Stop paying credit cards. Give yourself a bailout!!

[Trader666]

P.S. Leave it to you to try to argue against educating yourself beyond high school because real wages are decreasing. I wasn't talking about that, I was talking about you elevating yourself above the second rung from the bottom of the totem pole. But since you brought it up, erosion in real wages means you should strive to get even more education.

<img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2401239>

Quote from Sandybestdog:

Quote from Trader666:

If, as you claim, you have not been able to improve your financial situation no matter what you try or how hard you work, why don't you have more than a high school diploma?

Where does this notion come from that education is the answer to our economic problems? The evidence doesn’t support this. In fact, it’s just the opposite. As the percentage of the population with a college degree has steadily increased, real wages have actually decreased. How is that possible? The smartest population in the world can’t make up for the fact our job markets are crumbling.

 

[TraderZones]

Quote from dirkd:

As a nation we have to get away from the use of credit cards. I got myself in trouble many times with credit cards. I think we have to change our mindset and get away from spend everything you make and then borrow to keep spending. My goal is to not use any credit cards, have any auto loans or mortgages. This is the way the rich and powerful keep the middle class chained down. Educate yourself and stop borrowing money and stop buying random shit. Just try and sell some of those expensive clothes or bullshit you buy and you will see how much you lose. Buy a new car and its worth 40% of the price you paid 3 years later.

I would say this is overkill, getting away from the use of credit cards. Without credit cards, do you want to carry $1000 with you to make major purchases and then lose the cash? And I certainly don't want to keep blank checks in my wallet to pay for airline trips, tuition for the kids, mega-shopping trips to Costco, etc. Plus credit cards give you a transactional history of your purchases. Not to mention perks/rewards.

Cars kill 40,000 people a year. Should we ban them? And how many 100,000s of people are hurt badly each year?

And not having credit cards makes it hard to have a significant/good credit history, so you can get mortgages, car loans, etc. etc. So I think credit cards have a strong value to the average person. how do you rent a car without a card????

I think the bigger problem, is having LARGE CREDIT AMOUNTS available - people with 8 cards and a total of $70,000 available credit and a revolving debt in the tens of thousands.

I have 2 cards, with a self-imposed limit of about $5000. And I pay off my cards EVERY month. That will handle anything I am likely to buy (I am not into boats and snowmobiles or other toys). My credit card purchases are tuition for family members, shopping, travel, etc. And I have no interest in killing off the cards, as I use them quite a few times a week, even for smaller purchases (so I don't have to carry a lot of money or keep going to the ATM). The card is useful.

 

[Fractals 'R Us]

Being out of work I have a lot of time for the library. Nonfiction best sellers are the greatest btw... your point is fleshed out and demonstrated abundantly in a book called "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a great read.. the dang guy points out a few other equally profound ideas as well...

Success is about being in the right place, at the right time and doing the right thing. Usually the right thing is to be working very hard at something... you can find a zillion stories about people that were in the right place at the right time and they were doing nothing that fit the scenario...

Quote from bidask:

i'll say one thing. success is due to both hard work and luck, but the distribution is probably far more skewed towards luck than people think.

why? when people succeed, they believe that the reason is due to their own hard work. they tend not to see the extra help they may have received or how they were fortunate in certain critical junctures that kept them on the path of success. that's just human nature.

now you have two camps of people. the ones who succeeded and the ones who failed. which of these two camps do you hear from the most in tv shows and newspapers? of course you hear from the people who succeeded the most. what do they say?

"work hard and you'll succeed."

 

[ElCubano]

Quote from bidask:

i'll say one thing. success is due to both hard work and luck, but the distribution is probably far more skewed towards luck than people think.

why? when people succeed, they believe that the reason is due to their own hard work. they tend not to see the extra help they may have received or how they were fortunate in certain critical junctures that kept them on the path of success. that's just human nature.

now you have two camps of people. the ones who succeeded and the ones who failed. which of these two camps do you hear from the most in tv shows and newspapers? of course you hear from the people who succeeded the most. what do they say?

"work hard and you'll succeed."

Yes like when someone makes a shitty call in poker and hits....'he was a genius'...;o) at least they like to think it was talent...

I have someone close to me who lost all of his net worth from flipping a house making money and then parlaying all he had on 5 condos one or 2 for over a million each. Imagine had he just done that from the onset he would have made millions...just 1 or 1 1/2 years earlier when he did the first condo ... had he done it then he would also be viewed as a genius...but he didn't do it then and he has lost everything so he is being viewed as a loser....

In my book he toook his shot ....

 

[Eric215]

I would have to say that blaming timing for an investment or business failure is also a cop-out. Figuring out whether or not it is the right time to initiate an investment is part of the hard work. We as traders should know this. For example, if I shorted the Dow on 3-09-09 I would have lost big but does that mean I should just blame it on bad luck? Or is it my fault for not doing the work to realize it was a bad TIME to short because the market was due for a pull-back. If you looked at a chart of real estate prices you would have noticed that it looked a lot like the Nasdaq did back in 2000. I showed my real-estate agent friend this chart a few years before the housing collapse and he ignored it too. So again, the timing aspect is part of the hard work to be successful.

