I don't think anyone on ET envies someone who is such a loser that he sold himself out for $12K and brags about it. Grow up little boy.
You're right it's envy. I envy all people who proudly steal thereby forcing the rest of society to pay for it. Of course Bernie Madoff is my real hero.
One thing that is cool about defaulting, you can bank your money. I'm saving faster out of work on unemployment than I was when I worked and paying the minimums... Banks are dumb, dumb, dumb... I got paranoid about having money in the checking because if they serve papers on me it will look suspicious if I drain my account, have to keep it in cash ahead of time to avoid suspicion or getting the account frozen, sometimes they take a person to court but they make sure the person is not really notified so they don't show and I could get a surprise of a frozen account.. anyhow, I go to the bank, tell the trainee teller I want to withdraw money. She asks me for my account number, never looks at a single piece of ID, gives me twenty five one hundred dollar bills and smiles and says "will there be anything else?" I was frozen in time there for a second, thinking of giving her a bogus account number and getting some more money but I'm not a criminal, just unemployed... So, all you guys that hate people that default, three quarters of a million more people are unemployed, do you think they should dig into their savings and pay off the cards and then lose their houses?? It would seem like that would worsen the crisis... I'm going to drop out of the banking system I think. I'll live like an illegal alien and just cash checks at the check cashing places, I'm sure the system is set up to trip up debtors via the savings and checking acount thingies and the collections guys are farther up the learning curve that I am at this point... I don't think I've broken a law yet, I did not intend to default when I signed the credit agreements, I got laid off, didn't quit on purpose just to stiff the creditors, haven't lied to any creditors, threatened a couple but no lies... now I have two questions, name me one thing I can't do without credit or with bad credit, other than get more credit, and what law can I be prosecuted under? A third one might be "who is sending the foul demons that wake my dogs every night at three am" but nobody is going to answer that one probably... personally I think that the dogs know that I'll let them in if they bark enough but the demon theory seems plausible considering how much some of these people hate defaulters...
So the rest of society pays for my 12k default??? Do you really buy that??? Even if that happens, I assure you pay for more outrageous things. For example, WE ALL have paid for the killing of more than 500,000 Iraqis, BEAT THAT.
Your 12k default would not have an affect but the collective of people who do what you do does have an effect. If a couple people throw garbage on to the street it is not noticeable but if many people do it the streets turn to shit. Your 12k does have to come from somewhere and in the end it comes from the tax payer or consumer. Another words it comes from somebody who actually earned it. Just pull your own weight man. It's called responsibility. The Iraq war sucks but that is totally unrelated. I don't see how stealing from a bank is related to the war in Iraq. I feel bad for the people there, why did they get the unlucky birth card to be born there instead of here, who knows.
I personally don't hate defaulters. If you lose your job and you can't pay the card back then shit happens but trying to weasel out of paying it because it's easier not to pay, or worse, intentionally not paying them when you can is the issue here. It's not up to me to determine who can pay or who can't pay that's for each person to decide. Just realize that when you don't pay somebody else does. If placing some of your burden (And I do sympathize if you lost your job) on someone else's back is ok with you then so be it. But realize that you are taking from, not adding too, society. We are all part of a dynamic collective world society and everyone's actions have an affect. As far as dropping out of the system, I hear yea. I have thought about doing that before also. We are all traders so I guess at some level we all want to be free of the system. It's the most freeing job I can think of.
Funny because when he pays his interest it doesn't go to the taxpayer or the consumer.... and i am for the pay your debt/obligations side.
If I am understanding this right I believe it does go to the consumer. It goes in the form of bank profits paid as a wage to an employee or as a shareholder dividend to an investor, who are both consumers. Bank interest is a mark up on the sale of money just like bread is marked up from the stores wholesale price. When you take out a loan you are in essence buying money and the cost is the interest. The banks wholesale supplier is a bigger bank or the Fed. They mark it up and sell it to you or me from there. It's the same as anything else we buy retail. And a credit card would be considered retail.
Too bad people don't think ahead to, "What if I lose my job? What's to be done about my credit card balance?" I understand carrying a credit card balance [big one, for many] is a way of life. But in my days as a financial planner, I used to counsel people to use CCs as a cash surrogate only unless there was no other choice. I cut up quite a few credit cards of clients [used the biggest scissors I could find for drmatic effect] after they refi'd their house and paid the CCs off. Still, many just ran their balance up again..