Available credit coupled with a good credit rating is your best asset.

Usually those who view credit as evil have had problems and an inability to use credit as it was intended.

Credit gives you many more options in life.

For instance, let's say your car breaks down and you don't have the cash to fix it. Your options are to take the bus (walking to the bus stop and having to allot twice as much time), an expensive cab, beg for a ride with a friend, walk or ride a bicycle. If the weather is bad, your options are even more severely limited.

If you have credit, you can get you car repaired immediately on the promise to pay later. And that is all credit is, a number applied to how trustworthy you are to repay your financial obligations.

Not have credit? Are you kidding? What if you or your child gets sick? Are you going to delay treatment?

Have solid credit has allowed me to move to another city for a new job when I didn't have the funds -- twice, it has allowed me to purchase three different homes, start a successful business and even given me free items from the points I earned. I use American Express exclusively, so there is no interest and they have sided with me each time I've had a dispute with a vendor.

I have no revolving debt whatsoever, no car loan and a mortgage only.

If you are unable to manage your finances, or if you do not understand the concept that credit is merely a promise to pay in the future, then you shouldn't have credit cards.

You need banks because if you had to store it at your house, robbers would come and steal all your money. At banks, stealing your money is government sanctioned, which always makes me feel a little cozier, could be those nice looking suits that the robbers wear also.

[edit on 16-10-2008 by ghaleon12]

Great post, and I'm proud to say I've never owned a credit card, taken a loan (other than student) or paid for anything on finance (except one year's car insurance - not something I wanted but couldn't afford - something I'm forced by law to have that I couldn't afford at that time). If I want something, I save up.

HOWEVER - Homes! A small apartment in my area starts at around £150,000 ($300,000). That's almost FIFTEEN times my yearly salary. Renting a similar apartment costs around £600 ($1,200) a month. After bills etc I might be left with £200 ($400) a month. So I get £2,400 ($4,800) a year to put towards buying that apartment.

150,000 / 2,400 = 62.5

62.5 years to save up and buy a mediocre apartment outright!

OK, so if you have a partner and you're both working, and you factor in rising wages as your career progresses, that amount of time could be halved or more. But still, far too late for anyone to start a family - which is surely the point of owning a home in the first place.

For the Record,

I only have 2 credit cards.

I don't have 16 and I really never met anyone with that many. Sounds like an international stereo type.

I totally agree with everything you've said.
Too many families are ruining everything they have with credit cards!
Keep it up, and spread the word.

One of these posts said something to the effect of renting being cheaper than buying. Really? I am paying less on a mortgage for a house 3 times the size of the cheapest rent I could find in my area. If I rented the whole time and tried to save the difference to buy a house in cash, I would get nowhere. Besides the fact that over time your rent will go up and you will never save enough to buy a house.

Originally posted by AHostileMe
One of these posts said something to the effect of renting being cheaper than buying. Really? I am paying less on a mortgage for a house 3 times the size of the cheapest rent I could find in my area. If I rented the whole time and tried to save the difference to buy a house in cash, I would get nowhere. Besides the fact that over time your rent will go up and you will never save enough to buy a house.

I have to agree with this. It costs far more to rent than to buy, and when you rent, you are investing money that you will never get back. If you buy, at least you can sell and get back some or more of your money.

We bought our first home for 57k at a time when the average cost of a home was 150k. We've been fixing it up ever since. A few short years after we bought it, the average cost of a home skyrocketed to 250k making it impossible for us to "upgrade" because we refuse to take out more than a 20 year mortgage. At the same time, my mother, who's in her 50's and has horrible credit, purchased a 300k home with a flexible 30 year loan.........I couldn't believe anyone was dumb enough to offer it to her and I couldn't believe she was dumb enough to get herself into that. About a year ago she filed bankruptcy. That right there is the problem I see with most Americans. The "I want it now because I deserve to have it too" attitude. Luckily my husband and I don't have those same views.

I am all for living credit free, but it is hard this day and age to live on cash. I have a mortgage, and my car will be paid off in 3 months! We have our money already saved for my husband to purchase a new vehicle, we are just waiting to see where things are going with vehicles...(seem to be at a crossroads at the moment). We have only 1 credit card and it is for emergencies only....and there is a total balance of $0 on that card right now....feels good! The last emergency was last summer when our air conditioner broke, and where I live, people die from heat, so we had to replace it right away. We paid it off as soon as we could.

Credit can be a good thing when used responsibly. We have a savings, several of them actually. But sometimes, there are things that cost more than what you have saved. It feels good to have a cushion, but you have to know that and emergency isn't needing that new big TV or house full of furniture. That's where things got out of hand I think. Too many people aren't satisfied with living within their means. It has to be the newest car, newest house, most expensive furniture, latest electronics, etc.

It seems people have forgotten the difference between what we need and what we want. Credit isn't the problem, its the irresponsible use of credit by a vast majority of people and businesses that has brought us to this point we are in now.

I have a bank account but I don't have a single credit card.

I agree with another poster that you need to distinguish between banks and credit. I also agree with you that people have been living WAY beyond their means.

It's like that commercial with the guy boasting about is cool car, big house, new bbq and pool but he then says, "But I'm in debt up to my eyeballs!". It's perfect!

