Episode 2: Money Matters - Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom by Robert Sudha Hamilton

Money matters! Most people on planet earth would agree with this economical statement. We all start out on mother’s milk or an artificial alternative of this nurturing substance. However, it is not too long before we depend upon pocket money to satisfy our desire for sweets. Once expelled from mum and dad’s garden of Eden many of us must hunt and gather dollars or dosh of our national currency to fund our lives and lifestyles. Money matters sit at the base of this primal urge to survive and thrive. We all must pay the piper and pay the rent.

There is a distinct dearth of writing about money in the public space. There are regular missives on economics in our newspapers but these are usually written with a short term political focus pertaining to the governments of the day. Deeper examinations into our economic edifices and their reliance on credit and debt are all too rare. In some sense, money has long been regarded as a dirty topic, especially by those who have a lot of it. Perhaps, it has been a deliberate stratagem of deflection by those in power and with wealth. If it has been a conspiracy it has been largely successful, as the wider population shows little sign of seeking out the secrets behind our financial systems. 

Banking is a privileged world, where a small coterie of financially minded professionals literally make our digital money by pumping zeroes onto numbers on account screens turning debt into credit. Commercial banks expand our economies every time they lend money. Most people have no idea how the world of banking actually works. We base our assumptions on how our own finances work. However, family and individual finances depend upon things like earning, budgeting, and saving. The finances of nations and commercial banks are not run in this way, as there is no gold standard anymore. High finance is all about speculation, with ginormous volumes of debt and credit gambled every moment of the day. 

Most folk turn their focus away from the jargon infested goings on in the realm of high finance. This is despite the fact that terms like inflation have come to cause many of us terrible outcomes in life. Increased CPI and high inflation means our money cannot buy as much. Inflation is usually accompanied by rising interest rates, which means borrowing money becomes more expensive and harder to source. Central banks vigorously go after inflation with the brute force of monetary policy. This ultimately causes an economic recession in most cases. Resulting in people losing working hours and sometimes their jobs. Not comprehending the workings of the capitalist economy or wilfully ignoring it comes at a cost.