On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, the home furnishing giant, IKEA, held a grand opening for its 353,000 square foot store in Tampa, Florida. This was the third store the Swedish company had opened in the state of Florida and needless to say, the locals were excited. People were camped outside the front doors of the building for more than four days prior to the grand opening. Two days prior to the grand opening, huge crowds were lined up around the building hoping to cash in on the FREE chair IKEA was offering to the first 500 customers through the door (a $90.00 value). By the time the grand opening arrived, the store had to utilize dozens of its employees in order to direct traffic for the mass amounts of vehicles filling up the parking lot! Did these people really take time off of work to be a part of this madhouse? And if they’re unemployed, what are they doing spending money they don’t have on things they probably don’t really need? Hard to fit a couch in the cardboard box you’re living in.

I just don’t understand why I keep hearing about this terrible economy we’re currently facing when I see the malls, movie theaters, sporting events and IKEA jam-packed with people spending money. I think we should just be honest with ourselves - we’re really not broke, we just have our financial priorities screwed up. We charge up our credit cards every month while we accrue ungodly amounts of interest and continue lying to ourselves that we will eventually pay it off. What’s worse is that we’re constantly exhausting our credit card limits for “non-necessities”. Instead of groceries and the mortgage, we splurge on the new $300.00 iPhone, the $230.00 iPod and the $60.00 Beatles Rock Band for our Xbox 360 which we purchased last year and still paying for on credit.

We need to take financial responsibility and start digging ourselves out of the proverbial hole we’re in. Dig or be buried alive.