Watching President Obama, Professor Gates, and Officer Crowley having a beer at the White House reminded me that difficult circumstances can be avoided by taking your time and analyzing the situation more closely. Sharing a beer with friends is nice while sitting outside, in your backyard, on a nice summer day. Midweek, your buddies come by to share in some relaxing conversation regarding current events on the front page of the newspapers. I’m sure that this meeting didn’t emulate and equally tranquil atmosphere.
As you might recall, this meeting was a requested by President Obama. It started with a simple phone call to the Cambridge Police Department. A female witnessed two people breaking into a house in her neighborhood on a Tuesday afternoon. Because other houses in the neighborhood had been burglarized in previous months, she immediately phoned the police. What happened next is subjected to one’s personal view.
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s preeminent African-American scholars, was arrested in his own home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. This raised concerns that Gates was a victim of racial profiling. The arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley is not only a certified emergency medical technician but also trains hundreds of police officers in avoiding racial profiling. Both parties had two different points of views regarding the incident. Then the President condemned the Cambridge Police Department during a White House news conference while openly admitting he didn’t have all the facts. The issue became front page fodder.
How did this issue get out of hand? More importantly, what could have been done to avoid the issue in the first place? Maybe the real problem lied in the approach by President Obama. When the President said the Cambridge Police Department acted “stupidly”, he made an assumption without knowing all the details. He should have considered all the facts of the situation prior to commenting to an opinion. He reacted emotionally rather than analytically. Don’t make the same mistake when looking for debt elimination options.
If you are having problems with your debt, don’t make an emotional charged and hasty decision! Conduct research. Speak to different companies. You should look at all options available to you. Is your particular situation best handled through debt consolidation, debt settlement, credit counseling, or bankruptcy? What are the costs associated with each service? What are all the positives and negatives of each service?
If you start by asking these questions, you’ll be well on your way to finding the right process for you. If you act emotionally and hastily, you’ll be telling your friends over a beer how you made the wrong decision on how to handle your debt.