Credit Card Debt Quotes

If you don't take good care of your credit, then your credit won't take good care of you.

Most women sell sex; most of them just don’t take cash (nor do they each sell to more than one ‘client’ at a time).

She says, "Do you have any rubbers?" I say, I thought she was barren. "Sure, I'm sterile," she says, "but I've had unprotected sex with a million guys. I could have some terrible fatal disease." I say that would only be a problem if I wanted to live a lot longer. Fertility says, " That's how I feel about my giant credit card debt." So we have sex. If you could call it that.

If repairing one's credit is as easy as sending some dispute letters to the credit bureaus then why doesn't everyone have good credit?

Are you willing to accept anything less than the credit you want, the credit you need and the credit you deserve?

The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan, and credit without a card. We

In Heaven, there are no debts - all have been paid, one way or another - but in Hell there's nothing but debts, and a great deal of payment is exacted, though you can't ever get all paid up. You have to pay, and pay, and keep on paying. So Hell is like an infernal maxed-out credit card that multiplies the charges endlessly.

social media addict? This is a very real problem—so much so that researchers from Norway developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.[3] Social media has become as ubiquitous as television in our everyday lives, and this research shows that multitasking social media can be as addictive as drugs, alcohol, and chemical substance abuse. A large number of friends on social media networks may appear impressive, but according to a new report, the more social circles a person is linked to, the more likely the social media will be a source of stress.[4] It can also have a detrimental effect on consumer well-being because milkshake-multitasking interferes with clear thinking and decision-making, which lowers self-control and leads to rash, impulsive buying and poor eating decisions. Greater social media use is associated with a higher body mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for consumers with many close friends in their social network—all caused by a lack of self-control.[5] We Can Become Shallow

Some of his bitches had left him with the clap, some with ramped up credit card debt, and some with a feeling of damn relief. But not Glory. No. Glory had left him with remorse. And regret. And something that felt like pain in the area of his heart. And now she was coming back to where it all started. Back to Crownsmount. Back to the lake house. But not back to him. Not back to him. And he had absolutely no idea what to do with that.

Average household credit card debt topped the landmark of $10,000 in 2006, a hundredfold increase over the average consumer debt in the 1960s. One consequence: Much of the material buried in landfills in recent years was bought with those same credit cards, leading to the quintessentially American practice of consumers continuing to pay, sometimes for years, for purchases after they become trash.

Anxiety suits the status quo very well. Anxious people make good consumers and good workers. Governments and big business, therefore, love terrorism – they adore it, it’s good for business. Anxiety will drive us back into our comfort blankets of credit-card shopping and bad food, so the system deliberately produces anxiety while simultaneously promising to take it away.

God sent the Egyptians ten plagues that became increasingly harder, one after the other, starting with blood, and ending with the death of the first born. Similarly, debt sometimes starts with charging just a couple of extra dollars to our credit cards when we want something we can’t afford to pay cash for. Before long, it might turn into a second mortgage on our house. Debt can kill our future and take our house with it.

In short, if you are using a shovel to dig yourself into a hole, a credit card company will be happy to give you a backhoe.

we’re helping the consumer. Because we’re taking him out of his high interest rate credit card debt and putting him into lower interest rate mortgage debt.

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan, and credit without a card.

Number 198 was wonderful too. Blake had watched a good-looking and ridiculously pretentious guy hit on Livia. The fancy man dropped expensive name after name as he showed her all his accessories. When he finally pulled out his wallet to show her a “highly desirable luxury credit card” Livia had rolled her eyes in Blake’s direction with smile number 198. He’d had to swallow a snicker when he heard her tell the fancy man she was debt free and didn’t even have credit cards. Blake knew that was a lie because he’d seen her pay for tickets with a card at the train station. That made number 198 a secret joke between just the two of them.

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman.

Stupid to keep cash, there was no reason for it other than his dislike of credit cards and checks and stocks and instruments of transfer, all the tempting chains that tied people to America’s overwhelming and ultimately destructive debt-and-spend machine.

Forget the National Debt Clock. We need an electronic billboard to track all the daily shootings in this country. I'm really sick of listening to all the mouth breathers who soil their camouflage pants every time someone suggests we might have a gun problem. Other countries have crazy, violent people. What they don't have is 300,000,000 WMDs and a gun show loophole that allows any psycho with a valid credit card to own 'em.

Fornale (v.) To spend one’s money before it has been earned. We live in a nation that is overwhelmingly and crushingly in debt, awash in credit card debt and subprime mortgages. How is it possible that the only word for “spending money before it is earned” is an obsolete Scottish one? Forplaint

The fact is, most people in our nation today believe that debt is NORMAL, and in most cases, NECESSARY. They can’t imagine living a cash-and-carry life or a life in which all things they own are purchased outright with cash at the time of purchase— in other words, with no payment plan or use of credit cards.

Isn't it sad that we have to gain control of the artificial numbers placed upon us by others to regain some control of our lives?

