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TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

treecard.org

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Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#91

Post by throwaway201103 »

capableweb wrote: post #78
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they handle assessing creditworthiness, then? Ex. someone walks into a bank and asks for a loan to buy a house. How does the bank evaluate that?

A) Do you have a job? B) How long you've had the job? C) How much is your salary? D) You have family? And so on. Bunch of questions and documents back and forth until the bank is confident you'll pay back. It's funny to hear people from North America talking about the scary new Chinese "Social Points" system when they've had credit score for such a long time they don't even think about it anymore and find alternative…

The credit score in the US is based entirely upon one's assets, income, current amount of debts, and payment history. It doesn't include what one posts on social media or what political party one votes for. At least not yet.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#92

Post by klyrs »

Bud wrote: post #56
klyrs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s also worth noting that while planting trees is very good for the environment, it is not a silver bullet against climate change. Not buying things is better for the environment. Projects like this are brimming with good intention but are little better than salve for consumer guilt.

Do you need to be such a judgmental scold? People need to pay rent. People need to buy food. People need to pay for all kinds of things that don't really constitute the kind of acquisitive consumerism that you're trying to criticize.

> Do you need to be such a judgmental scold?

Is the personal attack called for here?

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#93

Post by JoeAltmaier »

klyrs wrote: post #52
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but objecting to every attempt to do good because, it doesn't go far enough! Is a recipe for doing nothing.

A card that leaks crude oil on every purchase would be more effective (if ridiculous from an engineering/logistical perspective) -- salves for consumer guilt aren't merely not doing enough, they're enabling the behavior that's doing the most harm.

This credit card doesn't enable anything that wasn't already enabled. That argument is similar to 'what-about-ism' where irrelevant objections about another subject are injected as if they follow from the premise.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#94

Post by sofixa »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #75
Jommi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building credit is not a thing in most european countries.

How do they handle assessing creditworthiness, then? Ex. someone walks into a bank and asks for a loan to buy a house. How does the bank evaluate that?

As another person responded - based on your income and situation ( family, age, stability of the job) and very basic loan history ( stored at the central bank, basically for the lender to know if you have outstanding debts and if you've defaulted on loans before)

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#95

Post by multjoy »

dangelov wrote: post #57
chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think about the argument about it allowing you to keep your money invested for longer? Say you're ordering something large like a car. You can pay the deposit on a debit card, and lose access to the money immediately, or you can pay on a credit card, and keep your money invested for another month or so, still earning you money, until you need to settle. A credit card gives a consumer liquidity. I don't th…

What kind of income are you looking at for an extra month, even with a huge payment like a car (which I don't think people use credit OR debit cards for in Europe)? I suspect for the vast majority of people it's going to be negligible at best.

In the UK, the biggest advantage of using a credit card for the first £100 of any purchase is that it makes the credit card provider jointly liable with the vendor for any failure in the contract. This is an awesome bit of consumer protection.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#96

Post by darawk »

klyrs wrote: post #72
darawk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would a card that leaks crude oil be more effective? Leaking crude oil is terrible for the environment. Planting trees is good for it.

It's a thought experiment, analogous to Tullock's Spike [1]. The idea is to modify incentives, by putting environmental impact at the forefront of a consumer's mind, by making them actually handle the mess that the card produces (thereby making them reluctant to make purchases). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock%27s_spike

Why would that modify anyone's behavior? Consumption already has negative environmental externalities, and it doesn't seem to be causing much modification.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#97

Post by darawk »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #73
darawk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would a card that leaks crude oil be more effective? Leaking crude oil is terrible for the environment. Planting trees is good for it.

maybe take a closer look at the thread; they're saying that purchasing "stuff" is the worst thing for the environment, so a card that leaks oil on purchases would discourage the act of doing so, and hence do more good tha encouraging purchases to plant trees.

I read the thread. I get the idea, and it's nonsense. At scale, nobody cares about negative environmental externalities. If you added an extra one, behavior would not change in any scalable way. And it certainly wouldn't change in greater proportion to the damage it causes.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#98

Post by chrisseaton »

elric wrote: post #61
chrisseaton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're using the money you have vs. taking a loan? Why would you want to use the money you have when you can take a free loan until the end of the month? A free loan means you can keep your own money invested or otherwise working more efficiently for you somehow. > the no.1 personal finance advice is "stop using CCs" I've never seen this - I see 'use CC's more to build up your credit'. I use my cards religiously an…

> Why would you want to use the money you have when you can take a free loan until the end of the month? Because it's usually not free. Most banks charge some fee for providing a credit card. Debit cards are completely free with most banks.

You should really shop around! In Europe I have a free credit card, with a large line of credit, that I literally never pay any interest on, that (used to) fly me to New York in first class once a year on normal household and business expense spending. They're out there - you're throwing away money by not using them.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#99

Post by soupson »

“We also use suppliers such as social media companies and search engines in order to advertise the launch of our Services. We may share your email address or device ID with these suppliers.”

I will not get this card because their privacy policy does not align with my values.

Re: TreeCard: The wooden debit card that plants trees

#100

Post by xwdv »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #90
xwdv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Invest the money into an S&P 500 ETF and you’ll probably gain 10% profit by the time you have put down your last payment.

The S&P return is not always and certainly not guaranteed to be 10% or even positve. Some months/years it is negative. It's an exceedingly bad idea to keep cash that you will need in the short term (< 5 years) invested in equities.

If you sell OTM covered calls of about 10 or 8 delta against the shares you own and keep rolling them after sufficient theta decay you can conservatively add 1% ROI each month on top of whatever appreciation your shares get. So yea you have a good chance of getting 10% ROI per year consistently this way unless S&P is down more than 2% for the year.

Unfortunately so many people use this strategy these days that the bids are lower than what they used to be though.

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