What I hate is that people try to make themselves look like they have a lot of money by buying all this worthless crap on credit. People look at them and say, "Wow! Look at the fancy boat John just got!" But they have no idea that he's lying in bed at night stressing out over how he's going to pay for it, the new HD tv he just bought, and the balance on the credit card that includes new clothes they keep buying even though the ones the own are in great condition.

It's not about keeping up with the Jones' anymore; it's about one upping them.

Here's a few cases for you to prove my point:

My roommates brother and sister-in-law are in dire straights right now because they have to file bankruptcy.

I've hung around them and noticed that they have all this REALLY nice stuff in their house. They had bought an HD TV, were sharing payments on a new boat w/ a friend (bad idea cuz the 'friend' bailed and took the boat), and all this other stuff. I asked my roommate what her brother did for a living. She said he was a manager at Albertson's (a grocery store). I'm thinking, 'how in the world can they afford all this stuff when he's just a grocery store manager and she stays at home". Well, my question was answered when she told me they were filing bankruptcy. They weren't REALLY paying for all of that.

A client of ours owes us $12,000. He lives in a house that is so freaking big that it even has a servants house and a pool house. It looks like he makes a butt-load of money but he can't even pay us what he owes. Guess what? He filed bankruptcy. We're not going to get our money. We saw the list of creditors that he owes and it was obscene.

We were looking at credit card statements of a couple who were cheating their business partner out of money. They basically were having him pay half of the credit card payments but were putting TONS of personal credit on the card. My actual point is that I was the one going through each individual charge and saw the insane amount of money they were spending. Mostly all of it on clothing. Any trip they made they went to high end clothing stores and bought hundreds of dollars of clothing sometimes a few times in only a couple days. They did the same even when they were in town. The spent a lot of money on restaurants too. Guess what? The man whose family was running up the charges just had to close his restaurant down a couple months ago. This is a restaurant that has been a very highly praised restaurant in my city for many years. It was the nicest restaurant in the area and it was a treat if you could afford to eat there. But, now it's gone because they couldn't control their spending habits. They had no money. They now filed bankruptcy.

We've had 3 clients in the past 6 months alone file bankruptcy on us. This is an epidemic. And it needs to stop. It's all catching up to these people.

People are addicted to credit. They are addicted to buying things. Nothing is ever good enough for them. They can't have a car more than 5 years old. They can't have a TV any smaller than 48 inches. They have to have new clothes all the time and they have to be name brands.

This crisis has a lot more to do with than just housing. I bet most of these people could have afforded their mortgage payments if they had just made a rational choice and said, "I'm not going to buy those new pair of shoes. I have 20 pairs at home that are just fine".

Good subject you guys got going here. I myself had three credit cards at one point and was struggling to keep up with the payments. Then one day I decided that enough was enough and put myself on a monthly budget. I ended up paying off all three credit cards in four months and canceled each one. I now live debt free and it is a good feeling. One tactic that I used to pay off my cards is that I calculated exactly how much money I was making every month and where exactly that money was going towards. After I had the numbers figured out I basically trimmed the fat. That means if I could live without a certain service or minimalize it for a couple of months I did. For example, I figured out that I was paying roughly around $59.95 for internet access through my local cable company. So I decided that I could reduce that outgoing amount to around $12.95 if I signed on with the dial-up guys. I then took the extra money left over and put it towards eliminating my debt. You can do this in other areas of your household. I encourage everyone with credit card debt to pay it all off and live free. And if you find yourself struggling month to month for the payments then I encourage you to trim the fat. I hope this helps anyone who reads this post. Good luck!

Originally posted by lushyslushy
everyone says money is the root of all evil... so why wouldn't they say the same about a bank? lol

star for yooo

Don't listen to what everyone says, most everyone is wrong...

The Bible actually says "The LOVE of money is the root of all evil."

Meaning, money itself isn't evil, we need it to live, what is evil is when a person begins to love money, then they want more, and more, and more, pretty soon they devise evil plans to get more, theft, murder, et cetra...

Don't let yourself think that money is the root of evil, it's the love/lust of money that is.

you dont... invest in guns and other tradeable items. Cases of water... Put it in a underground vault and guard it. Now set up trip wire's pungie pit's and a moat around your property. Now Start breeding Doberman Pincer's and create a pack that travels with you when you need to leave your bunker.....
Lets get cracking

Anyone who can't understand the benefits of earning interest with a bank and getting points by using a credit card and paying it off every month has no business having money in the first place.

Before you all gasp over what I'm about to post, know that I'm retired from banking, have raised 6 children and am a grandparent.

You should have a community bank to safe guard your money, mainly from your children.

Next this protects you from having to give em money if they refuse to leave home.

Once you get em out of the house, the bank can loan em the needed cash for all the crap they believe they can't live without.

Banks are a good for the community.

Originally posted by rocksarerocks
Anyone who can't understand the benefits of earning interest with a bank and getting points by using a credit card and paying it off every month has no business having money in the first place.

Exactly. As long as you are responsible banks are good. Interest is good. It is when people are stupid where debt and interest is bad. How can these people tell me that opening a mining business with a loan from a bank of 500,000 dollars which makes me a million dollars and I pay the bank off 550,000 dollars (50,000 dollars in interest) is evil and bad? Shouldn't they be living in North Korea or the old USSR?