Feelings of desperation and hopelessness tied to financial problems can lead otherwise law-abiding citizens down criminal paths. The 2005 film “Fun With Dick & Jane” starring Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni is a good illustration of the point. As the IMDB plot outline describes:

The day before Globodyne’s stock tanks, a la Enron, and its pension fund evaporates, the corporation’s CEO and CFO setup middle manager Dick Harper to be the public face of the disaster. Jobless, and with no savings, pension, or home equity, Dick and his wife Jane sink slowly into poverty. He looks for work (as do all former Globodyne executives); he even tries day labor with the relatives of their Mexican nanny. A foreclosure notice sends Dick and Jane over the edge into a life of blue-collar crime.

While Dick and Jane managed to get away with holding up stores and robbing banks, most people who resort to crime as a last desperate resort to get money usually get caught and end up spending years behind bars. So if you’re feeling desperate and hopeless and you’re considering holding up a convenience store, robbing a bank, or committing some other crime involving theft of money, consider how much more desperate and hopeless you’re going to feel when your freedom gets taken away and you’re waking up every day in a jail cell. And if it’s another action you’re contemplating such as committing suicide to escape your money troubles, consider the mental, emotional and continued financial difficulties that will forever plague the loved-ones you leave behind after you take your life. They will still have the reality of no money with the addition of grief and a new level of desperation and hopelessness that will linger for years, if not for the rest of their lives.

When weighing the burden of having no money right now against the consequences of acting in desperation on account of having money, and feeling hopeless because you can’t seem to find a solution to your money problems, it becomes plain to see that there really are worse places you can be than where you are right now. There are worse situations you can find yourself in than your present situation. Admittedly this brings you no closer to resolving your present conflict, but it can certainly help you avoid making a bad situation worse.