Americans Falling Behind on Credit Card Payments at Alarming Rate

reply to post by GUICE2


The law is on their side in the sense that they loaned you money which you agreed to pay back on their terms.

If you go delinquent yes, you will be able to settle after a few months. You will also be able to negotiate away the majority of the late fees and extra interest. But this will also harm your standing with your other creditors through Universal Default, and this will severely limit your options as you proceed. You want to go this route if your only other option is bankruptcy, which at only 45K outstanding bankruptcy is not even on the table.

It takes five minutes to write the people elected to represent you. You can either get involved, or complain on the Internet. One action gives a sense of accomplishment, the other just compounds stress.

The point in selling the car is it's a huge chunk of your debt that you couldn't afford to take on in the first place. Find a way to sell it. Use your personal savings plus the sale to pay off the loan. Sit down with a credit union to see what options they can offer you. Even put the difference on a zero percent credit card. There is always a way. You can either find one or ultimately become yet another statistic. The choice is yours.

reply to post by apc


Dont get me wrong apc....im finding a way slowyly. The complaining on the internet serves the purpose of raising awareness to the subject because it isnt just an individual struggle. Im looking into so many different possibilities.

At this point, for you, it is an individual struggle. Your fighting your own fight does help others. If you want to raise awareness, do it by telling others to write their representatives. Tell them to vote. A voice on the Internet is meaningless. A voice in congress can actually do something.

This article seems to run in line with our credit problems, this document written by Grant Walker entitled 'the 3rd world default' please read it, it's an interesting article.

I would have pasted the article as oppose to a link but there are also videos that go along with the story that add credence to the theory.

While your at the site please also read 'American way of life is not negotiable' under the Documents section the menu name is 'You will need to March'

a1ccp.com...

I would love to hear your comments either here or at the a1ccp.com website

Thanks



[edit on 26-12-2007 by matt2112]

reply to post by apc


No offense but what good is a voice in congress at all if large corporate institutions like big oil, pharma and investement bankers control the lobbyists who push their agendas through to legislation? I mean, thats how we find ourselves in this mess in the first place because that is why the federal reserve act was passed. It seems like any resistance would be futile because of this.....what congressman is going to back the crackdown on the central banking system? Which one of those congressional mongrols will support a bill that makes it illegal to practice fractional reserve banking? That will in itself cause an economical crash because then the banks would have to admit the fact that they can actually only back up a fraction of what they say they have on deposit. Its dangerous and in a way a bigger waste of time to write the congressman. Dont misunderstand though....i will try. Yet somehow i feel that all the factors i have mentioned above will play against me.

This isn't PTS so I won't tell you what bills to support or whom. You'll have to start paying attention to what goes on in government to find out. The problem today is a pathetic percentage of the population is involved. Of course the special interests get their way. They're the only ones telling our reps what to do. We outnumber them. We just have to make our numbers count.

reply to post by buddhasystem

I have two credit cards (both paid in full every month). I use debit cards wherever possible. I learned a tough lesson when I was 27. I had almost 18k in credit card debt. I had been paying minimum monthly payments which we now know is the worst thing to do. Long story short paid it off. Had the solid job and secure future to accomplish it.

What I can do and what others are faced with are two entirely different situations. Some of us are fortunate enough to get our finances in order and stay well above the fray. Others are already in a tight financial predicament. Getting credit cards issued to them with the promise of low interest rates is seemingly a god send. In reality its not. Banks are not in the dark on who they are offering/giving credit cards to.

The credit card companies do work in a predatory manner. For people or families who are usually already in a pattern of debt. These are people who pay the minimum or have already missed payments. The Federal Bankruptcy law was changed in 2005 in anticipation of the current crisis we are now in.

The banking systems own greed (Sub prime) being bailed out by the fed with favorable interest rates will be marginally propped up by laws keeping consumers locked into high interest long term debt.


[edit on 26-12-2007 by nullster]

Hello All,

What do you all think of the "internet only" banks that have been popping up over the past few years? Banks such as EmigrantDirect, ING Direct, etc. Do you think these are safe?

As long as they are FDIC insured, they're safe. If they rely too heavily on lending instead of investing they might start to hurt, but if they go under your money is still safe.

I am kind of surprised at the "credit cards are evil - period" mentality that I see in this thread. Credit is means to an end, it isn't good or evil. You can get into trouble using credit cards - but it is not because credit is evil, but because you decided to rack up debt on something. The vast majority of people who have credit don't carry a revolving balance, or if they do they carry it at 0% APR. Using credit has advantages over cash on big ticket items - so use it, and just pay it off every month.

Cash is not king for any merchant except small-time merchants, or unless your buying so much that you can get a cash discount.

reply to post by apc


But from what i have heard deposit insurance is also a scam....again i have to refer to that website of course beause it seems as though that is the only place you can find this info. Well.....not the only place because they site resources. The inception of this system was a scam and everything that took place after it was in the interest of self-perpetualization. It runs itself.....
The only thing to do is to get everyone out of debt because its the only way to fight it and that is the main point of the site.

Originally posted by nullster
What I can do and what others are faced with are two entirely different situations. Some of us are fortunate enough to get our finances in order and stay well above the fray. Others are already in a tight financial predicament. Getting credit cards issued to them with the promise of low interest rates is seemingly a god send. In reality its not. Banks are not in the dark on who they are offering/giving credit cards to.

