Am I an exception? Hardly. When temptation meets opportunity, we often yield. Counting how many times I’ve availed of a consumer loan would be difficult. I look around at all the equipment in my house and wonder—how is it that I don’t see anything purchased with a loan? Of course, some items were replaced later, with my own savings from retirement or with the help of my sons.

Why couldn’t it have been done the other way around? First, save for a grinder, set aside money, and then buy it with my own funds. But the pressing urgency—often driven by external influences rather than genuine internal need—has such weight and momentum that you collapse under it. You give in. Even if, by some great stretch of the imagination, I had managed to stick to a plan and save, those so-called savings would have likely been spent on something else. Discipline, after all, often has to be forced; it’s rarely self-acquired.

The trouble with taking loans from employer-organizations is that they have to be repaid—no matter what. The employer ensures your salary only reaches you after your "pound of flesh" has been delicately deducted.

Some people are lucky. They borrow from friends, relatives, acquaintances, even strangers, and never pay back. "Take action against me," they say, knowing full well that such actions rarely materialize into anything serious.

But with employer loans, Polonius' rule doesn't apply. In today’s world, with an open economy, loans are freely available for vehicles, consumer goods, houses, and almost everything else. In these cases, loans may lose themselves, but friendships remain intact.

So, without following Polonius’ advice, I kept borrowing—right up until my retirement. For consumer durables, for house repairs, during festivals, from societies—anything I could borrow, I did, of course, with due humility and by following all the rules.

Did I follow any of Polonius’ rules? Hardly.

Continued in 183. Pressed and Oppressed - Part 3