I was watching one of these "experts" that are making a ton of money hawking their books and seminars
on the public without giving advice that would actually help .. not once have I heard any expert say
PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARDS !
or
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 0 % INTEREST !
Only a total moron loans money for free ... it's actually a higher interest rate that is "paid down" as an up front fee.. trust me..
if you went to the car dealer or furniture dealer and paid cash you would get it cheaper.. A friend of mine recently went in to a dealer and negotiated
a deal on a car for his daughter... got a nice discount... then at the end said "I want that 0% interest" and the dealer said... sorry.. then the price of the
car is $2,500.00 more if you want the 0% interest...
Believe it or not there is a great web site called Feed The Pig where they are jammed packed with some serious common sense ideas for getting out of the hole the banks have taught you to dig so they can make lots of money. They have made us forget the first rule of holes...
"When you find yourself in one STOP DIGGING!"
We have this society that we live in where we seem to be pulled around by our noses by the finance industry. And why not? We have the best country money can buy... So... here we go.. the business community keeps coming up with new business plans so that they can keep sharing our income with them .. (the working masses).. Example: The automotive industry needed a way to get price increases on their new cars in the 50's so they invented the car loan.. that way they could up the cost and let consumers pay it off over the 3 years until it started to disassemble itself (I think it was called designed failure or something like that) after a few years.. so since your income wasn't improving this was the way you could afford the price increases.. Then they got so expensive that they invented the car lease for Harry Homeowner ... so now you can effectively Rent a car 3 years at a time.. paying the dealership his profits up front.. then you give the car back.. and they sell it again.. and of course you will be needing a new car as well...
Of course there is Zero interest credit cards designed to get you to have a big balance by the time the 0 % intro period is over and now you have a nice big balance backdated because you didn't pay that intro loan amount off.. and now it's loaded with 19 to 39 % interest.. of course if you miss a payment you lose all the 0 % and go directly to 39 %.. Oh.. bat.. did you know that cash store loans can start at 99 % interest.. and car title loan stores have interest rates sometimes starting at 4000 % (yes four thousand percent interest) .. God love Congress for removing oversight on the Banking industry..
And how about them school loans? they changed the laws so that you can't get out from under them even with bankruptcy... so here come the predatory lenders going after the 19 year old crowd...
And about saving for your kids college.. they say put it in a tax deferred account HA!.. at what ? 2 percent?.. look at this... if you have credit card debt @ 19 % wouldn't it make sense to pay off the damn cards with that 2 percent money and actually SAVE 17%... look.. in 18 years there will still be grant money and low interest student loans.. use that extra cash to kill that debt.. and DONT go buy more stuff... the banking industry wants us to think that credit they offer is some kind of cash account due you... instead of the money holes that go directly into buying them new swimming pools and paying for their kids college.... sheesh..... wake up people!!!
They invented home mortgages in the 40's so that the prices could continue to increase and the poor home buyer could now pay 4 times as much as the house is worth with the bankers making tidy profits on improved home prices and long loans.
The talking heads on television/cable/radio will never tell you to just get rid of the debt.. that would cause a crash of our financial district, you know those people smarter than you and me earning a living sitting behind a desk thinking up new ways to get your money from you.. Did you know that your credit score goes DOWN when you have paid off a credit card?. I did some tests and when I doubled the minimum payment for 3 months on a $1000.00 credit card balance (about 40 bucks a month) my score went up over 100 points and once I paid off the account my credit score dropped 50 points.. does that tell you something about how the credit industry wants you up to your eyeballs in debt? Oh yeah.. and don't cancel your credit.. they lower your score for doing that.. so just put them in your safe deposit box or freeze them in a bowl of water in the fridge.. the idea is to make it hard to use them... but you can still use them in an emergency... (You put them in a plastic bag and then in a bowl of water and put it in the freezer.)..