Juat a rant, ignore me

[Platapus]

I gotta get this off my chest. :damn::damn:

Every day when I am watching the morning news, I am inundated with these commercials trying to convice people that it is ok to defraud the credit card companies :stare::stare:

Credit card companies are in the business to make money and they offer a convenience service to the customer -- Use the credit card company's money now and promise to pay it back later with interest.

If you don't like that deal don't use it

But if you take the credit card company's money, buy stuff with it, then you have to pay it back!!!

These "credit help" commercials are driving me nuts! It is not OK to garner benefit from borrowing money and then not pay it back. To me this is stealing or fraud. Just because Credit Card Companies are willing to accept a settlement does not mean it is right. They are willing to accept a settlement because it is better than being cheated out of their entire money.

It is dishonourable to use a credit card and then not pay back the money. The only saving grace is that people who defraud the credit card companies by using these "credit help" companies, will probably never be able to get credit again and rightfully so. :yep:

The attitude of these "credit help" companies drives me nuts. They make the defrauding customer out to be the victim and the credit card companies the villain because they simply want their money back.

Sorry for the rant. I really need to move to decaf. :yep:

[The Third Man]

It gets worse. What they are saying is that it is OK to let others pay for your irresponsibility. And believe me others do pay. Either through passing the loss onto other customers, reducing dividends to shareholder, layoffs, or not exrending credit to those who would otherwise be deemed credit worthy.

[Sledgehammer427]

I made a decision very early on to stick with an ATM/charge card.
I will never have a credit card.

If I don't have/make the cash to be buying something, I'll just learn to shrug it off and save my money.

[Ducimus]

I hadn't really looked at this commercials as, "Hey lets cheat the credit card company!", but more of a thing targeted to financially irresponsible dillweeds, and a sign that there must be alot of them if their making commercials like this. Fallout from the "instant gratification" society i suppose.

My ex was terrible. Every christmas, she'd put her self 1500 to 2000 dollars in the hole buying gifts. Not to mention Payday loan's (aka loan sharks), multiple credit cards, etc. It's all a vicious circle, and downward spiral when someone refuses to man up, and endure the hardships that being a financially irresponsible, consumerist schmuck, and shopohaulic brings.

Yeah, i know EXACTLY who those commercials are targeted at. People like my ex.

[TLAM Strike]

This is what my banker told me:
Get a credit card and use it to buy gas once a week only. Use it for nothing else.

It build up your credit and doesn't put you in debt.

[The Third Man]

Credit cards if used wisely can be of financial assistance. If used unwisely they are a disaster for the user and society.

[GoldenRivet]

Couldn't agree with your rant more ;)

[Takeda Shingen]

I hadn't really looked at this commercials as, "Hey lets cheat the credit card company!", but more of a thing targeted to financially irresponsible dillweeds, and a sign that there must be alot of them if their making commercials like this. Fallout from the "instant gratification" society i suppose.

My ex was terrible. Every christmas, she'd put her self 1500 to 2000 dollars in the hole buying gifts. Not to mention Payday loan's (aka loan sharks), multiple credit cards, etc. It's all a vicious circle, and downward spiral when someone refuses to man up, and endure the hardships that being a financially irresponsible, consumerist schmuck, and shopohaulic brings.

Yeah, i know EXACTLY who those commercials are targeted at. People like my ex.

Absolutely. Payday loans are the worst thing that you could possibly do, and those people just prey upon the desperate and irresponsible. Frankly, credit cards are little better. The downfalls of our society of consumerism; we are to want things that we cannot have, and likely do not need.

Personally, I have never touched a credit card. I have zero debt; I have paid off my mortgage and my car. The hundreds of credit card offers I get in the mail every month go promptly in the shredder. They are as a very seductive poison, and a piece of advice that I always give my students is that one of the fastest ways to ruin your life is to mismanage your finances.

[Ducimus]

Get a credit card and use it to buy gas once a week only. Use it for nothing else.


That is exactly what i've been doing. :O:

My truck is paid for, and I owe creditors zero dollars. Well, aside from the weekly trip to the gas pump. Doing this though, besides helping with credit, lets me see exactly what im spending on gas per week/month. I view my credit card as more of a "gasoline bill" then anything else.

[The Third Man]

I have paid off my mortgage


How did you do that? I am so envious of anyone who can do such a thing as paying off the mortgage. You must be one of the rich. Your effective taxes must be around 93%.

If not they will be under the top 1% class warfare. And you shoulfd be doing anything to reduce your tax rate.

[Takeda Shingen]

That is exactly what i've been doing. :O:

My truck is paid for, and I owe creditors zero dollars. Well, aside from the weekly trip to the gas pump. Doing this though, besides helping with credit, lets me see exactly what im spending on gas per week/month. I view my credit card as more of a "gasoline bill" then anything else.