The one who hugs a debt also shakes hand with a danger.

Only a fool would envy someone something they bought on credit, or a lifestyle that is funded by a salary.

There is no such thing as good debt. The credit card is the cigarette of the financial world. The borrower is always a slave to the lender.

Here is an equation worth remembering: Five dollars earned minus seven dollars spent = Unhappy Life." (Life Hacks, p.51)

It is even more foolish to buy an unnecessary thing on credit.

The Poor is no longer not just having enough, but poverty is in fact, not having more than the debts you owe!!! - - The Credit Repair Book: The Credit Repair Company's Secret Weapon.

Note to future generations: In our time, are such things as credit cards. Company loans money, you pay back at high interest rate. Is nice for when you do not actually have money to do thing you want to do (for example, buy extravagant cheetah). You may say, safe in your future time: Wouldn’t it be better to simply not do things you can’t afford to do? Easy for you to say.

Stupid to keep cash, there was no reason for it other than his dislike of credit cards and checks and stocks and instruments of transfer, all the tempting chains that tied people to America’s overwhelming and ultimately destructive debt-and-spend machine. But the cash might be his salvation. Cash could be replaced. The notebooks, over a hundred and fifty of them, could not.

Debt is always negative, no matter how positively you try to look at it. The “minus” sign in front of your bank balance is a dead giveaway, despite what you might think about leveraging or whatever. It’s even worse when it’s a credit card or a student loan, and you can’t even remember what you’ve bought or learned with it. Sure, the minimum repayments will eventually cancel it out, but by that time you will most likely have dentures and be peeing anywhere you damn well please.

In general, men should only be doing dinner dates once she proves herself worthwhile after some coffee or cocktail dates. Under no circumstances should a man pay for a woman's debt, be that credit cards or student loans. Under no circumstances should a man help with a woman's rent or car payment. And you absolutely never donate money to an e-thot for any reason. But if there's a nice girl you've met for coffee before, and she is sincere, paying for dinner and a movie isn't bad.

What this means is that the entire business model for something like Chase’s credit card business is not much more than a gigantic welfare fraud scheme. These companies borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from the Fed at rock-bottom rates, then turn around and lend it out to the world at 5, 10, 15, 20 percent, as credit cards and mortgages, boat loans and aircraft loans, and so on. If you pay it back, great, it’s a 500 percent or 1,000 percent or 4,000 percent profit for the bank. If you don’t pay it back, the company can put your name in the hopper to be sued. A $5,000 debt on a credit card for the now-defunct Circuit City, which was actually a Chase card, became a $13,000 or $14,000 debt by the time the bank finished applying fees and penalties. Just like a welfare application, you have to read the fine print. “They make more on lawsuits than they make on credit interest,” says Linda.

Income tax rules also made borrowing against a home’s equity attractive. Because mortgage interest payments can be deducted for income tax purposes, the interest paid on home equity loans could also be deducted, although interest on credit card debt or other debt was not deductible. Therefore it often paid anyone with any other kind of debt to pay off that debt with a home equity loan, whose interest would be deductible for income tax purposes. More and more people began to do this during the housing boom. In 2003, home equity loans totaled $593 billion. Such loans soared during the housing boom, nearly doubling to $1.13 trillion in 2007.

Until a few years ago, a man who had no debts was considered virtuous, honest, and hardworking. Today, he’s an extraterrestrial. Whoever does not owe, does not exist. I owe, therefore I am. Whoever is not credit-worthy deserves neither name nor face. The credit card is proof of the right to exist; debt, something even those who have nothing have. Every single person or country that belongs to this world has at least one foot caught in this trap.

I can always tell which ones are serious and which aren’t. There’s something in their voices that communicates passion and conviction when they’re really excited about getting out of debt. But if they’re just playing around with the idea, if they’re simply curious about it, then their voices are flat. If I don’t hear any passion behind what they’re saying, I know they aren’t ready to cut up the credit cards and dump their debt for good. That’s because getting out of debt isn’t about solving a math problem; it’s about changing your life—and that requires a change of heart.

The eye contact is strong and he’s biting his lip when he’s chatting to me, so I know he’s feeling me. But then I check his accounts: minus four hundred pounds in his current, six grand in debt on his credit card. Queenie, I just bid him a good day and let him pass— I stopped hacking at the thick string holding the weave in place. “But this could have been ‘the one’, Kyazike. What if you fell in love? You could have financially guided hi—” “Financially guides who? Excuse me, Queenie, I cannot be with someone in that much debt. I have a lifestyle that needs sustaining. My Mr. Right cannot have minus money.

When we talk about building wealth, we ought to refer to one’s entire net worth, meaning the sum of savings and total assets, minus all debt. If you have $50,000 in your TSP and in other savings accounts, but owe $50,000 on credit cards, a car or two, and student loans, have you really built up any “wealth”? While you have saved up a tidy sum in the TSP and in savings accounts, since you owe so much to creditors, your total net worth in this scenario is actually zero.* Consider also that, instead of receiving interest and dividend payments in the TSP, each of your debts is charging you interest—and in many cases considerable interest.