 

[dirkd]

debit cards are just the same as credit cards. If you have 5000 in your savings account then hell spend it if you like with your debit card. I am in the mortgage business and have been in it for over 10 years now. I know about credit. I breath credit everyday. I also have the knowledge about proper credit use and i would venture to say 80% of america is financially ignorant. Sure you want a good credit score and i dont say not to have any credit cards just dont use them. They should be for emergency situations only. What i teach my own family is to have a 2 year emergency fund and dont spend what you dont make. If you can pay off your credit card debt every month then you are ahead of the curve. Thats proper credit card management.

 

[ElCubano]

Quote from Eric215:

I would have to say that blaming timing for an investment or business failure is also a cop-out. Figuring out whether or not it is the right time to initiate an investment is part of the hard work. We as traders should know this. For example, if I shorted the Dow on 3-09-09 I would have lost big but does that mean I should just blame it on bad luck? Or is it my fault for not doing the work to realize it was a bad TIME to short because the market was due for a pull-back. If you looked at a chart of real estate prices you would have noticed that it looked a lot like the Nasdaq did back in 2000. I showed my real-estate agent friend this chart a few years before the housing collapse and he ignored it too. So again, the timing aspect is part of the hard work to be successful.

The point is not wether he made money or not. The point is had he made money he would be viewed as a genius or a winner or his hard worked and planning worked out....while it was just a difference of 1 to 1 1/2 years....peace

 

[u21c3f6]

Quote from dirkd:

debit cards are just the same as credit cards. If you have 5000 in your savings account then hell spend it if you like with your debit card. I am in the mortgage business and have been in it for over 10 years now. I know about credit. I breath credit everyday. I also have the knowledge about proper credit use and i would venture to say 80% of america is financially ignorant. Sure you want a good credit score and i dont say not to have any credit cards just dont use them. They should be for emergency situations only. What i teach my own family is to have a 2 year emergency fund and dont spend what you dont make. If you can pay off your credit card debt every month then you are ahead of the curve. Thats proper credit card management.

Debit cards are not the same as credit cards.

I don't disagree with your point but I don't have a debit card nor will I have one unless I am in some way forced to have one. I use a credit card for just about everything and pay the bill in full each month. Not only do I get perks to use the credit card (cash back), I also get other protections not available with a debit card.

If there is a problem with a purchase, the credit card company intervenes and has always made me whole. In addition, if the card is compromised and erroneous charges are made, the credit card company takes care of it and again I am whole without a single dollar leaving my pocket. If a debit card is compromised, the money is already out of your account and you may suffer some cash down time before you are made whole if you are ever made whole.

Joe.

 

[dirkd]

what i meant by debit cards are the same as credit cards is that debit cards can be used an place of a credit card. No one wants to walk around with $1000 in their pockets. True you do get some advantages with credit cards. If you can consistenly pay off your credit card balance each month, that is fine. But how many people have great credit card management. I simply stated my point, as my own experience, that debt is bad. We as a country have been raised to spend, spend, spend. That's the reason our economy is in the shitter now. People cant pay off their credit cards every month. Sure there are some exceptions but as a nation thats the case. We have to educate our people and give them financial knowledge instead of financial ignorance. Strive to have a 2 yr emergency fund, no auto debt, and keep mortgage debt to a minimum and no loan terms greater than 15 years.

 

[Eric215]

Quote from ElCubano:

The point is not wether he made money or not. The point is had he made money he would be viewed as a genius or a winner or his hard worked and planning worked out....while it was just a difference of 1 to 1 1/2 years....peace

I see your point and I don't think he is a loser, he just had bad timing. If he had made money 1 to 1 1/2 years earlier like you say it is apparent by his recent actions that he would have probably parlayed those earlier winnings to make an even bigger amount. So either way the timing would have caught up to him. Because he continued to invest at the market peak he would have continued to do so either way. Unless of course he just had a set profit goal in mind, but I doubt that, most people would think that they could continue to make more. Your friend simply didn't pay attention to the bubble that was forming and thought, like most people, that the market would continue higher. We all make this mistake sometimes. I would consider somebody a "genius" as you put it, if that person can buy low and sell before the market turns against them, when ever they enter the market.

Warren Buffet is a perfect example of this and why he is considered a "genius" by some. He does (or at least used to do) a tremendous amount of work finding the best companies and then being extremely patient until the stock is really cheap and the TIMING is right. He isn't lucky and he may not even be a "genius", he could just be a hard working, patient, man. As you know from your poker analogy, lucky people don't last long term. If I go 7-2 against AA I might get lucky once, but I will lose long term.