41–50 of 127 posts
What happened to "stop buying things you don't need"? I had a friend tell me he was considering a consumer loan because repaying his other loans didn't leave him with enough money. I swear, it's as if people have never seen money before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey there, thanks for the comment! You are absolutely right that there were about 1.5M bankruptcy filings last year [this number is growing (1)]. Note that we haven't made any claims about the ordering on the graphic, but bankruptcy is an option which is often under-considered, because people are scared of it, and driven by FUD to pursue other options which often have lower success rates. Rod and I have learned a tre…
If the debtor pool varies as widely as you claim, that reinforces something I've been wondering for a while: Is it true that Americans are in debt because they are fiscally irresponsible, or is it because the playing field is tilted? It is hard for me to believe that 33% of all Americans can't grasp the idea of "spend less than you make". Sure, a lot of it is consumer culture / media pressure, etc. But other countrie…
Take myself for instance... Me and my wife are both college graduates. We both come from non rich, roughly impoverished backgrounds. Her mom was a single mother, my dad is a small farmer. So we went off and had to pay for it ourselves. College isn't cheap, that means loans. Lots of loans. So we walked out of college with 80k total in just student loans. We both worked summer jobs, plus jobs during the school year as much as we could. Now, neither of us had nice cars, so they needed to be fixed from time to time. You know, a head gasket here and new transmission there. It all adds up. Then we had this crazy idea... Lets get married! Nice, but now we have to pay for that as well. So I've got a mountain of debt that we're both working to pay off (very slowly) and its not like I have a flat screen tv or any of that stuff to show for it. We don't spend more than we make, but we have a huge hole to climb out of that leaves us with very little at the end of every month.
And our expenses aren't getting smaller... health care goes up, so does food, and gas, and heating oil. Welcome to the new American Dream.
My hope is that my bootstrapped web hosting service will someday allow me the flexibility I long for, but its a lot of sacrificing of sleep and some family time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you pay it off in full, and get 2% cashback then that lunch cost you $19.60
You know, obviously you are right. But, I think people (especially intelligent HN type people) greatly underestimate how much psychological tricks affect them. I know deep down that spending with credit card is the same as spending with cash. But, I tracked my spending using cards and only withdrawing from ATMs and using cash. I spent about 20% more. And my life didn't feel any better or anything. Now I use credit ca…
I download a csv of my transactions, import into ledger (https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki/ it's like mint, but for the command line), then just "ledger balance --cost expenses". All my CC transactions are labelled ("expenses:entertainment:bar", "expenses:computer:github"), then I have a big black box: "expenses:cash".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most useful way of thinking of CC debt is how much it INCREASES THE PRICE of what you buy. That nice lunch might cost 20$ if you paid cash, but use your CC and it's really 20$ + the interest you are going to pay. If it's going to take you 4 years to pay off your 20% APR CC debt then that 20$ lunch is really 41$ 50c. PS: That is not to say paying cash for lunch changes the numbers when you are in debt; CC increase…
If you pay it off in full, and get 2% cashback then that lunch cost you $19.60
What happened to "stop buying things you don't need"? I had a friend tell me he was considering a consumer loan because repaying his other loans didn't leave him with enough money. I swear, it's as if people have never seen money before.
Though you're being rather flippant, I agree this is the key. When there's a mountain of debt before you, the little spending decisions you make today seem to have no consequence on your fate. The cappuccino and Wired magazine that you buy on the way to work are of no consequence compared to all the money you owe. Clearing debt can feel like digging at that mountain with a dessert spoon.
Right, and the prize for those who have the discipline and patience to finish? nothing. (well, nothing tangible anyway)
It reminds me of the "Bee Sting Theory" article (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1467832). We are conditioned to view our finances in a competitive way, as a measure of our social value...and people deep into debt feel like they are so far behind their peers financially that they can't ever catch up anyway- so rather than futily trying, they cheat and try to buy the status symbols on credit instead. Stupid yes, but easy to understand on a psychological level.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey there, thanks for the comment! You are absolutely right that there were about 1.5M bankruptcy filings last year [this number is growing (1)]. Note that we haven't made any claims about the ordering on the graphic, but bankruptcy is an option which is often under-considered, because people are scared of it, and driven by FUD to pursue other options which often have lower success rates. Rod and I have learned a tre…
If the debtor pool varies as widely as you claim, that reinforces something I've been wondering for a while: Is it true that Americans are in debt because they are fiscally irresponsible, or is it because the playing field is tilted? It is hard for me to believe that 33% of all Americans can't grasp the idea of "spend less than you make". Sure, a lot of it is consumer culture / media pressure, etc. But other countrie…
Most other countries have considerably lower wages (PPP-adjusted, not nominal) than we do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wa...
If an average American reduced his consumption to the same level as a profligate Swede of average income (i.e., one who spends his entire paycheck every month), he would be saving about $15k/year.
What happened to "stop buying things you don't need"? I had a friend tell me he was considering a consumer loan because repaying his other loans didn't leave him with enough money. I swear, it's as if people have never seen money before.
It's easy to paint those people as irresponsible, but according to her, it's very far from the truth in most cases.
Is their business model subscription based or recommendation (like Mint) based? I don't know if I would trust anything from a company like this if I was already in debt. Usually people already feel screwed over. They should really work on PR and branding so people feel like they can trust then.
Check out our FAQs and Privacy Policy, we try to address this and other issues there: https://www.readyforzero.com/overview/faqs https://www.readyforzero.com/overview/privacy As a datapoint, since the public launch a few days ago we are already helping people track over $35M in credit card debts. We believe trust is earned not paid for.
I'm reminded of statistics saying that the average wedding costs $28k or whatever. The reality turns out to be something like "among weddings arranged by a professional wedding planner, the average cost is 28k".
I hope they aren't putting together a funding pitch equating the "1/3 of American's have credit card debt" with "1/3 of Americans have enough debt that they need outside help managing it" as this chart implies.
What happened to "stop buying things you don't need"? I had a friend tell me he was considering a consumer loan because repaying his other loans didn't leave him with enough money. I swear, it's as if people have never seen money before.
relevant video: http://www.hulu.com/watch/1389/saturday-night-live-dont-buy-...