"The day has lived, and okay."

“I don’t understand people who take loans for clothes and gifts,” Pavel Galich, an actor and grandson of the famous bard Alexander Galich, told me in an interview.

We talked about finances. And I thought: “What nonsense! Where did he meet people who take out loans for gifts? ” But closer to the New Year, more and more often I come across online calls for not denying anything to myself or relatives on New Year's Day and if my own funds are not enough, apply for consumer loans for gifts. I googled. Indeed, there is a demand for such loans. There are even statistics - on average, Russians take up to thirty thousand rubles for New Year's gifts.

I can explain why the words of Galich caused me such a reaction of rejection. At least in the last year, during my journalistic trips to the regions, I have repeatedly come across people who find themselves in a debt hole due to consumer loans. The most severe cases I saw in the flooded Tulun of the Irkutsk region. These people, whose houses sailed away, still stand before my eyes. The fact is that not only houses sailed away, but also loans - borrowed televisions, refrigerators, washing machines. In the end, the banks promised to give the victims a credit vacation, but still, what a shame they will now pay loans for what is no longer there.

I met another victim of a consumer loan by accident in the Pskov region. She took out a loan to bring her children to school. The husband did not work. She worked for a salary of sixteen thousand. She took the loan upon herself, thinking that her husband was about to find work and they would give back together. The husband not only did not find a job, but left for another family. At first, the woman forgot about the loan, and when the bank reminded her, she tried to cope with it alone, borrowing and re-taking. On the day when I accidentally entered her house, they pulled her out of the loop. She, chased by debt and creditors, wanted to die and leave her young children. She knew that the amount she had to give would never work. She did not sleep at night. For one night, I collected money through her Facebook and she closed the loan completely. Thanks to my friends and subscribers! The woman wrote to me: "You returned me happiness."

“But you will sooner or later come to the point of paying!” - Galich told me. - It's just stupid, crazy frivolity - "Ah, we walk while we live!".

And then he, of course, hit the nail on the head. The most vivid illustration of his words still stands before my eyes: I worked in a Baikal village, prepared a report on a large family. Men in this village suffered from massive unemployment. Therefore, to put it mildly, they drank a lot. They made money by going out to the lake on motor boats at night and setting up nets. Often perished - Baikal is unpredictable. Often fell into the hands of a fish inspection. They drank all the money earned from the sale of poaching fish.

Seeing how one of the fishermen dragged to change their only nets to vodka to get a hangover, I exclaimed: “Why are you going to fish ?!” Turning to me, the man calmly said: “The day has passed, okay.”

Then I rushed with this phrase. It was a miraculous phrase - the answer to the whole worldview of a Russian peasant. How much she explains in such irrational behavior of our people. The future is foggy and bleak because there are no prospects in the present. There were none in the past. It is foolish to hope that in the future they will appear, since they were never there at all. So life one day is the surest strategy. This is the Russian-village "Day has passed, and okay" is shown in the city in - "and, we walk, while we live."

If you analyze all the cases in which I had to declare a fee for a person driven into a credit hole, then we can come to one conclusion - when deciding to take a consumer loan, these people did not look into the near future. They didn’t expect how they would give, where to earn, as if they were not going to live up to the moment when the debt was asked with interest. This is our man’s peculiarity - he hopes for some kind of miracle, and at the same time he tries to live only with what the present day brings. Understanding the social circumstances of these people, I do not blame them much. That woman from the Dedovichi in the Pskov region really needed to bring her children to school, and no one gave a loan.

But I blame the creditors: knowing this peculiarity of our person, they manipulate him, convincing that he deserves the best. True, on credit and at interest.

I am not against loans at all, but I agree with Galich - you need to take only what is really necessary, and only when you have made the calculations for the coming months and you understand what you will give back from.

New Year's holidays will end, all the same non-holiday weekdays will come, and, alas, a “real man” who managed to give his girlfriend a “little ring with a pebble” so that she could show off on Instagram and make sure that she meets a “real man” will plow to give for a ring with interest. And worry by the end of the loan repayment period. A skirt bought from a credit card for a New Year's corporate party will be bored or dislike. But you have to pay for it - like three. But gifts are good, because of which a close and dear person does not have to tear and worry in the near future. And the new year is the near future, and it is strange that we look forward to this future with such impatience, but we do not know how to plan it competently financially.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.