He was talking about hire purchase. precredit cards. A different way of getting the poor into debt, but I think he was right. It was nice when ordinary people could take a holiday in Spain, of course, but easy credit is what started the cultural rot. Tourism depends on lots of people everywhere with loads of disposable wealth, which means all kinds of changes through a place a cultivates it. The real, messy, informative past disappears to be overlaid with bad fiction, with simplified folklore, easy answers. Memory needs to remain complex, debatable. Without those qualities it is mere nostalgic sentimentality. Commodified identity. Souls bough and sold.

We stand today on the brink of economic destruction. The housing market remains stagnant. Unemployment is obviously far higher than the officially reported figures of 6 to 7 percent, which factor in only those filing for unemployment benefits. As I was completing this book, there were alarming reports disseminated by the media that a hundred million Americans of working age were without jobs. This amounts to a staggering true unemployment rate of 36.3 percent. While some of those are willfully unemployed, such as stay-at-home parents, retirees, and high school students, there is no question that the real rate must still be at least somewhere in the HIDDEN HISTORY 4 25-percent range. Student loan debt is quickly surpassing credit card debt in volume. The cost of living continues to surge, while the vast majority of American workers receive little or no yearly wage increase. Our industry has practically left our shores, leaving us incapable of manufacturing anything of substance. Although the US population increased by 10 percent during the first decade of the twenty-first century, 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during the same time period. The sad reality is America doesn’t make much of anything anymore. The income disparity has grown to such an extent that the richest four hundred citizens presently possess more aggregate wealth than the bottom fifty percent of all Americans combined. If present trends continue, the United States is rapidly on the way to Third World nation status.

But first, I want you to over-spend on junk one last time. Take your credit card or store card, walk into any shop you choose and buy something you don’t need with money you don’t have. As you hand the card to the cashier, focus on how you’re feeling. Is it giving you pleasure? Does it make you feel good? As you punch your PIN into the card reader, concentrate on your emotions. Is this expenditure giving you a buzz? Is it making you happy? When you get home with your purchase, unpack it and hold it. Are you happy with it? Be aware of exactly how this purchase has made you feel. Stripped of the brainwashing that previously told you this sort of spending gave you pleasure, you can recognise what an empty, meaningless act it is to spend money you don’t have on something you don’t need.

It is evident that wealth is even more unevenly distributed than income and that the gap is widening. Since 1976, wealth has increased by 63 percent for the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and by 71 percent for the top 20 percent. Wealth has decreased by 43 percent for the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population (Economic Policy Institute 2011). The widening gap has multiple causes. First, shifts in the U.S. tax code have lowered the top tax rate from 91 percent in the years from 1950 to 1963, to 35 percent from 2003 to 2012, allowing the wealthy to retain far more of their income (Tax Policy Center 2012). Second, wages for most U.S. families have stagnated since the early 1970s. Moreover, credit card, education, and mortgage debt have skyrocketed. Finally, the collapse of the housing market beginning in 2007 dramatically affected many middleclass families who held a significant portion of their wealth in the value of their home. By 2012, fully 31 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth (Zillow 2012).

But it was quickly recognized in the 1920s that what they called "on-job control" could be extended to "off-job control." That is, controlling every other aspect of life in the same way. So why should people not be robots in their entire life? And to be a robot means to focus your attention on what were called the superficial things of life. Like fashionable consumption, not on care for one another, not on working together to create a decent environment, not on what the world will be like for your children. To turn you into a passive consumer, a person who pushes buttons every couple years and is taught that that is democracy. Follow orders, don't think. Identify your own value as a human being in the amount of useless consumption that you can carry out. That's "off-job control." It runs through all the institutions and it's a huge industry. And, yes, to overcome off-job control you have to make people realize that your value as a human being is not how deeply you can go in debt and how many credit cards you can max out to get commodities you want. That is not your value as a human being.

