Trans-Eurasian belt Development (TEPR)

[Kellemora]

I used to pay cash for everything, and always carried way too much cash on me, which is not good.
I do use a credit card now for a couple of reasons. Insurance on purchases, and Cash Back incentives.
If you use a Debit Card, you have little to no recourse, and it could get stolen and used easily.
A credit card isn't much safer, but you can contest a charge which appears on a statement.
While it is being contested, it carries no interest burden if you don't pay it off while it is being contested.

I was surprised when a company sent me a zero percent interest credit card, and figured it must be a gimmick.
After all, that is how they make their money. Then I though, yeah but, late pay fees at 39 bucks could kill you. Especially if the mail the bills out on the 28th, and want payment in their office by the 5th.
Well, they didn't have that angle to rip you off either. I have a full 25 days after I receive the statement in the mail, PLUS they send me an e-mail the day they cue it for mail it out, so I know it is coming.
OK, zero percent interest, a whole month to pay without worry of being late, I decided to take it.
When it came in the mail, it had another letter with it stating if I open a saving account in their bank, they will automatically deposit my monthly earning into the account with a 10% bonus.
WHAT Monthly Earnings? I found out they qualified me for a Cash Back credit card.
Some things pay 3% cash back, some 2% and general items 1%.
I make between 30 and 60 bucks a month in Cash Back bonuses. This is REAL CASH deposited to my saving account.
Not airline miles gimmicks, or other such bologna.
I pay my bill in full every month, so the fact the zero% interest eventually ran out, I still pay no interest.
But you see, that is their gimmick. They want you to use the card to pay off all your other cards, adding your debt to their card, so when the no interest period runs out, they can clean up with high interest charges.

Like these places that advertise Internet on TV for ONLY $19.95 per month, and in the fine print it says for the first 90 days, then it goes up to $99.95 per month for a minimum of two years via contract.

I LOVE these so called car lease places too. You can rent a brand new Roll Royce Silver Shadow for ONLY $199.99 per month. $478,826.00 due at Closing.
The car doesn't matter, or the monthly price, which is a bogus figure anyhow. You are paying almost the whole LEASE UP-FRONT. There should be a LAW showing what the TRUE Lease Price is for the Vehicle.
Heck, the way they do, I'm surprised they don't take the next step and say LEASE FOR FREE, No Monthly Payments, $58,000 due at closing, hi hi... Same difference! The monthly rental amount is a totally bogus come-on.

[Icey]

These companies are so full of rip-offs. If something seems to be too good to be true, you can more-or-less guarantee that it is!

However, with credit cards, if you use them wisely, you can benefit from some of their offers, but you have to watch how you spend.

I have no qualms about debit cards. If they're lost or stolen, you can immediately put a stop on them and usually get reimbursed if a fraudulent transaction occurs, but then you have the waiting while investigations take place, and as I know from a friend it happened to, it's hard to prove your innocence. The chances of one being stolen from me are minimal though, so if I have to use a card at all, I'd prefer that over a c-card. I still like using cash the best, or we can still use cheques over here.

[Kellemora]

I hear ya on the con games, swindles, and major rip-offs, hi hi.
They ABOUND over here big time!

I have a debit card also, but normally only use it for ATM transactions, and have withdrawals from an ATM locked into a set dollar amount, as one form of security. If I enter any other amount than what is locked into their computer, the ATM will give the message "Temporarily Out of Funds." It is supposed to keep the card if it is tried twice in a row. Not once, because sometimes I make a mistake punching the numbers myself. If it has a keypad, I normally use that instead of the touch screen, where I usually mess up somehow on the number entries. Probably because my fingers are fatter than the buttons they display on the screen.

I do like getting the cash back on my credit card, but hate writing that check at the end of the month.

[Icey]

Oh bless. This is the thing, isn't it? It's so easy to borrow the money, but it's not too good having to pay it back! Another reason for using d-cards instead, or, as you say, using one to withdraw funds which you know you have.

