3 ms·

If you're taught it early, then people have a chance. The problem is that credit is predatory. If you're barely scraping by but paying your minimum, I believe m

If you're taught it early, then people have a chance. The problem is that credit is predatory. If you're barely scraping by but paying your minimum, I believe most lenders will slowly increase your limit as long as you're current. Or if not them, another lender will give you a line of credit and you can just transfer it or accumulate more. Now, even banks got into the game with even asking you if you'd like to finance something after you've bought it! If you buy something for 300, they'll show you an option to pay 3 installments of 100 instead with penalties if you fail to pay on time. So what some people do, instead of saving and buying one thing for 300, they buy 3 things for 900 and pay for them monthly. The problem is when you can't pay, now you're screwed. Credit is scary. Life is also crazy expensive. I can't imagine how the next generation will feel once they come of age and things are soul crushingly expensive. Inflation has no bounds. You know how the yen is like a penny? That wasn't always the case. The yen was a dollar and cents were sen. Inflation got so high so fast, that domination just went away. We're not far from cents going away either, god forbid with 100 becomes the new dollar.

WalterBright 2y ago
These days people just throw their coins in the trash. Literally. I know this because I saw a news story about a company that "mined" trash for coins. Doing at scale made it profitable.
- charlie0 2y ago
  This is a big reason why I switched over to credit cards. I don't throw away my coins, but they end up in a plastic container somewhere.
riffraff 2y ago
Aren't you being a bit pessimistic about the next gen? US got a couple years of moderately high inflation, and yeah buying a house is harder than it was 50 years ago. But the hedonic index is still going up, it's insane how much more stuff we have access to now. Even comparing to the yen is misleading, since Japan is the only country which has had nearly zero inflation for 30 years. A USD is still ~1€ or ~1CHF for example.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>If you're barely scraping by but paying your minimum, I believe most lenders will slowly increase your limit as long as you're current. Or if not them, another lender will give you a line of credit and you can just transfer it or accumulate more. Congratulations, unfortunately you don't understand credit as well as you would like to. * Carrying debt is actually unfavourable for requesting further debt, most credit reports track your current debt to available credit and score you lower the smaller that difference is. * Each new line of credit you open for a balance transfer is another hard inquiry ("hard pull"), and each of them will ding your credit score for at least a year because it is unfavourable for someone to be looking for and taking on new debt whether real or potential. This means you will eventually run out of new potential debt to pay your current real debt with, and you're now drowning in debt. Please for the love of sweet baby Jesus do not do this, do not fucking carry a statement balance over. If you can't pay your statement balance in full, it means you can't afford it and you need to stop spending so much. If life decides today is your day to get fucked (eg: emergency medical bills, sudden job loss) then there's no way around that, but you shouldn't deliberately go to get fucked. This is incidentally why high national debts like that seen here in the US or Japan are points of concern: A lot of that debt is financing to pay off debts, borrowing money to pay monies borrowed. What happens when the creditors stop lending? >You know how the yen is like a penny? That wasn't always the case. The yen was a dollar and cents were sen. Inflation got so high so fast, that domination just went away. The JPY was 360 JPY to 1 USD once upon a time, today's ~143 JPY or even the ~80 JPY seen around 15 years ago are very high value relatively speaking. The sen is also still used, just not in daily life because fractional yen isn't significant outside of financial circles.
- bluSCALE4 2y ago
  I suppose I'm referring to people with established credit. I know when I was 22, I already had 7 years of credit history and was maxed out at 1k, then they upped it. I reached 2k at one point. I constantly received laters for credit cards, pre-approved. At the time, I'd transfer it over at 0% for a year, paying like 3% transfer fee or something like that. Started with Cap1, got offers from Citi and Chase on the regular. I had friends whose parents were doing this that eventually filed for bankruptcy. So I know first hand it works and that it's obviously a problem. If you have no credit history, then yeah, you can't do this but it's doable. I'm not saying to do this but it's how it works. Some people have kids, give them lines of credit before their of legal age then start massing credit on their name and rinse and repeat their game on the kids credit.

WalterBright 2y ago

These days people just throw their coins in the trash. Literally. I know this because I saw a news story about a company that "mined" trash for coins. Doing at scale made it profitable.

charlie0 2y ago
This is a big reason why I switched over to credit cards. I don't throw away my coins, but they end up in a plastic container somewhere.

riffraff 2y ago

Aren't you being a bit pessimistic about the next gen? US got a couple years of moderately high inflation, and yeah buying a house is harder than it was 50 years ago. But the hedonic index is still going up, it's insane how much more stuff we have access to now. Even comparing to the yen is misleading, since Japan is the only country which has had nearly zero inflation for 30 years. A USD is still ~1€ or ~1CHF for example.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>If you're barely scraping by but paying your minimum, I believe most lenders will slowly increase your limit as long as you're current. Or if not them, another lender will give you a line of credit and you can just transfer it or accumulate more. Congratulations, unfortunately you don't understand credit as well as you would like to. * Carrying debt is actually unfavourable for requesting further debt, most credit reports track your current debt to available credit and score you lower the smaller that difference is. * Each new line of credit you open for a balance transfer is another hard inquiry ("hard pull"), and each of them will ding your credit score for at least a year because it is unfavourable for someone to be looking for and taking on new debt whether real or potential. This means you will eventually run out of new potential debt to pay your current real debt with, and you're now drowning in debt. Please for the love of sweet baby Jesus do not do this, do not fucking carry a statement balance over. If you can't pay your statement balance in full, it means you can't afford it and you need to stop spending so much. If life decides today is your day to get fucked (eg: emergency medical bills, sudden job loss) then there's no way around that, but you shouldn't deliberately go to get fucked. This is incidentally why high national debts like that seen here in the US or Japan are points of concern: A lot of that debt is financing to pay off debts, borrowing money to pay monies borrowed. What happens when the creditors stop lending? >You know how the yen is like a penny? That wasn't always the case. The yen was a dollar and cents were sen. Inflation got so high so fast, that domination just went away. The JPY was 360 JPY to 1 USD once upon a time, today's ~143 JPY or even the ~80 JPY seen around 15 years ago are very high value relatively speaking. The sen is also still used, just not in daily life because fractional yen isn't significant outside of financial circles.

bluSCALE4 2y ago
I suppose I'm referring to people with established credit. I know when I was 22, I already had 7 years of credit history and was maxed out at 1k, then they upped it. I reached 2k at one point. I constantly received laters for credit cards, pre-approved. At the time, I'd transfer it over at 0% for a year, paying like 3% transfer fee or something like that. Started with Cap1, got offers from Citi and Chase on the regular. I had friends whose parents were doing this that eventually filed for bankruptcy. So I know first hand it works and that it's obviously a problem. If you have no credit history, then yeah, you can't do this but it's doable. I'm not saying to do this but it's how it works. Some people have kids, give them lines of credit before their of legal age then start massing credit on their name and rinse and repeat their game on the kids credit.