The average household income in America is right around $50,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. Joe and Suzy Average would invest $7,500 (15 percent) per year or $625 per month. If you make $50,000 per year and have no payments except the house mortgage and live on a budget, can you invest $625 per month? Follow me here. If Joe and Suzy invest $625 per month with no match into Roth IRAs from age thirty to age seventy, they will have $7,588,545 tax-FREE! That is almost $8 million. What if I’m half-wrong? What if you end up with only $4 million? What if I’m six times wrong? Sure beats the 97 out of 100 sixty-five-year-olds who can’t write a check for $600! I would submit to you that Joe and Suzy are well below average. Why? In our example they started at the average household income in America, and in forty years of work never got a raise. They saved 15 percent of income and never increased it by one dollar. There is no excuse to retire without financial dignity in the United States today. Most of you will have well over $2 million pass through your hands in your working lifetime, so do something about catching some of that money. Gayle asked me one day if it was too late for her to start saving. Gayle wasn’t twenty-seven like Joe and Suzy. She was fifty-seven years old, but with her attitude you would have thought this lady was 107. Harold Fisher had a much better outlook at age one hundred than Gayle did at age fifty-seven. Life had dealt her some blows and had knocked most of the hope out of her. A Total Money Makeover is not a magic show. You start where you are, and you do the steps. These steps work if you are twenty-seven or fifty-seven, and they don’t change. Gayle might be starting the retirement investing step at sixty that Joe and Suzy start at thirty years old. Gayle was unwise to enter her sixties without an emergency fund and with credit-card debt and a car payment. She, like all of us, couldn’t save when she has debt and no umbrella for when it rains. Would it have been better for Gayle to start when she was twenty-seven or even forty-seven? Obviously. But once she was done with the pity party, she still needed to start with Baby Step One and follow The Total Money Makeover step-by-step to put herself in the best position possible.

The math is revealing. The typical American with a $50,000 annual income would normally have an $850 house payment and a $495 car payment, with an additional $180 payment on the second car. Then there is a $165 student-loan payment; and the average credit-card debt is about $12,000, making those monthly payments around $185 per month. Also, this typical household will have other miscellaneous debt on things like furniture, stereos, or personal loans on which they pay an additional $120. All these payments total $1,995 per month. If this family were to invest that instead of sending it to the creditors, they would be cash mutual-fund millionaires in just fifteen years! (After fifteen years, it gets really exciting. They’ll have $2 million in five more years, $3 million in three more years, $4 million in two and a half more years, and $5.5 million in two more years. So they will have $5.5 million after twenty-eight years.) Keep in mind, this is with an average income, which means many of you make more than this! If you are thinking that you don’t have that many payments so your math won’t work, you missed the point. If you make $50,000 and have fewer payments, you have a head start, since you already have more control of your income than most people.

you can’t charge your way out of credit card debt and you can’t carbohydrate-stuff your way out of diabetes.

YOU: Hi, I’m going to be paying off my credit card debt more aggressively beginning next week and I’d like a lower APR. CREDIT CARD REP: Uh, why? YOU: I’ve decided to be more aggressive about paying off my debt, and that’s why I’d like a lower APR. Other cards are offering me rates at half what you’re offering. Can you lower my rate by 50 percent or only 40 percent? CREDIT CARD REP: Hmm . . . After reviewing your account, I’m afraid we can’t offer you a lower APR. We can offer you a credit limit increase, however. YOU: No, that won’t work for me. Like I mentioned, other credit cards are offering me zero percent introductory rates for twelve months, as well as APRs of half what you’re offering. I’ve been a customer for X years, and I’d prefer not to switch my balance over to a low-interest card. Can you match the other credit card rates, or can you go lower? CREDIT CARD REP: I see . . . Hmm, let me pull something up here. Fortunately, the system is suddenly letting me offer you a reduced APR. That is effective immediately.

Today, in the wake of the credit-card party of the eighties, it has become fashionable to live beyond one’s means. The nouveaux riches (new rich) are distinguished from old money families by their ostentatiousness and their colorful display of newfound status. But to live beyond one’s means, one must actually charge items for which one does not expect to pay. Oh, sure, there is the realization that the company will not let the bill go forever, but we will enjoy it now and worry later. This, too, is a form of theft. The creditor assumes that when we charge something, we intend to pay off the debt; but if that responsibility is not assumed by the debtor, there is a breech of contract—fraud, or, if you will, theft. It is not really our hard-earned cash that paid for the item, but the money loaned to us by the creditor. To default on our loans, of course, does not mean merely that we fail to pay for the item, but that we are requiring someone else to pay for it.

Success is the ability to move from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” —Winston Churchill

Kim was twenty-three, single, on her own, and at a job making $27,000 per year. She had recently started her Total Money Makeover. She was behind on credit cards, not on a budget, and barely making her rent because her spending was out of control. She let her car insurance drop because she “couldn’t afford it.” She did her first budget and two days later was in a car wreck. Since it wasn’t bad, the damage to the other guy’s car was only about $550. As Kim looked at me through panicked tears, that $550 might as well have been $55,000. She hadn’t even started Baby Step One. She was trying to get current, and now she had one more hurdle to clear before she even started. This was a huge emergency. Seven years ago George and Sally were in the same place. They were broke with new babies, and George’s career was sputtering. George and Sally fought and scraped through a Total Money Makeover. Today they are debt-free, even their $85,000 home. They have a $12,000 emergency fund, retirement in Roth IRAs, and even the kids’ college is funded. George has grown personally, his career has blossomed, and he now makes $75,000 per year while Sally stays home with the kids. One day a piece of trash flew out of the back of George’s pickup and hit a car behind him on the interstate. The damage was about $550. I think you can see that George and Sally probably adjusted one month’s budget and paid the repairs, while Kim dealt with her wreck for months. The point is that as you get in better shape, it takes a lot more to rock your world. When the accidents occurred, George’s heart rate didn’t even change, but Kim needed a Valium sandwich to calm down. Those true stories illustrate the fact that as you progress through your Total Money Makeover, the definition of an emergency that is worthy to be covered by the emergency fund changes. As you have better health insurance, disability insurance, more room in your budget, and better cars, you will have fewer things that qualify as emergency-fund emergencies. What used to be a huge, life-altering event will become a mere inconvenience.

