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Money is and always has been an invention of man. As such money has many purposes and agendas. The more you know and understand about money the better your life will be if you apply lessons learned,
Note: this topic is presented as a general topic so don't direct your comments at me since it not personal.
Money is and always has been an invention of man. As such money has many purposes and agendas. The more you know and understand about money the better your life will be if you apply lessons learned,
Note: this topic is presented as a general topic so don't direct your comments at me since it not personal.
What a terrible article. I want to gouge the author's eyes out with a spoon. I should have known it was going to be awful when I saw the blog's name but this one takes the cake...
Carrying a balance of $15,956 at 12.83%, even compounded monthly, would NOT generate $2.6M in fees. For that to be true, it would imply that (1) You never made a single payment in the history of the credit card for a period of 40 years, (2) At year 40 your balance on your credit card would need to be $2,574,227. Not the $15,956 the article claims is static. Thats a pretty big difference. (3) If 1 and 2 were true, it would imply that the credit card company would have to write off $2,600,000, because, if you havent paid a single penny in 40 years, odds are you arent ever going to - in which case the credit company has actually made $0 (or more accurately, lost money), (4) The credit card company would have to LET you run a balance of $2.5M without a payment for 40 years, which I can confidently say wouldn't happen - so literally, the scenario they lay out is not just ridiculously unlikely, its flat out impossible.
The entirety of the math is misleading and stupid. Carrying a STATIC balance of $15,956 - which is what the article states - will generate approximately $2100 a year interest charges, or about $80,000 over the 40 year period. Discounted at a rate of 5%, in present value terms this is about $37,000.
So, to recap: If you carry a balance of $15,956, wholly unsecured, for a period of 40 years and only pay the interest at 12.83%, compounded monthly, the credit card firm will have had revenue of (not profit) of $37,000.
Not $2.6M.
I have no problem with the general premise that we are a nation that is far too debt ridden and full of easy access to credit, but the author of this article is a moron.
Fairly good article conceptually, although the calculator might be broken. The convenience of a national fiat currency put a lot of power into the hands of a few. It startles some people to learn the Federal Reserve, which is what backs the currency, is not really a Federal agency in the full sense, and has government held by the short hairs.
As for mortgages, car loans, cell phone plans and the like, yeah. The first thing people do when they think they are on the road to success is buy the trappings of what they perceive to be success, often on credit. It also amazes me how many people are unwilling to move to less expensive areas or buy used to have more actual take-home money.
If someone is so into how they are seen that they have to buy a million dollar house, and then have to pay $20K in taxes on it each year, more in interest, more in upkeep, and so on, I don't look at them as being successful. I look at them as playing an ego-assuaging game that doesn't particularly interest me.
It isn't just the hamster wheel. It is the cage, the sucking at the water tube, the eating the provided kibbles and pooping in the designated areas that people would do well to be aware of.
Money is and always has been an invention of man. As such money has many purposes and agendas. The more you know and understand about money the better your life will be if you apply lessons learned,
Note: this topic is presented as a general topic so don't direct your comments at me since it not personal.
Let's stop looking for scapegoats and examine the facts for a minute.
Money is a strore of value -- no more and no less; it is one of man's earliest inventions, in recognition of the need to denominate and store the fruits of our labor in something small, valuable, and easy to transport -- like gold, for instance.
"Fiat money" -- the kind issued by governments, is by definition more subject to manipulation by politicians, by the corrupt businesspeople they schmooze with, and by those who just can't wait to spend next week's paycheck. But that's only possible when the state has the power to print more currency, and simultaneously debase it.
If we want to see the root cause of your complaints, we need only look in the mirror
Let's stop looking for scapegoats and examine the facts for a minute.
Money is a strore of value -- no more and no less; it is one of man's earliest inventions, in recognition of the need to denominate and store the fruits of our labor in something small, valuable, and easy to transport -- like gold, for instance.
Define value before saying it stores value. Its a proxy which essentially outsource saving, meaning that you are depending upon the root cellars of everyone else to sustain you. If 9 people have money and 1 has the root cellar it may become a precarious store of value.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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Yup, whenever I hear someone ranting about the Federal Reserve system (or the Bilderbergers, or bringing back the Gold Standard), that's immediately what I think too...
Yup, whenever I hear someone ranting about the Federal Reserve system (or the Bilderbergers, or bringing back the Gold Standard), that's immediately what I think too...
What did you think when we saw criminal bank fraud when the only thing that was done was to give them more money so that they could bandage our boo boos? and then what did you think when they took the money and run?
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Money Is A Form Of Social Control