I can understand why people do that, and I applaud your restraint. Yes, it will boost your credit score. Personally, I would just rather not have them in the wallet at all.

[Skybird]

I have a Visa - for the occasional internet buy where other sales methods are not available or not trustworthy. I get any deficit straight within 4 weeks. I use it 1-3 times per year, at best.

The card is not in my wallet. Together with my driving license it is stored in a safe drawer in my desktop.

In every-day-life I hate plastic money. It is not convenient, becasue it takes longer time at the cashdesk to get through the payment procedure than if oyu hand over real cash and get back the change. Street robbery also is still some kin d of an exotic crime over here, so safety also is no real argument in most situations. I am more worried about electronic crime and my banking data ending up in dark channels where they do not belong, getting abused for fraud by somebody else. Stolen card info, phishing attacks on home PCs, and manipulated bank automats that steal the card info and PINs as well, according to the Gemran "FBI" (=BKA) now are a very serious crime problem since some time, with ever exploding rates of cases.

I share the sentiment of ducimus and Takeda that plastic money is a good opportunity to let you escape from a material, real expereince of that you actually have given away money, which makes it easier for people to dive deep into debts. It is a psychological problem. Banks support the idea of people going into debts, since they make profits by it. People like me offering them little or no opportunity to collect interests from me, are not what they want to see too often.

The shifting of debts from one credit card to the next, to the degree it is common habit in the US that is a relatively uncommon practice here in Germany. There are tighter rules and monitors in place.

[AVGWarhawk]

This is what my banker told me:
Get a credit card and use it to buy gas once a week only. Use it for nothing else.

It build up your credit and doesn't put you in debt.


:yep: We keep small bean bag cards just for this purpose. My wife has two clothing store cards and we have one major credit card. All paid on time and carry a minimal balance. Creditors want to see consistancy in payments. No late payments or going over the credit limit. This builds your credit. Need to be careful and show restraint with the cards. That hole is so easy to dig and clawing your way out is very difficult. Been there and done that a very long time ago. Learned our lesson and got it straight.

[TLAM Strike]

Creditors want to see consistancy in payments. No late payments or going over the credit limit. This builds your credit. Consistency in everything is what a creditor wants to see. I have a friend who works in the loan department of a car dealership a few towns over, I was talking to him once and said I've been at the same job for 3 years now and he said that's good. People who come in to his office looking for finance for their new car get denied because they can't hold down a job for a long period of time.

[Jimbuna]

My position is identical to Tak regarding debt, mortgage and car.

I do however have a credit card which is seldom used but paid off at the end of each month if I do use it.

I'm not sure how they work in the US but here in the UK they come with automatic refunds if fraudulently used by anyone other than the cardholder and have a further use in insuring against holiday companies going bust (which is quite frequent here atm) when paid for by your card....at least that is what my Visa does :hmmm:

[Platapus]

There is one advantage of using a credit card - security

This happened to me one week ago. I have one credit card that I pay off every month. Last week, I opened up my credit card statement and found a bunch of charges made in PA (I don't do PA). Gosh, what a problem....for the credit card company, not me.

I hoped on the phone, all the fraudulent charges are taken off my account, the account was closed and a new credit card was issued to me. Had to send in a signed form (did not even have to pay the postage). Sure I went four days without a credit card and survived.

This is why I use my credit card for almost all my purchases. The risk is on the part of the credit card company. That's what I am not paying interest for when I pay off the account every month. :har:

I was glad the credit card people found a solution to their problem of fraudulent charges. :yeah:

[Takeda Shingen]

Jim and Platapus are indeed correct; you do get a decent amount of protection from fraud and identity theft, something that debit cards generally do not have.

[Tchocky]

I have 3 credit cards. Recently I had 4. I should probably explain that.

Right, card one is my standard Irish credit card, used for Steam, internet purchases and the like. It gets a fair amount of use and has never seen an interest charge.

Card #2 is my Dutch card. I didn't ask for one, it came with the account. Nice to have in an emergency I guess. It sits in my locker, gathering dust with licences and medical certs.

Card #3 is a MasterCard prepaid. I use this because it carries no €5 processing fee when booking Ryanair. With Dublin being a major hub I'm in and out a lot, and if the flight costs €12 then an extra €5 is something to be avoided.

Card #4 is a Visa Electron, which used to carry no processing fee with Ryanair. Needless to say, this card ain't used no more, cap'n

[Ducimus]

Jim and Platapus are indeed correct; you do get a decent amount of protection from fraud and identity theft, something that debit cards generally do not have.

Yeah I found that out the other month when my bank locked down my debit card when a "mass compromise" occured and didn't bother to tell me about it. If it had been my credit card, i would have had an automated phone call within 10 minutes of the lock down.

