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Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

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Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#131

Post by SaintGhurka »

atomical wrote: post #113
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

I think most of the time you can work with the hospital and possibly get the charge cut in half. Then pay monthly payments with zero interest. Has anyone done this?

I've done it.

I owed a $975 remainder on a $3000 e-room visit. I sent an email asking if they'd discuss a settlement and they just called me and said the debt would be written off completely.

I was going to open the negotiation at $900 because that's what I had left in my HSA account.

So clearly it pays to ask. In my case it probably also helped that I had already paid more than half the bill. But I didn't even have to plead poverty - I just said something along the lines of "I'm trying to figure out how to best deploy the funds I have, would you discuss a settlement"?

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#132

Post by ASalazarMX »

crazynick4 wrote: post #104
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #21

The definition of "we" and "survive" needs to be established clearly first and I don't think all those fancy graphs and market trends will define them. There's a lot of people that ended up bankrupt, in a bottomless depression, turned to drug abuse or committed suicide because of the last crisis. Wages are still relatively low while prices continue to climb. Many people are working 2-3 jobs and having trouble affordi…

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

Would this, for example, for cancer? Refusing to pay your first treatment might make access to subsequent treatments harder.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#133

Post by icedchai »

izacus wrote: post #119
icedchai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you ever hear of taxable investment accounts? Online brokerages, mutual funds, etc?

People with < 6000$ on their savings account? Most of the population? Very very unlikely.

I'm pretty sure "most of the population" has at least seen advertisements for ETrade. Probably too complicated for them though. That's why they'll be working until 85 or eating cat food in retirement...

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#134

Post by toss1 »

reaperducer wrote: post #123
crazynick4 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew one person who owed 300K for cancer related surgery and another who owed 30k for appendicitis and they didn't have any legal action issued against them. One was close to minimum wage and one stopped working entirely for years after the surgery. Is this more common in specific states maybe? This was in Florida.

In some states, especially retirement states like Florida, debtors can't take your home. In other states, they can.

Filing a Homestead Exemption is a good idea when you buy a home for your primary residence.

Rules and amounts vary by state, but it general, it protects you from creditors forcing you to sell your home. They may get some of the proceeds when you do eventually sell, so it may lock you into your location if you get a lien/judgement against you, but it's still better than getting kicked out.

Per usual, IANAL, consult a proper attny in your locale.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#135

Post by toss1 »

darawk wrote: post #36
acconrad wrote: post #2

One of the few times Bettridge's Law of Headlines doesn't apply. "Survive" is an extreme word here, but I do see a big issue w/ index funds. Perhaps an unpopular opinion - but I believe index funds will be the next major bubble that cripples the financial system. It's one massive way to persist the same inequality status quo. You know what made Bezos so rich in spite of a company that doesn't make much accounting sen…

This is a real misunderstanding of how markets work. An index fund invests in everything, market-cap weighted (usually). This means that your investment merely reinforces the prices already determined by the other participants in the market . There are still huge numbers of active managers, not to mention quants and others. They, collectively, determine the prices of assets. When you invest in an index fund, you're j…

> basically. It doesn't cause amazon to rise in price.

Actually, it does. Whenever a company is added to one of the major indexes, it almost always increases in price, and conversely, when one is removed, it generally declines.

This is specifically because of all of the index funds that suddenly must put money into/remove it from the stock when it is added/removed from the index.

Supply, Demand, price curves, you know the rest ...

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#136

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #128
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having wages garnished doesn't sound like fun, but that's just me. Healthcare incident doesn't necessarily mean 100k hospital bill or something ridiculous. It can be as little as 10k (or much less) and still do a lot of financial damage to a person. Sounds like a bad idea.

In what state can debtees garnish debtor wages? To my knowledge, only the government has that power, and only uses for taxes or child support reasons.

Any creditor can garnish wages by taking you to court. There are state and federal limits to how much they can garnish though.

Here is a law office that deals specifically with this: http://georgettemillerlaw.com/can-hospitals-garnish-my-wages...

