Having recently paid off yet another credit card (2 left) I’m all too aware of how much debt can be a burden.  Recently a friend asked me if I had some advice in regards to him getting new glasses.  he didn’t have money that day for glasses, but when the bill arrived in the mail he was pretty sure he’d have it.  I asked about the state of his glasses and he said he’d had them for five years (I don’t wear glasses, but my wife does, and you should see the eye doctor more often than that, I think).  He told me that parts were broken now and so it forced his hand to need them sooner rather than later.

My suggestion at the time was to contact the doctor’s office and ask them about their schedule and about payment options.  I don’t recommend debt, but you have to have glasses to drive in some cases, and if he couldn’t drive he couldn’t earn money and the disaster would be worse than a few hundred dollars in debt.  So, I haven’t heard how the situation went in response from the doctor’s office in regards to payment plans or billing schedules but I did want to ask: what would you do?  Would you go into debt to get glasses?  Would you put things on a credit card?  Get a loan from a friend or family member?  Put tape on things until the tape fell apart?