myrmepropagandist
Buying some perfume online.
"Would you like an installment plan?"
For a $26 purchase.
If I wanted I could set up the installment plan for the $26 purchase and have it charge my credit card.
Call it "micro leverage on leverage."
Some puritanical grumpy voice deep in me that came from my dad is grumbling that it ought to be illegal to buy something like perfume like this. But really it shouldn't be possible for any purchase. In some ways buying food this way would be a sadder story.
Rich Felker
@futurebird My position on debt & credit is that any credit not secured by the thing it's purchasing should be legally unenforceable and attempts at collection as illegal as any other harassment/threats/extortion.
myrmepropagandist
Every single day there are all these offers to go into debt flying at my face. I don't even notice them anymore. And I can see easily how they could take over your life.
The "offers" have a tone that makes it seem like a normal thing to do. I think we should cancel all of these debits for those who have them. Let the creditors fail and make the whole thing illegal.
It's what Jesus would have done. Flip over the table. Scatter their coins and contracts and chase them out of the temple.
myrmepropagandist
I know in my core the only reason I don't have debt is because we had a little financial security growing up. And I haven't been hit by the natural and man made disasters that push people into this corner. Not about "financial planning" to the degree people think.
When I was younger, more broke over draft fees nearly ruined my life.
A $30 fee on a $4 purchase. I fought it. Yelled at them on the phone until they removed it. "Why would you think anyone would want this service?"
Rich Felker
@sewblue @futurebird Cars as a big ticket item are also a gratuitous debt trap. You can get a perfectly usable car for the price of a down payment, with annual maintenance costs comparable to a single monthly payment.
SewBlue
@futurebird I hate debt with a passion and have successfully avoided it, outside the normal big ticket items like cars.
Growing up my parents got trapped in debt. The airforce base closed where we lived and we had to move for unrelated reasons. The local housing market tanked and the house would not sell, and rents collapsed too. They racked up debt while covering 2 mortgages until the house finally sold.
At the time to me as a teen the debt was an impossibly high number, and it scared me.
We live waaaaay under our means so we can afford a school for dyslexia my kid. College may be cheaper if they go to a state school. But we are doing it without debt, and that is what matters.
✧✦Catherine✦✧
@cavyherd @futurebird oh it's WAY worse than heroin. at least when you stop using heroin it only makes your life unpleasant for a week tops.
Cavyherd
I was lucky in that my mother was very savvy as a household finance manager. (My dad was...rather less so. Which may be why my mom was so fierce about it.)
Every year, we got a gift certificate from Monkey Ward for keeping our bill paid up,* which she'd give to me, & point out the reason we got it.
I cam out of childhood regarding consumer debt roughly as dangerous as heroin. Haven't had reason to change that assessment.** >
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