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#137

Post by gascan »

headmelted wrote: post #130
crazynick4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an extreme health care incident, why pay the bill? Sure it would hurt your credit score not to, but if it's between that and tens/hundreds of thousands, I think it is worth it to take the hit for 7 years. I know health care workers who give this 'unofficial' advice to their patients and I've had friends and family members do the same thing - people who had no health insurance but still got health care and…

"take the hit for 7 years" This is the advice I've heard given to people who are severely underwater on a mortgage, but the idea that you can get sick one time and be financially ruined is still astonishing to me. I guess everywhere has some legislation that is just bonkers, though. I only just recently found out from a friend that you can't legally walk away from a mortgage here (UK) without declaring bankruptcy lik…

the idea that you can get sick one time and be financially ruined is still astonishing to me.

FWIW I'm not aware of many people who come down with a cold and are financially ruined. The people I know who are in crippling medical debt have, for example, had both kidneys replaced. While I'm not happy they are in those circumstances, it's not hard to picture two replacement kidneys and all the other treatments involved as mind-bendingly expensive.

It seems worthwhile to distinguish, at least a little bit, severity when we are talking about this.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#138

Post by Applejinx »

oihoaihsfoiahsf wrote: post #85
chadbaud wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a functioning market, a buyer would not have received a loan, no matter how much they wanted to over extend themselves. But, because fraud was being committed from the rating agencies, investment banks and mortgage originators, they got the loan. I understand what you saying, but I think you underestimate the lack of accountability that allowed people to get loans they were not in the best interest of anyone.

I guess my thing is more of a reaction against paternalism and the infantilization of the public. I do think there need to be much more in the way of bank regulations. I don't think the public ought to absolve itself of all responsibility because of the absence of some regulations. I just don't think it's healthy or necessarily leads to better decisions being made in the future. I want an informed public, not a delud…

Statistically, you can't have that. No matter what you want, a sufficiently motivated conman will be able to find the dumbest person, for instance by the methodology used by Nigerian-prince scammers: put out bait that's bad, to pre-screen for people dumb enough to be that kind of deluded.

Then you can say 'oh, that scam was so obvious that people ought to have seen through it!' but it was explicitly designed to be obvious because, statistically, THERE WILL be someone (perhaps a nice but foolish someone!) who does fall for it.

Therefore, you can't have an informed public. Ever. It's a matter of how you handle the edge cases. We don't have rules making things like murder, etc. bad just because MOST people don't deserve to be straight-up murdered. We have them because it needs not to be too tempting to murder in those cases where the guy REALLY deserved it… it's inhibiting the potential murderer on general principles, not making value judgements on why to protect extremely deserving victims.

This is not the case in the financial industry, and the consequences we pay for that might be pretty dire. In the financial industry they think they can say things like 'I want an informed public', and they think they can make entire business models on screwing deserving victims, and it's not really about the victims, it's about social pressure stopping people from being monstrous on general principles. And again, nothing at all stops bankers from being monstrous. Indeed, it's a survival characteristic: we select for that.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#139

Post by hndude »

icedchai wrote: post #133
izacus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with < 6000$ on their savings account? Most of the population? Very very unlikely.

I'm pretty sure "most of the population" has at least seen advertisements for ETrade. Probably too complicated for them though. That's why they'll be working until 85 or eating cat food in retirement...

The amount of condescension/lack of empathy in your comment is astounding. Haven't logged in in 2 years, had to log in to say that. And before you worry that I downvoted you, I still don't have enough karma to do so.

Re: Can We Survive the Next Financial Crisis?

#140

Post by chadbaud »

oihoaihsfoiahsf wrote: post #85
chadbaud wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a functioning market, a buyer would not have received a loan, no matter how much they wanted to over extend themselves. But, because fraud was being committed from the rating agencies, investment banks and mortgage originators, they got the loan. I understand what you saying, but I think you underestimate the lack of accountability that allowed people to get loans they were not in the best interest of anyone.

I guess my thing is more of a reaction against paternalism and the infantilization of the public. I do think there need to be much more in the way of bank regulations. I don't think the public ought to absolve itself of all responsibility because of the absence of some regulations. I just don't think it's healthy or necessarily leads to better decisions being made in the future. I want an informed public, not a delud…

I agree with you about protecting the public, no one needs to be coddled.

But when parties enter into a transaction, there should be repercussion in the case of fraud. That never happened. One party in a transaction was lied to and there was no repercussion to the other party.

Also, thanks for taking the time to respond, really enjoy debating this topic. Wish it could be in more real time.

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