Death of a family
Today it was quite disturbing to read in HT (http://www.hindustantimes.com/ 10 march 2005) about a family dying due to debt burden. The tragic story is about a 41 years business man and his 37 years old wife commit suicide after killing their two pre-teen children by poisoning them. The photograph of their flat portrait a upper middle class living room with all modern amenities.
The family was suffering from a debt spiral with dwindling business income. Ironically just below the news item was a bold advertisement encouraging the reader to mortgage their homes for cash. Even a few banks advertise loans saying that your house can be an earning member. This can totally mislead a common middle class without a training in financial discipline and with the ease with which a person can get a loan create a great potential for a person already in a desperate situation to fall into a debt trap.
Respected brand names in banking are hard selling soft loans, with or without collateral. Every day I get about 3 to 4 calls asking me to take a personal loan ranging from one to 10 lakhs of rupees. This aggressive selling is a sure fire way to trap fragile financial beings.
Me and my wife being of similar age of the dead family, and having a housing loan and also being in business; I asked my wife, we face a similar situation, would she be willing to sell the house to repay the debts? To my shock, she said that it would be simpler to die than to move to a smaller house! The social pressure from friends and family is too much to retain a set standard of living. This peer pressure might have lead to the death of the family.
We tend to forget that the external physical world is nothing but an illusion and thinking of ending this divine life for vanity is a delusion.
The family was suffering from a debt spiral with dwindling business income. Ironically just below the news item was a bold advertisement encouraging the reader to mortgage their homes for cash. Even a few banks advertise loans saying that your house can be an earning member. This can totally mislead a common middle class without a training in financial discipline and with the ease with which a person can get a loan create a great potential for a person already in a desperate situation to fall into a debt trap.
Respected brand names in banking are hard selling soft loans, with or without collateral. Every day I get about 3 to 4 calls asking me to take a personal loan ranging from one to 10 lakhs of rupees. This aggressive selling is a sure fire way to trap fragile financial beings.
Me and my wife being of similar age of the dead family, and having a housing loan and also being in business; I asked my wife, we face a similar situation, would she be willing to sell the house to repay the debts? To my shock, she said that it would be simpler to die than to move to a smaller house! The social pressure from friends and family is too much to retain a set standard of living. This peer pressure might have lead to the death of the family.
We tend to forget that the external physical world is nothing but an illusion and thinking of ending this divine life for vanity is a delusion.
posted by Unknown at 12:37 AM
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