[jumpy]

ha, credit cards... I have one with a modest amount outstanding.
Thing is, I never used it for anything I couldn't already afford (like others in this thread), until the recession bit my work and home life and then I had no choice if I wanted to keep a roof over my head. It's ironic that I never needed the use of a credit card until everything went tits up with the economy, then I had no choice.

This morning the bank sent me a letter reducing the amount of credit I can use, why this should be I don't know, since the amount outstanding on the card is greatly less than a quarter of my previous 'credit limit'. So, as there's a lack of jobs and income and ever increasing utility costs my margin for error or emergency to tide me over is gone now.

Banks; they'll give you an umbrella when it's sunny, then ask for it back when it starts to rain.

Fact is, if banks were not so damn greedy in the first place in lending to people who couldn't afford it, people who live in a consumer driven world where every measure of success is material in origin, then the banks wouldn't have fallen on their faces when their creditors decided they wanted to be paid up... to value a business or industry based on the potential value of all the cash it is owed is not the same as its true value in assets. Which fool thought that was a good idea needs shooting. But it's an idea that is so pervasive that even if you had no credit debt as an individual before the recession, chances are you probably do now because it was either that or have no gas or electricity supply (that's what my credit card was used for recently).

I lost my job and a respectable income because of something that was caused by other people; part of my home life was turned upside down due to this extra pressure. The jobs that are available round here as what I call 'non-jobs' of too few hours and negligible pay when stacked against the most basic necessities of providing food shelter and warmth... hehe, even if I sold everything I own and reduced my life to its barest minimum, it would only stave off the wolves from my door for perhaps another month.

For me the trap of credit use is that I only used it because I had no other choice and no sensible recourse to debt that was calling at my door no matter what I did. I don't like it... in fact I hate it.
I'd still be at my old job if it were not for the recession and this obsession with exponential profit/growth that banks, governments and company bosses seem to think is good. I'd still be there earning and paying tax and spending and saving - all my savings are gone, lost to the recession and my options are reduced so much I can scarcely believe it myself. It can only be a damn economist who thinks perpetual growth is a sensible goal.... whatever happened to the idea of sustainability in business and banking? Has the world gone totally mad with greed?

[yubba]

Well if they are stupid enough to give me money:haha:

[jumpy]

^^
hehe

If only that was the whole story with banks though.

My credit debt was not caused by unfettered spending above my means... at least until my means were taken away lol, then it was use the credit card or live in the dark, or outdoors in a cardboard box.

I wonder how true this is for many people who are living with the cost of the recession when they were prudent and conservative in their spending and saving habits - ie what was traditionally defined as good banking customers?

[Platapus]

Blaming banks for lending people money is like blaming McDonalds for making people fat. :yep:

[GoldenRivet]

Blaming banks for lending people money is like blaming McDonalds for making people fat. :yep:

I see your point, but its not entirely accurate, i mean those two things are not entirely comparable are they?

If i were to have 2 individuals asking me to lend them money...

the man with an excellent history of paying his debts and making good on his promises.

and the man with a history of accruing debt and rarely if ever paying it back.

which one should i lend to?

banks should lend responsibly... this is why we have credit scores yes?

surely you can see that lending money to people without credit checks, without proof of income, without a social security number and without down payment is a terrible idea... (we have all heard these programs on commercials from banks and various lending institutions) especially when the money you are loaning out belongs to other people (by way of various accounts and investments etc)

the other end of the spectrum - much like your McDonalds analogy is that people should borrow responsibly just as they should eat responsibly.

but people with good dieting and nutritional habits are not born... they are educated to make those choices... just as good borrowers and investors are not born either, they are educated to do so, and i think a LOT of people these days are very uneducated when it comes to lending, borrowing and the whole credit situation.

[Platapus]

McDonalds should not sell me a Big Mac when they see how fat I am. :D

As long as the bank is not engaged in deceptive practices (and some have), it is my position that it is the borrower's responsibility to understand the agreement and to choose to agree to ALL of its terms, especially the part where they have to pay it back.

But I can see your point also (and it is a good one too)

[GoldenRivet]

well let us just agree to this.

loans are like marriage. :yep:

There are two parties involved in the process... and both parties have to be aware of what they are jumping into in order for it to work.

:up:

[CCIP]

It really is an underlying cultural problem, an attitude problem if you will. Loans are a great idea as a tool for developing business or for making individual investments (e.g. into education or real estate). In emergency cases, perhaps they're acceptable. But using personal loans to support a lifestyle is imho pretty much criminally absurd. Sadly for every advertisement telling people they can get rid of their loans without paying, there is also an advertisement telling them that their MasterCard is "for everything else", with the underlying marketing for many credit cards generally being very lifestyle-focused.

That's the other side of the coin, I guess. As a culture, we've really lost track of what loans are for.