The town slowly wakes up around him with its foreign-made cars and its statistics and credit card debt and all its other crap.

You will be what you will to be;        Let failure find its false content        In that poor word “environment,”        But spirit scorns it, and is free.        It masters time, it conquers space;        It cows that boastful trickster, Chance,        And bids the tyrant Circumstance,        Uncrown, and fill a servant’s place.        The human Will, that force unseen,        The offspring of a deathless Soul,        Can hew a way to any goal,        Though walls of granite intervene.        Be not impatient in delay,        But wait as one who understands;        When spirit rises and commands,        The gods are ready to obey.

FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ________... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ? FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ? FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt... ? BIG IDEAS So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine? How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our experience and our work with others. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.” Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives.

lowest fees. Some cards charge no fee for foreign transactions. Avoiding Theft: Using credit cards abroad is generally safer

You work for the bank. After taxes, your next largest expense is usually your mortgage and credit card debt.

In a RECESSION or slow-down, this makes economic conditions worse. If governments, businesses and households all have too much debt, and all set about repaying their debts at the same time, it’s an economic disaster. That’s why David Cameron had to backtrack on a speech he was planning to make to the Tory party conference in 2011: ‘The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit-card and store-card bills.’ It was pointed out that this was a genius formula for making the recession worse, so he had, very embarrassingly, to withdraw the lines from his speech.

There are few, if any, absolute rules in saving and investing, but here’s ours: Never, never, never take on credit card debt. This rule comes as close as any to being an inviolable commandment. Scott

If you are carrying large credit card balances or other types of debt with high rates of interest, start paying as much as possible toward these debts until they are fully paid off. You would be surprised at how much it can free up to put toward your retirement savings.

was very broke. Not poor, never poor. Privileged and downwardly mobile. Like many of my peers, I could afford to work in publishing because I had a safety net. I had graduated college debt-free, by no accomplishment of my own: my parents and grandparents had saved for my tuition since I was a blur on the sonogram. I had no dependents. I had secret, minor credit-card debt, but I did not want to ask for help. Borrowing money to make rent, or pay off a medical bill, or even, in a fit of misguided aspiration, buy my own wrap dress, always felt like a multifront failure. I was ashamed that I couldn’t support myself, and ashamed that my generous, forgiving parents were effectively subsidizing a successful literary agency. I had one year left on their health insurance. The situation was not sustainable. I was not sustainable.

Timothy Geithner recently came out and said it’s time to abolish the nation’s debt ceiling altogether, essentially raising the feds credit card limit to “infinity”, which they will need immediate access to when hyperinflation hits.

A man with debt soon becomes a man with disturbance.

A man under debt not only loses the peace but also the people.

During a visit to the county landfill, I parked my truck in front of a junk heap and stared. As I meditated on the garbage piled as high as a demolished apartment building, it struck me that everything in this gigantic entangled mass was once new. State-of-the-art. An object of want. There were BBQ grills, bikes, toys, lawn furniture, stoves, picture frames, wine racks; it was a graveyard of past desires, a swollen scrap heap of residually accumulated consumption. Then I thought: Someone once opened their wallet, swiped a credit card, and bought this stuff. And now, here it lies as worthless junk, while its debt probably remains.

A family with a household income of $80,000 sits just in the top 30% of all households. If this household bought at the top of the market, it has a huge mortgage, credit cards, auto loans for two cars. Servicing this debt in addition to combined utilities leaves very little for dining out or going on vacation, especially if the parents are contributing to college education for their kids. Measured in terms of the items this family (currently) legally owns they appear wealthy. However subtracting their debt obligations paints a picture of a family on the breadline that spends much of their incarnation servicing debt with little money to actually live their lives over the forty years of debt servicing. This is a family that is one negative health diagnosis or even minor auto accident away from disaster. This family is a teacup.

Even more than savings, debt is freighted with moral baggage. We even use two different words for the same thing: credit and debt. When you apply for a loan, you fill out a credit application, while lenders make a decision to give you money based largely on your credit score. The most common borrowing vehicle for Americans is a credit card. If instead the process involved filling out a debt application, checking our debt score, and using a debt card, many of us might consider our actions differently.

Can you imagine?” Luke scoffed. “Finch Merlin, with all the Children of Chaos fighting over him. It’d be like using a bunch of credit cards to pay off debt. You use one to pay the other what you owe, but then you owe that one, and so on and so forth. Then you’d be royally screwed.