I think we all have our preferences, but I refuse to accrue interest. The banks make enough as it is, so they're not getting it from me. : )

[Kellemora]

I pay all of my credit cards in full every month, so I'm charged no interest. But that cash back deposited into my savings account is the main reason I use the credit card in the first place, rather than paying cash.

[Icey]

Hi Gary. That can work out very well if you stick to a budget and pay back without accruing interest, but obviously, the lenders hope that this system'll encourage people to use their cashback cards regularly.
This's how these cards work over here. It gives a lot of good info:

http://www.uswitch.com/credit-cards/gui ... explained/

[Kellemora]

An interesting read Icey.

I'm always getting credit card offers in the mail. I just glance at the terms and toss them in the paper shredder.
Most of the offers have either an annual fee, or high interest after the promotional period, or both. Some require you to transfer balances to the card from other cards in excess of a certain dollar amount.

I like the one I have, which pays back 1% on anything, 2% on some things, and 3% on a few other things.
It was 0% interest for 3 years on charges, no annual fee ever.
I never transferred debt to it, even though the post promotion fee interest was low, only 12.6% and one of the cards with debt was 16.8%, I was recovering over 10% of that fee because of what it was used for in the first place.

Along with my monthly statement, three blank checks to use to pay certain bills or make major purchases are always included, usually with a great incentive to use them too. But if you read the super-fine print through a high powered microscope, there are not so great terms associated with doing so. The one that sticks out like a sore thumb to me is if I do use one of their checks, I'm not allowed to reduce the balance owing by more than 1/3 every monthly cycle.
Most people would see that as they can pay off the balance in three months, 1/3 each month, which is not correct.

If you bought a 799 dollar couch to take advantage of the 10% discount by using the check, this makes the cost of the couch 719.10, but your actual charge will be 785.62 due to the sales tax on the purchase added to the bill, and therefore the charge.
You can only pay up to 261.87 or 1/3 of the balance at the end of the first cycle, leaving a balance of 523.75, plus roughly 1.1% interest on the 785.62 so your balance before your payment is 794.26 - minus the payment of 261.87, so your next months statement will be 532.39 to which 1.1% will be added, but you can only pay 177.46 off at the end of the cycle.
538.25 - 177.46 = 354.79 balance owing. Remember the fine print? You can only pay 1/3 of the actual balance at the end of this third month cycle too. Or 118.26 of the remaining amount, which will have 1.1% interest added to the 354.79 bringing it up to 358.69 - 118.26 = 240.43 remaining at the end of the third cycle. Only after three full cycles can you pay off the balance with the fourth cycle payment. Even if you do pay off the balance in full, you will still receive a fifth month cycle statement for the interest on the fourth month, not included in your payment. Around 3 bucks.
Most folks will pay LESS than 1/3 for fear of being penalized 39 bucks for overpaying.

Depending upon your credit card company, your normal charges are kept separate from your promotional check charges on mine, but most combine the two, so you end up paying interest on your normal charges too. Normally a whole lot more than you earn in cash back incentives.

By the way, it is the merchants paying this cash back in their service fees not the banks issuing the cards. I had a merchants account when they started these cash back incentive cards. At least back then, my fee only went up by 1/2 of what the incentive was, on a card by card basis, not across the board. Now to hide this, I think all fees for all cards went up by like 2% if not more to cover these.
Through my merchants account I could take four major credit cards and handle checks electronically. It was beneficial for me to have this merchants account at the time, as it was used to collect rents from late pay tenants by charging their credit cards for the rent, which they agreed to via the lease agreement. A few preferred I did it this way too, probably because they knew it cost me money, hi hi...

OK, I have to get back to work.

[Icey]

LOL! All those figures baffled my head, but yes, I see what you mean. You just have to read the small print and work out what's best for your own particular situation. I've considered a cashback card, but don't use them often enough to make a difference. I pay by cash, get a receipt, and know that whatever's paid for outright. No monthly payments, no interest, no debt, and whatever's left in my account's mine, with nothing coming out of it.

That wouldn't work for everyone, and some folk literally couldn't do it. At least if they need something urgently, like if an appliance breaks down and a new one's required, they can get it by using their card and pay back what they can afford. If you keep an eye on your spending and the type of card you have, they can be useful.

