Credir card debt --staggering

[TraderZones]

Quote from ProfitTakgFool:

Absolutely not TZ. If your debt to equity ratio is below 1 you are in sound financial health. .

heavy credit card debt affects many other areas of your credit life.

And in this chaotic, depression-possible economy, sound financial heath is one step away from unexpected disaster. Try reading what happened to Brandon regarding his health tragedy and medical insurance situation.

 

[ET873]

Quote from hughb:

I'm heading out the door here to get my errands started.

I just wanted to interject on the moral issue of filing BK. Most of us have been taught to pay your debts. We've been taught that not paying debts is dishonorable. But we were never taught that moneylenders can be scumbags. BK is a two way street. It takes a lender and a borrower to create a mess. Most of the time, I believe the mess was created by greedy moneylenders. An exception of course would be the deadbeat mentioned in this thread that fled to India to avoid paying back his debts. he knew he wasn't going to pay it back at the time he borrowed it. Debtors prison is a perfect place for him.

Some people say we should bring back debtors prison. OK, then what about creditors prison. There are a helluva lot more scumbag moneylenders then there is debtors.

Filing BK is a business decision, not a moral decision. If you can't pay, then consider BK, that's what it's there for. If you "WON'T" pay however, that's another story. But I don't think there are many people in that situation. There are far more predatory lenders then there are deadbeats.

My view is that weaknesses in the lending system should be brought up first, and then if nothing is done, exploited to such a point that change must happen. It's the same thing that happens with computer viruses. A lot of hackers do publish and warn about the exploits found before creating a virus to exploit. A lot of hackers only create viruses because viruses are the most effective methods for fixing security problems. If no one exploited security vulnerabilities, operating systems, web applications, etc. would be a lot less safe than they are today.

Second, consider who benefits by allowing weaknesses to exist in the credit system, only the bad people. If someone is allowed to take a huge debt and not repay it, who does pay for it ultimately? The people who do repay their debts and interest. The worst type of system is the one where the worst people benefit at the expense of higher costs (in any form) applied to those who make the system work. It's really an inefficiency that should be removed.

 

[Sandybestdog]

Quote from opm8:

Sorry to burst your bubble but these friends of yours sound like the definition of irresponsible. Where are their savings? Only a fool takes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and lives paycheck to paycheck.

opm8

I love it when people talk about how Americans are living way beyond their means without ever pointing out what the alternative is. Yes many people bought homes they couldn’t afford. But can you blame them? The American dream was slipping away and mortgage lenders offered them a way to buy a house. Where I live at the height of the housing boom, even a condo or townhouse still cost over 300k. Now, they are still over 200k. The mortgage payments alone are over $2000 a month. How can an average guy making $10 or even $20 an hour ever afford this? How would they have ever saved 50k to put down a 20% down payment? If they go to school to get a better job, they have to take out more loans to afford it.

As far as credit card debt, yes many people bought big screen tv’s, but a lot of it is simply higher cost of living. Again, can you blame the guy making $10 an hour because he wants health insurance that cost hundreds a month? Rent where I live is still over $900 for a 1 bedroom apartment. Then the CC companies jack their rates to 24% even though they have perfect payment history. Then they’ll never be able to pay it off because all of the payments go to interest. It’s a vicious cycle.

I for one am hoping housing prices continue to crash. Homes are meant to be places to live, not investments and ATM’s. Those who paid too much can still eventually pay off their mortgage, those who can’t will get foreclosed on and the banks will take the loss, and who really cares about them?

 

[seriousNews]

Quote from Sandybestdog:

I love it when people talk about how Americans are living way beyond their means without ever pointing out what the alternative is. Yes many people bought homes they couldn’t afford. But can you blame them? The American dream was slipping away and mortgage lenders offered them a way to buy a house. Where I live at the height of the housing boom, even a condo or townhouse still cost over 300k. Now, they are still over 200k. The mortgage payments alone are over $2000 a month. How can an average guy making $10 or even $20 an hour ever afford this? How would they have ever saved 50k to put down a 20% down payment? If they go to school to get a better job, they have to take out more loans to afford it.

...

no offense but you were born a slave, you will live a slave and in all probability will die a slave

there is no land of opportunity there never was and so long as most humans don't find another entity to replace the slaves they are, there never will be. To believe otherwise is just utter nonsense, you just want to believe it so you can have hope for the future

no one wants to admit their life is crap, when it really is. Because then there remains no reason to live

for the sake of simplicity we will assume god created this universe, this god is rather incompetent he knows he created a fucked up shitty system, he knows there is no way for everyone to have life in this system, but only a few can live while others work, but because of his pride he wants to keep this crappy system running at whatever the cost, and that cost comes at the expense of your life

if i can't live why should anyone else or if i can't live i will work so others can live or ..., you choose

 

[Sandybestdog]

Quote from seriousNews:

no offense but you were born a slave, you will live a slave and in all probability will die a slave

there is no land of opportunity there never was and so long as most humans don't find another entity to replace the slaves they are, there never will be. To believe otherwise is just utter nonsense, you just want to believe it so you can have hope for the future

no one wants to admit their life is crap, when it really is. Because then there remains no reason to live

for the sake of simplicity we will assume god created this universe, this god is rather incompetent he knows he created a fucked up shitty system, he knows there is no way for everyone to have life in this system, but only a few can live while others work, but because of his pride he wants to keep this crappy system running at whatever the cost, and that cost comes at the expense of your life

if i can't live why should anyone else or if i can't live i will work so others can live or ..., you choose

OK so I guess you are proving my point. People lived beyond their means because they saw no other way to finally get ahead.

