A trouble loan is the worst kind. You borrow against it and paying it back is never easy. I am not talking about, oops I cannot pay my bills I need to borrow some quick cash kind of trouble. However, that could be parallel. I am also not talking about the loan you take out with the shady character at the horse track when you think you have a good bet. That is really a bad loan. I am talking about not taking care of a festering problem because you would rather do something else then take the few minutes to fix it now.
So here I am, I notice a small leak in the backyard. It is very small, but it is coming from an underground pipe. I could fix that in a relatively painless way. A shovel, some pvc and pipe cement and I can have that crushed pipe fixed in about 1 hour. 1 Hour of time is what it is going to take. That is how trouble starts. Small but large enough to notice. However, I could pay that 1 hour price and take care of it today. However, I will not. I will push it off. I will take out a trouble loan. A small amount of money. I will borrow that 1 hour now, use it for something else.
However, trouble loans return back to you at a 10X rate. Meaning, that small leak will become a problem that will need 10 hours of my time to resolve. That leak will erode something else, it will cause a foundation problem in my house. It will produce rot, cause a tree to fall, perhaps crush my patio cover. That is what I am going to do today. I am going to take out a trouble loan. I am going to spend my hour on something else.
The point is that we should not take out loans against trouble. We should take care of it right now, while the trouble is small. If not, you will pay 10X what it would cost in today’s time.
Guy Reams
