Letters to the Editor
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from one anonymous to another
From the anonymous who just screwed the company out of her honeymoon to the anonymou who called us all fools!: I totally agree with you. I was a fool. Even though we WILL be able to get credit in a couple years (I think we could now, the debt is old enough), we will never again have debt of any kind. As Dave Ramsey says: CASH IS KING.
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Re: insurance
Anonymous, you would pay a lot more than $300 per month if you didn't have copays. In your case, looking backwards at a large co-insurance responsibility, of course, a higher premium would have made sense, but no one can know that in advance. But we should all recognize the following: most health care costs are driven by health care providers not insurers (not that insurers don't have their faults), and one of the main problems with insurance is that it enables providers (a) to disguise their lack of efficiency and higher costs from their customers and (b) to point the finger at the evil insurers whenever cost is raised. We all want to be friends with our providers. It's understandable since they are largely responsible for our well-being. But medical inflation and punier insurance coverage is a reflection on health care provider inefficiencies more so than insurer profits. They could forego all their profits and your premium would still be unaffordable.
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Kudos To Anon 7:41am -- You are Soooo Right!
SO here's what we did: We stopped paying our debts and decided to wait out the 7 years of bad credit. We're almost there-- just another 2 years to go. Of course we can't buy a house, a car, or anything in that time, but gosh, why would we do that, it would just cause more DEBT? That is one good thing to come out of all of it: We now know how to live without credit cards and debt! Not bad.
I know many might look at that and say it's really immoral and wrong for us to do it, and I DON'T CARE, because these credit card companies create a system where it's just impossible to do the right thing. I feel not an iota of guilt. My husband does, sometimes, but I don't.
You are right, right, right!
THEY are the ones who rigged the game. I've begged (literally pleaded for months) with my credit card companies to lower the rate to the single digits.
They laughed in my face and hung up on me.
So I stopped paying them.
Best decision I ever made. Now my priority is making sure my home and family budget is taken care of.
If 500 billion-a-year-in-profits Visa doesn't get my $275 minimum payment -- too damn bad for them. I'm sure they will survive! Bankrupting my family, literally watching my kids go hungry some days because I spent our last dollar trying to make Visa happy? Dumb. Family comes first and if these leg-breaking loan sharks at Visa refuse to act like sensible, decent human beings then I'll refuse to pay them (as I have) and not feel a damn bit of guilt about it.
See ya in 7 years Visa!
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Horrible advice!
IF you have a big credit card debt, & you simply stop paying Visa or Mastercard -- yes, in time, they will eventually stop calling you, and the debt will go into "limbo". (In around 7 years, it will even fall off your credit report.) But that's not the end of it, because in the eyes of the IRS, that "debt forgiveness" counts as actual income, because the debt represented goods and services you were actually allowed to keep without paying for. SO....you are on the hook for back taxes (and fines and late fees) on all that money. If your credit card debt is in five figures, that will be a considerable tax load -- and just trying screwing the IRS over the way you screwed over Visa/MC and....all the rest of us dumbasses who pay our bills, because we are the ones who are utlimately on the hook for your childlish lack of responsibility.
Equally stupid: draining your 401K to pay off credit card bills -- so you can be dirt poor in OLD AGE when you will not have the health or ability to earn income. Actually, your retirement savings should be THE LAST THING you touch -- it makes more sense to sell your house (or turn the deed back to the bank, or settle for a short sale on the property) -- because you will have a simply awful time in old age if you have absolutely NO savings or assets except for Social Security (which for late Boomers and Gen X and Y, might not even be there, or be greatly reduced).
I want to be sympathetic to Ms. Hepola, but her story is so immature and self-serving that its difficult. Why is she only freelancing while trying to live in an expensive city? That has to be recipe for financial disaster -- is it possible that no one, not even her generous parents, mentioned this risk? Freelance writing is notorious for being poorly paid and unreliable!
Her debt itself is laughable small -- $10,700? please! that's the cost of a SMALL USED CAR. Modestly-off individuals all over the place manage to purchase and pay off small used cars over a 3-4 year period of time. And the minimum credit card payment on $10K would be awfully small -- well under $100 a month.
I find the idea that she "solves" her problem, by....the time-honored "spoiled kid" method of simply borrowing from rich daddy. This doesn't answer much for the majority of us who either have poor or retired parents OR don't have living parents at all. It's not a solution, it's a stupid way of extending the problem into the future AND ripping off your gullible family. I think anyone with a brain realizes that in a year or two, Ms. Hepola will be able to revisit this subject and she'll be in debt more like $25,000 and never have repaid her dad a single penny.
The real lissue here is how spoiled and detached from reality we have become as a society and how brutal it will be when "the bill is finally due."
We now consider as entitlements things that were once luxuries -- premium cable TV, cell phones, i-pods, Netflix, high speed internet, $4 coffee drinks, takeout food several times a week, etc. -- and I notice how many people posting here TALK "eat top ramen" but get all huffy at the idea of giving up Starbucks ("I'd feel deprived").
You know, only 10-12 years ago most of the things I mentioned simply did not exist. Nobody had cell phones, the internet didn't exist, Starbucks did not exist in most areas of the US...no PDAs or i-pods either. And you know, everybody was JUST FINE. They were not deprived or frustrated because they didn't have (non-existent) high def satellite premium cable TV service with 250 channels and 3 varieties of HBO. And I am not talking about the Great Depression or the 50s -- I'm talking about 1996!!! That's how spoiled we've become in only a few years.
I've talked to a number of people, young and older, about debt. It's a really uphill battle, because like Ms. Hepola, most of them are deeply vested in the sense that they have a right to "toys" and to give any of them up, even voluntarily, is viewed as hideous deprivation. But I'll give Ms. Hepola my speech anyways, even knowing she's not listening: if you want to get out of debt and stay out, you need to drastically trim your spoiled yuppie lifestyle (which BTW can't and never will be manageable on a freelancer's income). That means you cut off cable TV (get rabbit ears) and get rid of your cellphone (yes, eat the cancellation fees). Get rid of high speed internet -- no, you almost certainly don't "need it for work". Cut up all but one credit card (for really dire emergencies). Give up the pricey apartment (move in with friends if you can), and give up all takeout food, lunches, cocktails (this is one of the biggest budget busters of them all).
Work out a payment plan with your creditors -- almost anyone will do this in the present economy. With only $10k in debt, you can pay this off in a year if you make $1000 per month payments.
In a year, you will be debt free, and if you also force yourself to get a regular job with health insurance, you will have the ability to save both for retirement with a 401k and start establishing regular savings accounts (as opposed to regularly draining your income by constantly purchasing goodies and treats). You can be completely financially stable by your 35th birthday, at which time it would be nice if you repaid Daddy.
But I think we all know you won't do any of this. It's boring, and not fun, and you'll feel deprived. And in our "gotta have it" culture, there is nothing worse than feeling deprived.