“An inflatable gorilla beckoned from the roof of Don Brown Chevrolet in St. Louis”
Racist!
What a novel concept!
I pray so. The long term viability of our country depends on it.
$1k downpayment on a car? That’s peanuts. We put about $4k down on my 2001 CRV which we bought new.
I know things are starting to get bad. I look at the local bulletin boards at the stores here and a heck of a lot of people are selling their “TOYS” boats, four wheelers, R.V.s etc.
Yo Adrian, if you can't scare up $1000, how you gonna make the payments, jack@ss?? I had no idea we'd reached a point where this was considered normal. Same with houses. Silly me, living by Poor Richard's rules.
If you can’t afford to put $1k down on a car, you should be shopping for $200 junkers on Craigslist, not going to a dealer and expecting credit.
In the consumer market, I think the appetite for risk at banks will be considerably less than in the past 10 to 15 years.
One thing that will come out of this period of American lending is just how little economists and “financial engineers” (what an oxymoron of a term) know about risk. Another thing that will be studied is the behavior of bankers around false risk prediction metrics. The financial risk models have utterly failed, and the whole premise of “Value at Risk” is now discredited. It will take a couple of years for it to finally be buried, but there’s no doubting the losses here. Entire international banking empires, built over more than a century, ceased to exist in a week’s time because of the mathematical mental masturbation of “financial engineers” and their absurd ideas of how to quantify and model risk.
In DC... well, that’s a whole ‘nuther story.
“”I think we’re undergoing a fundamental shift from living on borrowed money to one where living within your means, saving and investing for the future, comes back into vogue,” said Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com.”
Three generations too late.
Past time to stop easy credit forever.
Very few people could afford to go to college, to buy a house, to buy a decent car, etc. if they had to wait until they had all the money to purchase it outright.
Similarly, businesses would not expand and create new jobs if they depended entirely on receipts.
Obtaining credit is an act of faith and hope in the future: you believe that you will have the financial wherewithal to afford your current purchases even if it means paying for them over time with interest.
Some of the things you purchase will be entirely practical such as purchasing a decent truck for your business. Other things will be a mixed bag such as a vacation to a location which might provide some future business opportunities. And some will be purely for the sheer enjoyment of life such as a jet ski.
We need to be prudent, but we also need to realize that this is the one material life we will have and we weren't put here merely to struggle through and barely get by until we drop dead of worry and regret.
So am I to believe that along with medical care owning a car is now a right??? Wow, where have I been all these years?
“I think we’re undergoing a fundamental shift from living on borrowed money to one where living within your means, saving and investing for the future, comes back into vogue,” said Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com.
This was the first comment that hit my sore spot. (More generally, I’ve read a number of things on Bankrate that have hit my sore spot.) I’m still trying to figure out how someone earning minimum wage is supposed to live within their means (this part I can do) AND save and invest for the future. (My solution is to let people privately invest the taxes extracted from their paychecks for Social Security and Medicare.) If I knew how to do all that I could write a book and make a fortune.
“”I think we’re undergoing a fundamental shift from living on borrowed money to one where living within your means, saving and investing for the future, comes back into vogue,” said Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com.”
Is this really such a bad thing?
The fact is the markets NEED people to buy on credit. Need. Not want, need. They created markets that live on credit. Companies and people paying their way with cash does them no good. They need their cut of every transaction and of every business and of every personal account. Without credit being involved in every transaction they cannot survive..and I hope they don’t.
Daves been saying this for years
“Cash is king and the paid off home mortgage is the status symbol of choice.”
I haven’t used Credit in years I do a novel thing...wait.
I save and wait.
We live in a microwave want it now society.
Buy a beater and keep on trading up as you save and you can get into a pretty nice car.
WOW ... what a concept!!!
This will be good for the entire nation given time. What people should not expect is for this change to have immediate results. The results will be slow in coming and impact many segments of our economy for quite some time. The reason for this is that too many businesses relied upon their customers using credit to make purchases. There will be a long lull affecting many industries as Americans adjust to the tightening of credit, but once customers get back to buying most goods and services with cash saved, the economy will once again be robust.
The era of living beyond your means is coming to a close for this generation. Credit will always be there for those who can pay.