the federal government bail out the lenders and /or the borrowers? Frankly, I have eaten peanut butter and jelly or cereal for weeks at a time and skipped vacations so that I could pay bills. My house is not extravagant. I paid for my furniture(no Rent-a-Center) and yet I have known people with interest only loans, beautiful homes with very little furniture, or those who have borrowed every penny of equity to continue to maintain a facade that they have plenty of money to burn. Their cars are leased, their vacations are charged and they are up to their neck in debt. No one would ever know it to look at them, they are gifted actors if not as rich as King Midas. I do not find it acceptable that the government would come in and "rescue" those who have benefited from the sub-prime interest rates or found credit counselling companies to write off or decrease the true amount of credit card debts. That would be patting the irresponsible on the back and thumbing their nose at the rest of us. I am not referring to those people who are truly working to pay bills and find themselves getting behind and in need of some financial assistance. Sometimes the best planners can't foresee every pitfall, but overall make every effort to save money for retirement, college, pay mortgages, taxes, groceries, gas, car payments and insurance on everything. No one is perfect and everyone learns their own lessons but when the lesson is how to take advantage of a system that the rest of us try to live within, or the ultimate cost of their mistakes adds burden or increased responsibility to those of us who are making every effort to live within our means, I am afraid I must protest. Just to add fuel to the fire, those who have a knack for gaming the system , generally laugh at those of us who don't and call us naive. Frankly, my opinion is that I may be naive but my conscience is clear. In the end, I'll know I did the best I could for my family and if they are lucky I managed to keep up payments on my life insurance policy in the process!