In his book-length review of the executive functions, Dr. Russell Barkley (2012) explored the reasons that these skills evolved in humans in the first place. He makes the compelling case that it was the selection pressures associated with humans living in larger groups of genetically unrelated individuals, which made it selectively advantageous to have good self-regulation skills. That is, these abilities became more important to survival as humans became more interdependent with and reliant on dealings with people who were not family. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and executive dysfunction continue to have effects on the myriad relationships and social interactions in daily life. These connections include romantic and committed relationships/marriage, relationships with parents, siblings, children, and other relatives, friendships, and interactions with employers, coworkers, and customers. The executive functions in relationships also figure in the capacity for empathy and tracking social debt, that is, the balance of favors you owe others and favors owed to you. The ability to effectively organize behavior across time in goal-directed activities gains you “social collateral.” That is, the more you deliver on promises and projects, the more that you will be sought out by others and maintain bonds with them. Some of the common manifestations of ADHD and executive dysfunction that may create problems in relationships include: • Distractibility during conversations • Forgetfulness about matters relevant to another person • Verbal impulsivity—talking over someone else • Verbal impulsivity—saying the “wrong thing” • Breaking promises (acts of commission, e.g., making an expensive purchase despite agreeing to stay within a household budget) • Poor follow-through on promises (acts of omission, e.g., forget to pick up dry cleaning) • Disregarding the effects of one’s behavior on others (e.g., building up excessive debt on a shared credit card account) • Poor frustration tolerance, anger (e.g., overreacting to children’s behavior) • Lying to cover up mistakes • Impulsive behaviors that reduce trust (e.g., romantic infidelity)

if you consistently practice the techniques recommended in this book, you will automatically side-step most of the emotional investment traps. Pay off your credit card and high-interest debts and stay out of debt. Formulate a simple, sound, asset allocation plan and stick to it. Systematically save and invest a part of each paycheck in accordance with the asset allocation plan. The earlier you start, the richer you become. Invest most or all of your money in index funds. Keep your costs of investing and taxes low. Don’t try to time the market. Tune out the noise, rebalance your portfolio when necessary, and stick with your plan. By doing those things, you will intelligently manage risk. You will buy low, sell high, and have the power of compounding working in your favor. You will slowly but systematically build wealth and a nest egg for a comfortable retirement. With a little luck, you will have more money than you dreamed you would ever have. These time-tested techniques have worked for millions of other people and they can work for you, too.

All too often, a man gets into debt mainly, or even only, to get inside a woman or women.

Sharecropping is the dirty little secret at the root of America’s wealth—along with slavery itself. The immense profits generated by the industrious yet impoverished Black “sharecroppers” and “tenant farmers” financed Europe’s and America’s Industrial Revolution, including the building of their railroads, factories, mills, and their entire infrastructure. It is truthfully asserted that the major cities of America and the Western world were “built with bricks of cotton.” Today the debt traps designed to ensnare the working poor and middle class in a lifelong cycle of debt—the high-cost installment loans that charge usurious interest rates of 100% or more, the “payday” loans that charge 400% interest, the extortionate credit card multi-charges, the subprime mortgages with ballooning interest rates, and the home equity loan swindles—are the bastard children of the sharecropping American South. It

That took the view that every misbehavior, every cruelty perpetuated by one kid on another should be let slide in the name of letting kids be kids? (Let them be kids, really let them, and you will end up with a tribe of bulimic eugenicists with huge amounts of credit card debt.)

Those captivated by the cult of celebrity do not examine voting records or compare verbal claims with written and published facts and reports. The reality of their world is whatever the latest cable news show, political leader, advertiser, or loan officer says is reality. The illiterate, the semiliterate, and those who live as though they are illiterate are effectively cut off from the past. They live in an eternal present. They do not understand the predatory loan deals that drive them into foreclosure and bankruptcy. They cannot decipher the fine print on the credit card agreements that plunge them into unmanageable debt. They repeat thought-terminating clichés and slogans. They are hostage to the constant jingle and manipulation of a consumer culture. They seek refuge in familiar brands and labels. They eat at fast-food restaurants not only because it is cheap, but also because they can order from pictures rather than from a menu. And those who serve them, also often semiliterate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are usually marked with pictures. Life is a state of permanent amnesia, a world in search of new forms of escapism and quick, sensual gratification.

1.Payment history (35 percent)—Paying on time is the criterion. Missing payments hurts you here. 2.Debt (30 percent)—How much debt do you have? Too many credit card accounts will hurt you here. 3.Duration of your credit history (15 percent)—How long have you had debt? Your youth hurts you here, but you can’t do anything about that! 4.Amount of new credit (10 percent)—You don’t want to have a lot of new credit. 5.Types of credit you have (10 percent)—Good versus bad credit. A home mortgage is better than an unsecured loan (a loan that isn’t backed up by real property).