[Kellemora]

I was following a couple of cars behind a truck on the highway, so did not see a case of something bounce off the back of the truck after the overhead door bounced up a little.
The car two cars in front of me veered to the shoulder. The one behind him hit the case, which was already shattered from the impact of hitting the ground. He didn't swerve and I was right behind him.
Hundreds of little metal things, like T-shaped angle irons spread out over the road.
The car in front of me, I guess because he was close enough to the box, did not get his front tires punctured, but it spread fast enough he lost both of his back tires.
Then came I, and these little angle irons popped all four of my tires.
Plus a few of the cars behind got flat tires as well.
The truck kept rolling merrily along, not knowing he lost a crate off the back, and no one got the name of the truck either, since we were all behind it. Not that it would have mattered much if we did.

Since I did most of my own mechanical work back in those days, and carried an air pump and tire plugging gun in my car at all times. I never added the expense of tire hazard to my insurance, since I would never use it anyhow. Heck, I get a flat, I don't even change a tire, I just plug it, add some air and be on my way.
But these angle irons destroyed the tires well beyond repairs.
I did have towing on my insurance, however, since it was not an accident or mechanical failure and related directly to tire failure and I did not have tire hazard insurance, they didn't cover my towing either.
This was an expensive towing job, because they had to use a dolly because of the type tow truck he had.

I had to use a credit card to pay for the towing, and later to buy four new tires, and at a time when I really couldn't afford to buy anything at all. The most I could squeeze out of my paycheck each week to use to pay the credit card bill just barely covered the interest. I skipped a couple of things I normally bought in the way of groceries, and ate some of the canned goods I had stockpiled of things I didn't really care for, in order to pay a little more on the credit card each month.
Oh, I got it paid off within like eight months. But the amount of interest I was paying over that amount of time, was almost equivalent to what a second set of four tires would have cost.
I was glad I had the credit card when I needed it, or I could not have got back and forth to work. But because I was so short of funds from making payments on it, as Murphy's Law dictates, a few other emergency type things happened around that time, requiring me to add even more to the credit card.

I did something most people would think quite stupid. I sold my car in order to pay off the credit card, and have enough left over to buy a small motorcycle new. I figured without the credit card debt and the interest on it, I could buy a used car before winter set in. Well, another emergency arose, not a bad one, but one which meant I needed some money, and rather than use the high interest credit card, I got a small loan from EZ-Finance and Screw Company for less than 1/3 the interest rate of the credit card. This meant I would be using the motorcycle to go to and from work all winter and probably most of next spring to.
I did luck out around February and picked up a really old car which was running good for 150 bucks, so when our worst weather hit, at least I was in a car. Paid off the debt and started saving for another newer car.

Only one other time after that did I ever have an open balance on a credit card of MINE. Emphasis on MINE, because my frau at the time ran up massive debt on almost every credit card she could get her hands on. Drove me nuts.

[Icey]

Well that's a good example of the cards coming in handy. Folk DO have to do this in order to keep their heads above water, but you're right, when an emergency happens, it's not usually just one thing is it? All of a sudden, other needs crop up at the same time, so in instances like that, a credit card's handy, even if it means that a lot of interest's added. It all gets paid eventually I suppose, but then, some people don't care. They'll pay the minimum amount each month and just live like that. The lenders can't get blood out of a stone, so providing they're getting the basic back, it's up to the card owner to decide how - or if - they repay on it.

It's weird. I saw a documentary once about those who have massive credit card debts, and out of 5 people featured in it, 4 of them were women, and they owed the most! It seems that when spending gets out of control, it's all down to depression, so to get a temporary feel-good factor, they stupidly spend even more that they haven't really got, and end up in a whole heap of trouble. For anyone who can afford to pay back properly, these cards're useful at times, but there's always that temptation there, which of course, the companies rely on!

[Kellemora]

Sadly, there are people who will purposely do things to build up their credit, only to take everything to the limit after hiding all their assets, then filing bankruptcy to get out of paying back any of it.
They always seem to get by with it also.
Like how does a millionaire go bankrupt and come out as a five millionaire only a few months later?
And why are they getting by with it?

