Squid Games - The thing I shouldn't have done

I am a bit nervous.

I am going to talk about something I did the other day that I kind of wish I didn't do. I watched the Squid Games on Netflix.

The reason I am nervous is that this is not something I normally watch and I definitely don't normally talk about it. It was disturbing and dark and violent. I prefer comedies and if it is violent I prefer the Marvel MCU kind that even though you know that people die, but you are never 100% sure because you don't really see it. So I like to tell myself that they received medical treatment and made a full recovery after Captain America kicked them off a flying airship.

But this series got me - I am not sure how but I found myself moving from the scroll to the sit-down-on-the-couch move, which means I am in. I didn't fully commit, I watched it on 1.5 speed and skipped forward a lot and closed my eyes even more. Kill nameless monsters all day, but I don't like seeing people die, and a lot of people died.

Can we go back to talking about Captain America again, please?

No, ok let's talk about Squid Games.

I don't want to give away spoilers if you want to want to watch it but basically, the story is based around a man in South Korea who has made a long series of bad choices. He is divorced from his wife, rarely sees his daughter and is in a lot of debt and not just to the bank. He is desperate, so when a stranger offers to play a child game with him for money in the subway (station not sandwich shop), he accepts - showing how desperate he is for both money and a win. He is offered a chance to compete to win a lot of money and just needs to call a number and secure his spot.

He does this and after being knocked out with gas, he wakes up in a large room with 430 other people. A guard comes out and explains that everyone in the room is on the brink of financial ruin and if they play the 6 games and finish they will win the prize money.  So everyone plays, has a great time and the winner actually shares the money with everyone paying off their debts and they all became the best of friends. Well, that was the edit I am telling myself to help me sleep at night.

Obviously, there are some dark twists and a lot of people die (not a spoiler, it's in the trailer) but the crazy thing is people keep playing. One of the rules is that if a majority of people choose not to continue then everyone can go home without any money but they choose to keep playing. Even though the show does a good job of helping us understand why people would do this, it's just crazy. Risking their lives to win money.

The sad thing is this desperation is real for some people. Their problems with money will drive them to do things that no rational person would ever do. That brings us to my title - The Thing I Shouldn't Have Done. It's not watching the Squid Games, but I shouldn't have gone into debt!

For the last 6 months I have been researching and gaining wisdom on personal finances. I have always had a fairly good idea about that topic (I was a bank manager in a former life) and I took a lot of pride in my budget. You should see my budget spreadsheets, they were a work of art. I am not saying I am a genius at Spreadsheets, but I do Excel.

Pause for a groan.

Double Pause for those who haven't quite got it....... there you go. Funny stuff hey.

So even though I could tell you where every cent went, we still went into debt slowly more and more. I was the guy who was always fine with it. I thought I was so clever spending on credit cards than paying them off at the end of the month, in the meantime my cash was in a mortgage offset account. This strategy I estimated saved me close to $200 a year in interest...except looking back I probably spent thousands more. We were also not crazy spenders, didn't have to have the latest and greatest, and didn't even know the Jones' let alone feel like we needed to keep up with them. But even with this, the debt was still clawing away at us like a snake. I have just realised that that analogy is terrible as snakes don't have claws but it made me laugh so I am keeping it.  

I think that I and most of us underestimate the emotional weight debt has on our lives. It is so much more than a number on a computer, it has the ability to hurt us and lead us to make decisions that no rational person should make. This is what stood out to me in the show, it was taking this idea to the extreme but it proposed a theory that when desperate enough, people will do anything.

So I have come to realise that the correct attitude towards debt should be pure and utter hatred. We have gotten rid of all our debt (besides our house) and feel so much better. If I could give one bit of advice to anyone it's do anything you can, go without, sacrifice, do what no one else will do, to avoid going into debt.

You might not get rich quickly following this advice but I can guarantee you that you won't find yourself in a post-apocalyptic game playing for your life.