Lizabeth Cohen defines the postwar equation of citizenship and consumerism as the emergence of a "consumer's republic" in which consumerism, rather than social policy, is seen as the means through which to achieve social ideals. In the contemporary context, government authorities speak to Americans in the language of consumerism more than the language of citizenship, inciting us everyday to do our part for the national economy by spending our money, buying cars and houses, and accumulating debt on credit card. Indeed, Americans are almost always spoken to as citizen-consumers.

I have a car again! Top of the list, easily. It’s the American dream. The attendant debt is also part of the dream, I suppose. Americans have weird dreams, when you get right down to it.

Net wages: “It’s not what you make, but what you net” after paying the FIRE sector, basic utilities and taxes. The usual measure of disposable personal income (DPI) refers to how much employees take home after income-tax withholding (designed in part by Milton Friedman during World War II) and over 15% for FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) to produce a budget surplus for Social Security and health care (half of which are paid by the employer). This forced saving is lent to the U.S. Treasury, enabling it to cut taxes on the higher income brackets. Also deducted from paychecks may be employee withholding for private health insurance and pensions. What is left is by no means freely available for discretionary spending. Wage earners have to pay a monthly financial and real estate “nut” off the top, headed by mortgage debt or rent to the landlord, plus credit card debt, student loans and other bank loans. Electricity, gas and phone bills must be paid, often by automatic bank transfer – and usually cable TV and Internet service as well. If these utility bills are not paid, banks increase the interest rate owed on credit card debt (typically to 29%). Not much is left to spend on goods and services after paying the FIRE sector and basic monopolies, so it is no wonder that markets are shrinking. (See Hudson Bubble Model later in this book.) A similar set of subtrahends occurs with net corporate cash flow (see ebitda). After paying interest and dividends – and using about half their revenue for stock buybacks – not much is left for capital investment in new plant and equipment, research or development to expand production.

Say you owe $7,000 on a credit card. You’re paying 18 percent interest and making the minimum monthly payment of $280. If you continue to pay the minimum, it will take you 11 years and 8 months to pay off this debt, and the total interest you’ll have paid will be $4,071. But if you decide to pay $25 extra per month—a “roll-down” strategy—you will pay off your card in 2 years and 5 months, and will pay only $1,641 in interest—$2,430 less.

exhaustion make a significant impact on the workforce. Western workers find themselves working as much overtime as possible to pay off debts, match earnings with outgoing daily expenses, pay monthly rents/mortgage, student loans, car bill and credit card debts. Certain corporations will employ young citizens for days or weeks, on trial for a job, without paying them any salary, with the excuse of giving them “work experience.” Young people believe that working in a coffee shop, store or office will help them get a job. They are there serving as free or cheap labour. Corporations influence legislation. Major corporations endorse lower taxation to make themselves better off and to get people to spend more rather than pay taxes for the welfare and support of the poor. The corporate world enjoys major tax breaks for the wealthy. Some of the superrich use tax havens worldwide

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans cannot even envision a car without a payment, a house without a mortgage, a student without a loan, and credit without a card. We have been sold debt with such repetition and with such fervor that most folks cannot conceive what it would be like to have no payments. Just as slaves born into slavery can’t visualize freedom, we Americans don’t know what it would be like to wake up to no debt. Literally billions of credit-card offers hit our mailboxes and in-boxes every year, and we are taking advantage of those offers. Americans currently have around $900 billion in credit-card debt. We can’t do without debt—or can we?

Happiness is all too often pursued through the use of a credit card.

His boss had been muttering about possible redundancies for months. There were murmurings at home about debts and the juggling of credit cards. Dad had had his car written off by an uninsured driver two years previously, and somehow this had been enough for the whole teetering edifice that was my parents' finances to finally collapse. My modest wages had been a little bedrock of housekeeping money, enough to help see the family through from week to week.

All these price increases have been enabled by the heroin of federally subsidized student loans. Student loan debt now totals $1.6 trillion, far more than credit-card debt or auto loans. The average graduate will carry nearly $30,000 in debt away from their virtual graduation.

Before you start to save one penny for a child’s future college costs, I insist that you have the following financial priorities taken care of: You do not have credit card debt. You have an eight-month emergency savings fund. You have a term life insurance policy. You are saving for retirement; aiming to set aside 15% of your gross salary. Until all of that is in place you are not to think about saving for college.

When we get so wrapped up in our heads, we miss out on what’s available to us right now in the moment. Stop and notice how you feel right now. Feel your breath moving in and out of your body. Feel the air on your skin. Feel your heart beating. Your eyes seeing. Your ears hearing. Notice the energy inside and outside of you buzzing. Shut off your thoughts and feel your connection to Source. B-r-e-a-t-h-e. Even if you’ve got bone-chilling credit card debts or you haven’t spoken to your mother in six years, right now, in this moment, you can find peace and joy in that which simply is.