The poor man loses everything, often can't even afford the cost of the bankruptcy, and doesn't get full relief either, only a chance to pay back over time all that they owe. Which is what put them in that situation in the first place. So they are forever stuck in debt with no way out.

[Icey]

Bankruptcy doesn't quite work like that over here Gary. A fee has to be paid, but those planning on doing it often have the few hundred pounds put by for the event. Even when they become bankrupt, it doesn't stop them from getting small amounts of credit. I believe it's in the region of £500, and after a set time, which I believe's a year in the UK, they can begin to rebuild their credit worthiness again.

You're right in that millionaires never go totally bankrupt (or rarely). Their businesses're put into other names before the event takes place, and they have all sorts of scams which prevent their assets being taken, but bankruptcy's a way out for the poorer man. He rids himself of the stress of having demanding letters landing on his doorstep every day, although he might lose all but the barest essentials - e.g., depending on the amount of debt, it could mean losing his house, car and his bank account'll be closed. Other belongings could be taken and sold to pay off some of the debt, but then he's free to start again after the time lapse, and comes out of it owing nothing.

[Kellemora]

Way back in our high skewl daze, one of my friends fathers got into trouble for stashing cash and assets and then filing for bankruptcy.
He thought he was clever in what he was doing too. He sent his mother (the boys grandmother) a little over two thousand dollars a month, paid once a week. He wrote on the checks and in his checkbooks 'for mom's rent.'
Mom used the money to buy a Certificate of Deposit, and when she had enough of those, I think in 10k increments, she placed them in a trust for her grandsons college, with her son as the trustee of the account, if she passed away.
This built up to over 120k dollars within five years.
He purposely took this money out of his company, as a part of his salary, so did pay the income taxes on it.
This was all planned when he moved his company into a new larger building. He leased a lot of the machines and furniture, and bought the rest of the equipment on bank loans. The company was not making enough money for him to make the move or go into debt like he did. Before the move, he sold all the older depreciated equipment, which he could no longer get tax breaks on. It left just enough money for him to keep up with the payments on everything for about six months before he started going through the bankruptcy proceedings.
The bankruptcy went through as he planned. He also lost his house, which was mortgaged to the hilt too, with the loan from it claimed to go to make the move for his company. But he stashed it somewhere too.
It took about two years for them to catch him with more money than he could have earned. How I don't know. But he got stuck behind bars for five years, and without turning over any of the money he stashed away.
So, when he did get out, since he served the time, they couldn't go after him again. He could also now tap into the trust fund his mom put aside for him. Don't think it was worth losing five years of your life over for though.

[Icey]

Certainly not! That's the first time I've heard of a bankrupt going to jail though. I knew someone who didn't hoard wads of cash, but who bought antiques and paintings with his wealth. He never went bankrupt, but had he done, the items would've been gifted way before it happened. In actual fact, he still owned these things, and trusted friends and family members kept many of them. After he died, the items were eventually sold at auction and his children received the money. By this time, they'd increased in value, so no one lost out really. I don't know the entire story, but this man'd often tell me that no one, especially the tax man, was going to get their hands on a penny more than necessary. Even his house was turned over to one of his children some years before he died. According to how it looked, he was simply "living there", rent free. He escaped having to pay all sorts of things!

[Kellemora]

Working in the Real Estate industry, you would not believe the number of shenanigans I've seen pulled off over the years.
Seems like people will do almost anything to get out of paying back what they promised to pay, and will also try to keep the person from recovering what they put up as collateral as well.

[Icey]

What do you actually mean by a person getting back what they put up as collateral?

[Kellemora]

Well, when you get a mortgage, you put your house up as collateral.
When you buy a car, the car becomes the collateral.

The repo man comes to take the car back, because you didn't pay the lender.
Only the guy parted the car and sold all the parts before the collection order ever went to the repo man.
So the lender did not get back what was used as collateral for the loan.

[Icey]

Oh - I'm sorry.

Never had to do that, so excuse my ignorance.