In this episode of “5 Minutes”, Dr. Robert Svoboda explores financial debt.

The word for debt in Sanskrit is the same, grana, whether you’re talking about karmic debt or financial debt, and financial debt is a karmic debt, but that’s what I’m going to focus on right now. Lots of people go into debt nowadays, and many people go into debt for the wrong reasons. The only reason to go into debt is to do something that is really important, buy a house, potentially go to college, but lots of people do things that are non essential, and they borrow money in order to do it.

Never, ever, ever do this. Never go into debt for any kind of non essential reason. Going on vacation, that’s a non essential reason. Do not go into debt for purposes like this. Because you can be sure that the people who are lending you money, the banks and other financial institutions, they are not doing it because they like you and want to help you out. They’re doing it because they want to make money. So, what you do when you go into debt is If you are not paying attention, and if you are not paying it off as quickly as possible, is you’re only making somebody else rich.

I’m going to focus particularly on credit card debt at the moment because even though this is not something that is necessarily as common all around the world as it is in the United States, it’s quickly moving in that direction. Credit card debt in the U. S is something that most people, sadly,. Already a part of and many people, sadly, too many people are of the opinion they should just kind of use it as an ongoing, slush fund and just pay the minimum every month.

Never, ever, ever do that even if you have a card with 0 percent interest, because it is going to affect your credit score. Your credit score is very important. You should be focusing on checking your credit score at least every month, maybe even more often if it’s not very good. And you want to be doing things to assist your credit score to move in the right direction. One of the best ways to do that is to pay your bill off in full every month.

Above all, do not miss a payment. Missing a payment will cause your credit score to go down 50, 60, 80 points even. And it will take months for you to rehabilitate yourself. Even if you are, have a card with a very high credit limit and you try to charge something above that limit, that can easily cause a similar thing to happen. I read a financial newsletter from a guy who was buying some furniture for his new house. He had already charged $15, 000 on a card that had a $30, 000 credit limit.

He tried to charge $17, 000, the card was declined, and at the end of the month, his credit score had gone down by 60 points. So, the credit card companies want you to have a large limit, but they don’t want you to be trying to go beyond that limit, and they don’t want you to charge too much every month. Don’t want to feel that you are getting into the habit of overspending. So you want to have cards with high limits, you want to always charge a little less than the limit, and you don’t want to try to charge a lot on any of your cards every month.

You want to try to keep things well below the limit of each card. Keep track of your credit score, pay attention to how you’re spending your money. Going into debt to buy a new car is rarely a good idea. Occasionally, it may be essential. You may need a car for your job, but if you need a car for your job, you may not need a brand new car. In fact, you may be better getting a used car, or you may be better off leasing a car.

Which is not going to require you to go into debt in order to obtain that automobile. Only borrow money when you need to use that money. Pay it off as soon as possible. Only borrow money for essential purposes. And you will find that you are moving forward in your life in a very positive kind of way.