Somebody told me a few years ago that God only helps bad people and punishes good ones. I didn’t believe him, but I have slowly realized that it’s true. Bad people win, good people loose. This has been hard for me to realize. I was raised a Christian and taught to always do the right thing etc.

I hope to one day to take down just one bad company and put them out of business. Hopefully it will be a big credit card company, but I would be satisfied if it were some local restaurant franchise that treats their employees like crap.

I’ll admit my life is crap, but I’m not quite ready to give up, close, but not yet.

 

[Barth Vader]

Quote from seriousNews:


there is no land of opportunity there never was and so long as most humans don't find another entity to replace the slaves they are, there never will be. To believe otherwise is just utter nonsense, you just want to believe it so you can have hope for the future

Interesting thoughts..............

For the sake of discussion, lets look at this created world:

I believe that every minute we breath air, we have possibilities, potential, options........

Look to nature.......a bird is designed to fly in the air and to walk on the ground.......it has massive potential to seek food and water...both from the heights and from the ground......but if it never left the nest, it would die.....

So it is with us.....if we never make use of the potential and possibilities in front of us, we will never reach our fullest development, and indeed would become a "slave" to fear or sloth.

I will take "hope" any day of the week.

 

[Trader666]

On the contrary. They lived beyond their means because they wanted instant gratification, they felt entitled and were unwilling to put in the time and effort to earn what they wanted legitimately. Unfortunately they were enabled by greedy lenders, etc. Now everyone's getting what they deserve.

Quote from Sandybestdog:

People lived beyond their means because they saw no other way to finally get ahead.

 

[Trader666]

What a pathetic victim's mentality. Do you also think it's McDonald's fault for "making people fat?"

Nobody forced the borrowers to borrow and they're the ones who are breaching their side of legal agreements.

We need debtors' prisons and a sense of personal responsibility in this country.

Quote from hughb:

... But we were never taught that moneylenders can be scumbags....Most of the time, I believe the mess was created by greedy moneylenders. ...OK, then what about creditors prison. There are a helluva lot more scumbag moneylenders then there is debtors....There are far more predatory lenders then there are deadbeats.

 

[Sandybestdog]

Quote from Trader666:

On the contrary. They lived beyond their means because they wanted instant gratification, they felt entitled and were unwilling to put in the time and effort to earn what they wanted legitimately. Unfortunately they were enabled by greedy lenders, etc. Now everyone's getting what they deserve.

Your obviously not getting my point. Why do you people always give the “work harder” answer to everything. How is someone starting out now ever able to save enough to put down 20% on a 200 or 300k mortgage? By the time you save 50k, the house will go up another 100k, and then you’ll have to save even more.

How is someone who makes $8 an hour ever able to afford anything beyond a 1 bedroom shack and Cup O’Noodles? If they work 40-50 hours a week, are they not working hard? Oh I forgot, they’re the scum of the earth working low wage jobs. They deserve to live in poverty because they’re not educated. If you worked 2 jobs just to pay the bills, don’t you think you would think you’re “entitled” to a few luxuries?

Tell the person who racked up the credit cards to pay for outrageous medical expenses that they should work harder. Tell the person paying hundreds a month on health insurance, they should work harder. Tell the student who just graduated with 50 or 100k in student loans to work harder.

The baby boomers who taut this “you don’t work hard enough” crap did relatively little to deserve their wealth. They were blessed with good paying jobs before corporations shipped every job to Mexico and the government shipped Mexican’s to take the rest of our jobs here. They rode the inflation boom since the late 70’s when the Dow was at 500 and a 5,000 square foot home was $50,000. And they will get their social security and pension checks that are paid for by my generation through taxes that I will never benefit from, and inflation that I pay for through higher prices.

So now maybe you’ll rethink why people hit up the credit cards. Bring down the cost of living and you’ll bring down debt. Bring back good, productive jobs, and you’ll bring down debt. Otherwise we will never fix the root of the problem.

And you guys wonder why people voted for Obama. You tell them to work harder, he gave them hope, or at least the illusion of it.

 

[hughb]

Quote from Trader666:

What a pathetic victim's mentality. Do you also think it's McDonald's fault for "making people fat?"

Nobody forced the borrowers to borrow and they're the ones who are breaching their side of legal agreements.

We need debtors' prisons and a sense of personal responsibility in this country.

And nobody forced lenders to lend. They shotgun out mass loan applications and never bother to check if any of them actually have the ability to pay.

We need creditor's prisons and a sense of corporate responsibility in this country.

Fuq the moneylenders.

And fuq you for chopping up my post to meet your corporate asskissing agenda.