Given that writing off of the debt is a major source of loss in credit card business, banks indeed are not (or should not be, in theory) in the dark about who they issue their cards to. It's in best interest of the bank to have somebody who will be able to repay. As for the advertised rates -- again, one needs to read the fine print. I do all the time. For example, I keep getting cash access checks in the mail, with not so bad interest rate attached to it. If I read the conditions, however, it becomes obvious that they also charge like a 3% fee for cashing the check, which means the effective rate of the loan is unattractive to me. Whatever the bank promised they must deliver by law, but you as a client need to understand the contract.

Originally posted by GUICE2
But from what i have heard deposit insurance is also a scam...

I seriously doubt that. I worked for a major bank for a few years and compliance is taken ultra-seriously. The federal agencies will be on your back real quick if you don't follow the regulations.

The inception of this system was a scam and everything that took place after it was in the interest of self-perpetualization. It runs itself...

If a system runs itself, that's a really good sign. That's the idea.

reply to post by buddhasystem


I know thats the idea....but if the system is inherently unethical and it runs itself then that is a problem because it does more harm than good.
IM not competely clear as to why deposit insurance is also a scam....there is more infor with sources on the site.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Additionally, how could FDIC insurance be a scam when since its inception depositors have been receiving their money back after bank failures like the Savings and Loans crises?

Thats a good question to ask and i think the answer lies in fractional reserve banking where in its simplest form, banks are allowed to lend more money than they have on reserve thereby "creating" money out of thin air either as an accounting entry or by way of printing more cash or "wearhouse receipts".
The insurance is just another loan and when it is deposited fractional reserve banking takes place and more funds are created.

heres an idea,replace all the credit cards with check cards that withdraw directly from your account that way if you don't have the money you can't purchase anything. It still looks and acts like a credit card but you don't owe anyone any money.

reply to post by fnord


That would be a horrible move for the consumer, and would make the merchants very happy. You'd lose: a interest free loan for a month, chargeback rights, credit card rewards points, extended warranty protection on your purchase, theft protection on your purchase, etc. Check cards do NOT carry the same perks as a credit card - the perks, if any exist depending on the card - are all of lesser quality than credit card perks.

I have no problem owing people money when I don't have to pay them back for a month before they start charging me for using their money!

[edit on 26-12-2007 by LightinDarkness]

Massive debt is always the inevitable consequences of supply side/free market economics.

Back in the robber baron days at that beginning of the industrial revolution, the draconian business practices of those in positions of wealth lead to constant boom bust economic cycles, and a completely un-manageable capitalistic economic systems. Powerful corporate interests succeeded in turning our economy into a Darwinian nightmare.

The Fed Res was created to control and balance this process, the creators thought that they could continue to rob the public blind by manipulating the banking process. This worked for awhile, but eventually lead to the great depression.

The neocons, who are the same as the old cons, began trying to repeat this experiment back in the eighties, and once again when they took over congress in 1995. This has lead up to historical proportions of public and private sector debt not seen since, you guessed it, the twenties.

We are currently set up for the perfect storm, and my opinion is that the people who created this frankenstein monster of an economy have no clue as to how the fix the looming problem. They are just hoping and praying that the trends change direction and the whole thing smooths over, and that maybe the poor and middle class will have to suffer some. The truth is that we are in deep doo doo. Real unemployment, which means counting all those who are currently deemed unemployable, is somewhere above 18%. While many want to claim that the mortgage crisis has peaked, it really has just began, the over pricing of real estate might have been one of the greatest run ups of all time, which means that the fallout will most likely be of equal proportion. What goes up must come down. Not only was the Christmas shopping season disappointing to retailers, it was financed primarily with credit card debt. There was an article on the internet that has disappeared stating that this is the first time in decades that Christmas shopping has been financed primarily with debt. In the mean time, oil prices are continuing to rise, Saudi oil production has probably peaked, and the easy to get, good quality, cheap to produce oil is probably on the decline, which means high energy costs are going to get much worse.

Markets require two main components, supply and Demand. Without demand, all the supply in the world does no good. This is why China concentrates on selling to the U.S.. China doesn't have homegrown markets, and before their economy can ever succeed they will have to grow markets at home. The U.S. consumer is the consumer for the economies of the world. With stagnate job growth, stagnate wages, and historical levels of personal and public debt, it looks like the U.S. consumer is tapped out once again. Of course, the beginning of the boomer retirement starts the year after next, and all that money that has been invested for boomer retirement will now start to be withdrawn, which will grow into an ever larger drain on the economy. These levels of historical debt could not come at a worse time.

Are we doomed? Not necessarily. Retiring boomers also mean job openings, as boomers leaving the work force leave a vacuum of skilled labor behind them. The income tax has become an un-necessary burden on the middle class, who are paying for things that they should not be paying for, the huge national debt created by military expenditures, our overseas military presence, and medicaid which subsidizes illegal immigration. These massive government spending programs primarily benefit giant international corporations, and so giant international corporation should start paying for these government expenditures.

Eliminating the income tax with greatly decrease the cost of skilled U.S. labor, and allow us to more fairly compete with labor around the globe. ending illegal immigration will push up overall wages, and stimulate demand. If we move if these directions, we could return to true prosperity.

reply to post by poet1b


Too bad we have anything but a free market economy....very far from it. Also, there is no such thing a supply side free market economy, just for your reference. Supply side/demand side refer to specific economic policies used by economic development policy makers, not an entire economy as a whole.

[edit on 26-12-2007 by LightinDarkness]