The Luxury Trap

I have 4 days left in my job. There is not much to do, besides documenting every single thing i have done over 9 years and deciding what I can steal.

So, in order to fill this hole, I have been looking at a Swedish TV show called “Lyxfällan” (the luxury trap) on youTube. This is a show where experts head out to people who have no idea how to handle their money and give them a good financial going over.

Now these are not people with little money, because people with little money generally know how to handle it. Instead, these are people with normal lives, sometimes with quite large incomes, who just don’t have a clue.

These people (mostly couples) are seriously annoying, with their gormless grins and their stupid-looking houses crammed with crap. How the fuck can they go through life, burning cash as this rate, and not realise that something needs to change? How can they get so deep into debt and not care? And why do they need experts to come along and tell them how to do something so stunningly obvious and simple?

They are seriously like 6-year olds, and I want to do with them what I want to do with all annoying 6-year olds – that is, give them a good slapping.

The problem is, of course, the way they have been brought up. They have been bascially handed everything they needed and never needed to save for anything or wait for anything. They are a part of the generation that wants evertything, and wants it right right now, and will scream until it gets it.

This guy in particular made my blood boil. A young single guy with a big income (33000 crowns – or about 3000 euros – after tax). The little tit never eats at home – never – and blows all of his money on restaurants and bars. He doesn’t even have insurance on his flat or on his moped, and he sits there the whole time with a dumb grin on his face and talks about how hopeless he is. Well I agree totally – a slapping for Mr. Schulman, please!

In Sweden you can get SMS loans. You can apply on your mobile and get a few hundred dollars at exhorbitant interest, even if your credit record is shit. This service is of course aimed at teenagers, and they fall for it in droves. Kids get themselves into debt because they are too stupid to understand what it means, and have been brought up to think that the world owes them whatever they want, just because they want it.

In conclusion – it’s quite sad that this problem is so widespread today that it actually works to make a TV show of it, as well as get smug people like me to watch it. Is this a indication that we have too much to spend, that we have been brought up badly, or that we are all congenitally stupid?

Well all I will say in conclusion is that I bought my first proper luxury suit last week, and that I do not dare think about how much it cost. Looks good though.

/ paddy