Aiming for a Payday With No Loan Amortization
Scrawled In The Pay-Slip
By Marciano Paroy Jr.
Electric bills, food on the table, school fees for the kids, monthly amortization for so many kinds of loans – not to mention the amount you borrowed from a friend last week – these are the things that, like a merry-go-round, strikes at you in a regular fashion. On the dot. In time. Without fail.
Yet most of us fail to cope with the pressure that robs us of sanity every designated date of the month. And, so to keep everything afloat, we end up borrowing more, promising nothing but the meager net take home pay that we eagerly await every fifteenth and thirtieth – a sort of guessing game for us as we predict the closest estimate of the actual amount we would not even bother to place inside the wallet.
“Fact of life,” we tell ourselves. “This is quite normal. Everything shall be better by next month.” And so on and so forth. We become so good in intra-personal communication that we have a storage of words that we sooth ourselves with in a mantra-like fashion.
But the realistic part inside us silently whispers that that is not what it’s going to be like in the coming months. In fact, it would even be worse. But, of course, no one listens to inner voices. We instead allow the “make-believe” part in us to take over and create a false belief that, indeed, the next payday would be a wellspring of funds that we need so badly to maintain a passable credit standing.
What is so strange is that, as our pay becomes less and less desirable, we do keep up with the output expected of us at work. While it is true that some employees lose the productive spark as they lose the bigger percentage of their pay to payment of so many obligations, some employees still manage to maintain and even go beyond what they are supposed to turn in.
Teachers have it the worst. They watch their salary go the diminishing computation, and still muster enough strength to face the class the next day and perform as efficiently as ever. As long as there is enough to go by, they can flex everything that can be flexed, stretch everything that can be stretched.
And so loans serve as the solution that saves the day. Attractive as they are, loan forms of any kind are stored in the drawer, ready to be filled up anytime. With the one last hunt for a co-maker – which is difficult since everybody else is looking for one – the borrower may soon be holding a check that, as soon as it is cashed, gets divided according to the most urgent obligation.
Loan forms will never cease from being requested, downloaded, or reproduced when copies have ran out, and the monthly interest (whose amount is printed in small font size) shall never cease from accumulating. As long as there is a dining table, and as long as we struggle to keep a roof over our head, it will be a long shot from that point in time when we shall visit the cashier and take out a pay-slip that would elicit a genuine smile.
Paydays are a torture. We drag ourselves to the cashier’s window for that mandatory signature that we need to scrawl lazily in the payroll. But one day, we shall leave with a disinterested peek into the pay envelope handed to us, and give an instant double take as if we could not possibly believe the figures waiting to be kissed inside. Lo, the loans have all been settled! When that day comes, the part of us that always contradicts reality would unbelievingly whisper: “No, it can’t be possible. What happened?”