The Connection between Piggy
Banks and Free Agency
By Richard P.
Halverson
Recently I saw a cute little
ad that had as its graphic a broken piggy bank and an attractive
woman with a devilish smirk on her face that said, “I feel
a little bit guilty, but this sale is so good it was worth
it.” We can all picture the ad right now.
Then it hit me — nobody breaks
the piggy bank anymore!! Oh, I don’t mean we don’t overspend.
I mean we don’t break the piggy bank; we reach for the credit
card.
Piggy banks are pretty much
a thing of days gone by. In some ways that is too bad.
See, the piggy bank represented a physical barrier to impulse
spending. Usually, you weren’t carrying it with you at
the store. This forced you to leave the store and go home,
providing an important cooling off period. Then you knew
that if you broke the little piggy it would be gone forever
— along with your savings. These barriers could cause a
person to stop and think about how much he really wanted
to buy the item. Sometimes, just the barrier of a piggy
bank was enough to help us make more calculated spending
decisions.
Barriers are Falling Everywhere
It is not just piggy banks
that are gone. Paying in cash was a spending barrier.
When the cash in the wallet was gone — no more spending.
Even checks were a barrier. In the past, the idea of writing
a check against insufficient funds was a real barrier to
spending. Today most checking accounts have overdraft privileges
or come with some type of borrowing ability so that the
concern of bouncing a check does not exist.
There was a day when getting
a loan was often difficult. Sometimes the mean old banker
saved us from making bad buying decisions by refusing to
lend us the money. Today the banks have learned they can
make more money charging fees and high interest rates.
As such, they are begging people to come in and borrow money.
All these barriers have been
overcome by modern financial technology. The prime example,
of course, is the credit card. When the impulse strikes
a consumer today, he just reaches for the credit card.
It can be anything from an ice cream cone to a plasma TV.
Sellers know the barriers are gone and they seek to take
advantage of that fact. Their advertising is absolutely
geared to impulse spending. Many ads barely carry the cost
of the item but instead highlight the low monthly payments.
I am not a doctor or psychologist
but I am sure that most of us get a type of “high” from
buying things, a rush of endorphins. With few piggy bank-like
financial barriers to check us it is easy to become addicted
to unwise spending.
All this financial freedom
has led to a near epidemic of personal indebtedness among
consumers. This has been followed by a near epidemic of
personal bankruptcies. There was a day when filing bankruptcy
was a terrible barrier. People did everything they could
to avoid taking such action.
Further, for those who were
left with no choice but bankruptcy they knew that future
borrowing for things like homes and cars was almost impossible.
Today we hear over and over in the ads, “Poor credit, no
problem; bankruptcy, no problem. We will give you that
loan you deserve.” (Why do we “deserve” it anyway? That
always strikes me as an interesting advertising ploy — we
“deserve” it.)
Artificial barriers to spending,
from bankruptcy stigma to piggy banks, are pretty much gone.
The result is that many borrow and buy when they should
not. Many are saddled with loads of debt and loads of worry.
I once heard a woman tell this
story. Shortly before her marriage she was approved for
her first credit card. Before that all her mad money pretty
much did have to come from a piggy bank. The newfangled,
can-be-used-almost-anywhere credit card came with a $2,000
line of credit. She said she marched into the bridal shop
and spent the entire $2,000. She said, “I looked fantastic
at my wedding!”
After the wedding some reality
settled in. She couldn’t repay. Eventually, she decided
to declare bankruptcy.
The truth is her fabulous gown
and other wedding trappings have made no difference to her
happiness in marriage. The debt and the bankruptcy have.
There have been some hard consequences. It is too bad she
did not stick to what she had in the piggy bank. It probably
would not have amounted to $2,000, but the barrier of breaking
the bank for something this important to her would have
helped her make much wiser decisions.
Eliminating Barriers Means
More Freedom to Exercise Our Agency
Eliminating barriers is not
all bad. It increases freedom. In Latter-day Saint terms
we can say it increases our agency. We believe God the
Father took the ultimate risk with respect to barriers when
he gave us the gift of agency.
How well do we handle this
freedom? In our world, barriers are dropping everywhere.
In the MoneyWise column we focus primarily on money issues.
There are, of course, other columns on Meridian. They focus
on topics like marriage, morality, literature, entertainment,
and other things.
I believe in almost every category
we can see that physical and social barriers are being reduced
and eliminated. As a consequence our freedom and agency
are increasing. Sometimes we are disheartened by the mistakes
we see occurring in society because the piggy bank-like
barriers are being eliminated. Frequently, however, we
see that those who will listen are strengthened through
freedom.
Agency is Destroyed By Eliminating
Consequences
As Latter-day Saints we know
these things:
- Agency is crucial to the
plan of salvation. Without agency we cannot progress
toward God.
- Agency is a gift from God
to us.
- Agency is not free. There
are consequences.
We also know this — destroying
agency is important to Satan’s plan of enslavement. From
the scriptures we learn that before the foundations of the
world he sought to destroy our agency for his benefit (Moses
4:3).
Most of us have wondered at
one time or another exactly how Satan planned to destroy
our agency. Most often we hear it explained that he was
going to force us to live righteously. I doubt that was
it. You can’t force someone to live righteously.
You can constrain me to prevent
me from taking the name of God in vain but you cannot force
me to love God. You can put me in prison and prevent me
from injuring my neighbor but you cannot force me to love
my neighbor.
Ponder this. Real agency cannot
be destroyed by restraint, but agency can be destroyed by
removing the consequences of agency. If there are no negative
or positive consequences as a result of the use of agency,
there is no growth. Without the threat of negative consequences,
many — dare I say most — of us have tendency to drift to
the lowest level of conduct. If we know there is no consequence
for speeding, how many of us will observe the speed limits?
If we know there is no consequence for failing to pay taxes,
how many of us will?
Removing negative consequences
is bad for our agency but perhaps far worse is removing
positive consequences. Why strive to be educated if there
is no consequence including even the consequence of self-satisfaction?
Why strive to love your neighbor if there is absolutely
no positive consequence for them or even for how you feel
about yourself? This is difficult to imagine, but nothing
would destroy agency more completely than the complete removal
of all consequences.
Handling Money is Just another
Use of Our Agency
Why go into all this in a MoneyWise
article? Satan cannot destroy our agency. That was settled
in the pre-existence. But he sets up counterfeit situations
all around where he makes it appear that consequences are
removed. That sets up a risk that fearing a negative consequence
or perceiving a positive consequence we use our agency so
poorly that we do in fact eventually destroy it. (The very
simplest form of this deception is the thought, “No one
will ever know.”)
It can happen with money matters
as well as with immorality or honesty or personal relationships
or any number of other elements of our lives. You see the
point. In fact, faithful Latter-day Saints that are using
their agency well in so many ways can trip themselves up
on money issues. The immediate consequence can be marital
contention, inability to provide service in Church and community
and loss of reputation and self-respect. We can buy all
this with a credit card too.
It may have been easier not
to overspend when our savings were in a piggy bank. It
may have been easier not to drink when prohibition was the
law of the land. It may have been easier to observe the
Sabbath when stores were closed. It may have been easier
to avoid immorality before the pill, and so on. As technology
and society reduces the old barriers we must turn increasingly
to our own self-discipline to make good decisions.
In the end the Lord will allow
complete freedom of our agency. There will be no artificial
barriers given to us by society or by God. There will,
however, always be spiritual consequences. The Lord said,
“All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have
I given unto you a law which was temporal” (D&C 29:34).
Of course, this also refers to our finances.
