Yours, did you say?

The other day I was talking with my friends and was trying to find out what an average American owns. In other words, fully paid for.

It would be a dream come true if you own a house that has no outstanding dues. On an average, a person changes his house every five years. So you will always owe something or the other to the bank. Even if you do force yourself to live in the same house for thirty years, during the 30th year the only thing standing will be you. The rest of the house would have fallen apart. So you will move into another house and will be stuck for another 30 years or, till you die. Whichever is sooner.

The next big investment is the car. And this unlike a house it HAS to be sold after five or a maximum of ten years. Unless you want to spend 40 hours a week in the garage trying to fix it. If you own a Corolla, then don't let me see you or I'll just run you over. Coming back, all of them are financed for 5 years and once the loan is done so will the car. You will soon be driving another brand new car. Brand new according to me means, a 20% donation to the manufacturer for the new car smell.

The third would be the furniture. Now the furniture stores offer a interest free financing for more than a year. Now even if you have money you would say yes to that and take. So that is also not yours. Now the big screen sitting in your living room. That also, will be under BestBuy's three year interest free financing. Add the kitchen appliances to it too.

I just realised that the laptop I am writing this post on, is also under a monthly payment plan and the other one sitting on the table is owned by my company. My cellphone is under a two year contract. So I do not own it until the end of it. 

When I came into this country, I was amazed on how people lived their lives only on credit and vowed that I would never even do that. I would pay full price on anything and everything.

Unfortunately I also fell under the spell and realized I could never pay full price until I hit a 100. Being an Indian, that's a shame on my country since we are biggest bargain hunters ever, just behind the Chinese. Almost every product in this country has a full price and in a even bigger font size, the monthly payment price.

So after living in this country for almost six years and working for almost four years. I look around to find that I actually own, nothing.