The post I owe you ...

... after having mentioned that I had a draft in the hopper:

So, that bailout plan. This is where my culture and upbringing probably differ vastly from yours. It's where I go all German on your patootie.

That said: I don't believe in lending, and I don't believe in borrowing money. Or rather, I believe in lending money to someone, as long as you never expect it back and can afford to lose it.

I was brought up under the weight of the famous German Sparbuch: My grandpa opened my first savings account when I was still in elementary school, and I remember vividly not being able to look over the counter when I handed the nice lady the first five German marks ever in my life, and she handed me back a dark blue book with my name and a lot of stamps in it. I looked at that book and was proud--proud to have harnessed the power of compound interest, even if I still had no idea what that actually was. Having a Sparbuch was a part of growing up.

A few years later (ok, several years later), after Grandpa had passed away and money became scarce, I realized that, if I wanted cash, I'd have to work for it. That's when I started tutoring other students in lower grades in English, Math, and Classical Latin (GEEK!), first for five marks an hour, then for six and seven, and once parents saw actual results, my "business" started booming through word-of-mouth. When I was 14, I made about thirty marks a week. When I was 16, I made more than that, started giving piano lessons, too, and figured out quite quickly how I could save my lunch and my bus money by catching after-school rides with my school teachers and by spacing out the food in my lunchbag so I wouldn't have to buy any afternoon snacks. All the money that I saved went into my Sparbuch--despite the fact that, one winter, all I had left to wear were a pair of brown flare-legged corduroys (in the 80s, people!, when the cool girls were wearing straight-cut Levis and Reeboks!) and cowboy boots, which turned the icy sidewalks into a skating experience (albeit a well-padded one, thanks to my mother's hand-me-down lambskin coat). But the Sparbuch numbers, they grew.

Once I moved out from home and in with my then-boyfriend/ fiance (young and stupid!), I quickly learned how to budget because my father's monthly check didn't go very far; neither did my mother's 50% match or my fast-food restaurant wages. Our apartment was missing bricks in the kitchen wall and the bathroom window was cracked, so that the windows froze from the inside in winter. This meant that we spent a fortune on heating costs and had very little left for luxuries like food (other than what I brought home from my shift at the burger place); the left-over spaghetti with marinara sauce from one night were, with the help of a frying pan, an apple, and a handful of raisins, quickly changed into pseudo-nudelkugel the next night, or into "Chinese" fried noodles or pasta salad the night after that. Then I realized that, hey, I'm an English major, and there are language schools in town, so, instead of making minimum wage at my burger flipper job, I quickly made enough money to cover the monthly bills, buy real food, save a bit on the side, and, finally, afford my first own apartment, when a new boyfriend entered the scene. That Sparbuch? Still grew.

In that first own, rent-controlled, apartment, I slept on the floor for months while saving up for a bed. Most of my furniture came from dumpsters, from curbside pickup days (called "Sperrmuell"), or from friends. And you know what? It worked. The only time I ever dipped into my Sparcbuch was when I broke up with the aforementioned boyfriend and bought a TV for evening entertainment instead. And then I quickly covered that dip again by giving more English and piano lessons, and leading a couple of men's choirs (don't judge me!).

Why am I telling you this?

Because I never had a credit card when I was in Germany, and somehow, with sometimes admittedly extreme lifestyle adjustments, things worked out.

And then I came to California, to the one school out of the ones I got into that offered me a complete nonresident tuition fellowship and a TA ship. I was home free, I thought--until I got my first credit card. And then another one. And another. Because, wow! All those books! If you buy three CD's, they give you another 3 for free! I need to be part of the lecture-tapes club! Suddenly, the credit card balances showed $1000, with an APR of about 20%. My sleep became fitful--how would I ever pay this off, not being allowed to work off-campus because of my visa status? Even if I cut the damn things up, the balance would still rise because of the interest! So, I started living on ramen and going to all sorts of university functions, if only just to stand near the buffet and shovel as many canapes into my mouth and into a concealed little plastic bag as my hands could hold. Yeah, I was that classy. But, again, I paid my debts down, knowing fully well that my carelessness had made me borrow more than I could afford to repay.

When, post-Green-Card, I got my first job in a town about 35 miles away and needed a reliable car, I remember sitting in the dealership, sweat dripping down my forehead, and signing the loan paperwork. Thirteen thousand dollars, over three years! That was a heart attack waiting to happen--especially two and a half years later, when the Optical Bubbleness started its layoffs. Knowing that my job could go any minute, I adjuncted at local community colleges in the evenings and on weekends, and even worked as a video store clerk on Saturday evenings and Sundays--and everything beyond the basic bill coverage went towards paying off the remaining car loan and the credit cards, even if that meant the return of ramen and free-buffet cuisine (it did). Because being unemployed and in debt? I couldn't handle the thought of that.

So, now we live in a house, TBIK and I, and are paying off a mortgage whose astronomicalness is beyond my understanding--even though everything's perfectly reasonable, calculated with lots of breathing room, and with the paperwork in his name (preventing my imminent heart attack)--but some nights, again, I lie awake thinking of the huge responsibility that paying back these thousands of dollars entails. Deep inside I know that living with debt means living beyond my means, and living beyond my means makes me physically uncomfortable. Building equity my ass--that cash exists only on paper, and the paper is only as good as the housing market itself.

So, again, why am I telling you all this?

American culture, as I have come to know it, is a culture in which people spend more than they have, and often carelessly so; German culture is a culture in which people have more than they spend and tend to be more careful about money. Second mortgages? Second houses, with two mortgages and credit card debt? What's not unheard of out here is pretty much unthinkable where I come from, or exudes a certain sleaziness, like high-stakes poker or being McCain's speechwriter.

That's why I'm of two minds about this bailout, especially when it comes to reimbursing banks for the 7% of bad (as in, defaulted or worse) mortgage decisions that are dragging the 93% of good mortgage loans (I heard these numbers on public radio yesterday) down. It feels like rewarding irreponsible people for being, well, irresponsible, and making no effort to influence their customers' borrowing behavior by saying "yeah, so, if you lose your job or have a huge medical emergency or whatnot, how are you going to make the payments?" I'm especially against rewarding any executively-salaried fiduciary high rollers--which, not surprisingly, leaves the increase in FDIC insurance for accounts over $100,000 as the only thing I dig.

So, and because I'm a stuck-up holier-than-thou judgmental German tightwad anyway, I'm going to log into my bank account now and let my mouse lovingly stroke my pretty, dark-blue old Sparbuch.