You work for the company. Employees make their business owner or the shareholders rich, not themselves. Your efforts and success will help provide for the owner’s success and retirement. 2.​You work for the government. The government takes its share from your paycheck before you even see it. By working harder, you simply increase the amount of taxes taken by the government. Most people work from January to May just for the government. 3.​You work for the bank. After taxes, your next largest expense is usually your mortgage and credit-card debt. The problem with simply working harder is that each of these three levels takes a greater share of your increased efforts. You need to learn how to have your increased efforts benefit you and your family directly.

A credit card comes in the mail. They use it and max it out. A loan company calls and says their greatest “asset,” their home, has appreciated in value. Because their credit is so good, the company offers a bill-consolidation loan and tells them the intelligent thing to do is clear off the high-interest consumer debt by paying off their credit card. And besides, mortgage interest is a tax deduction. They go for it, and pay off those high-interest credit cards. They breathe a sigh of relief. Their credit cards are paid off. They’ve now folded their consumer debt into their home mortgage. Their payments go down because they extend their debt over 30 years. It is the smart thing to do.

From mid-2011 to about mid-2016, employees at Wells Fargo Bank opened over three and a half million fake bank accounts. As The New York Times reported in 2016, “Some customers noticed the deception when they were charged unexpected fees, received credit or debit cards in the mail that they did not request, or started hearing from debt collectors about accounts they did not recognize. But most of the sham accounts went unnoticed, as employees would routinely close them shortly after opening them.” Ultimately, 5,300 Wells Fargo employees were fired as a result of their involvement in these deceptive practices. Practices that then CEO John Stumpf told Congress “go against everything regarding our core principles, our ethics and our culture.

Debt is fun—until you have to pay it back at the worst possible time. So, as an alternative, live within your means. Do not count on a bonus or raise to cover your spending. Assume they will not happen—but if they do occur, have a celebratory meal and save most of the rest. People fall into the trap of borrowing from one lender or credit card to pay another. If you are doing that, stop now before it’s too late. Cut your spending. We enjoy, but do not need, much of what we buy. Prioritize spending patterns and say no to yourself and your family. It will reduce financial stress and help you support a comfortable life in retirement.

I later did the math and realized that in those six months, I’d traded 1,400 hours of my life for $15,500 after taxes. And not only did I have nothing left, I owed $12,000 in credit card debt.

Because this isn’t working for me. I’m not the Watson to your Sherlock Holmes. I have a life. I have credit card debt. I have to get back to the real world.

She was willing to work things through, even after discovering the credit cards he’d opened in her name. The thousands in debt he racked up. “You know, it’s not the gambling,” she’d said on that last day. “You might be able to overcome that.” “Then what is it?” “You’re incapable of loving anyone.

To track your money, write down or digitally capture every dollar you spend for one month. Include everything, from your $1,800 mortgage payment to the $4 coffee you grabbed on your way into work. Here, savings counts as an expense, so remember to include any money you put into a savings or retirement account (unless it was taken out of your paycheck—don’t include that). Record each expense regardless of whether you pay by cash, check, debit or credit card, automatic payment, or online transfer.

Why can’t I be a grown-up and order a cocktail that tastes like an alcoholic juice box? Literally what is the point of growing up and going into credit card debt if I still have to get the approval of weird booze snobs rather than buy what I actually want?

you use business credit cards for business debt, in most cases that will not be reported on your personal credit and you will avoid hurting your personal credit.

Chapter 7 has shown that banking was on its way to becoming a public utility in the years leading up to World War I. A public option survives in the Post Office banks of Japan and Russia. By providing deposit and checking accounts, loans and credit cards at rates reflecting the actual cost of such services (or even at subsidized rates instead of today’s interest charges, fees and penalties), a public option could free the economy from the monopoly rent now enjoyed by banks. Most important, public banking would have been unlikely to extend credit for the corporate takeovers, asset stripping and debt leveraging that characterizes today’s financial system.

Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you would have written a cheque or handed over your credit card, instead of feeling like you’re somehow missing out, think, ‘Isn’t this marvellous! I don’t have to incur any new debts.

Different philosophers appeal to different people at different times. Thoreau’s rebellious spirit attracts teens. Nietzsche’s flame-throwing aphorisms draw young adults. Existentialism’s emphasis on freedom appeals to the middle-aged. Stoicism is an older person’s philosophy. It is a philosophy for those who have weathered a few battles, suffered a few setbacks, known a few losses. It is a philosophy for life’s rough patches, large and small: pain, illness, rejection, annoying bosses, dry skin, traffic jams, credit card debt, public humiliation, delayed trains, death. Asked what he learned from philosophy, Diogenes, a proto-Stoic, replied: “To be prepared for every fortune.

The second one is money worship. This is where you think that having more stuff, more money, is going to solve all your problems and make you happy. It’s not necessarily negative or positive—but people who believe those things strongly have less income, less net worth, and more credit card debt.

They want Congress to pass a law requiring people to pay off all credit card debt before leaving the planet through a vertex.