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Living within your means sounds like a splendid idea. But when will it start to catch on in Washington?
1 posted on 10/12/2008 8:59:55 PM PDT by bornred
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To: bornred

“An inflatable gorilla beckoned from the roof of Don Brown Chevrolet in St. Louis”

Racist!


2 posted on 10/12/2008 9:03:54 PM PDT by ltc8k6
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To: bornred
"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.

What a novel concept!

3 posted on 10/12/2008 9:11:28 PM PDT by Anti-MSM
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To: bornred
Is the era of easy credit over for the long haul?

I pray so. The long term viability of our country depends on it.

4 posted on 10/12/2008 9:13:30 PM PDT by upchuck (Law of Logical Argument: Anything's possible if you don't know what you're talking about. => nObama))
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To: bornred

$1k downpayment on a car? That’s peanuts. We put about $4k down on my 2001 CRV which we bought new.


5 posted on 10/12/2008 9:19:55 PM PDT by Tamar1973 (Catch the Korean Wave, one Bae Yong Joon film at a time!)
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To: bornred
I certainly hope so! Some of us have been doing this for a long, long, time. Me and the MR. are pissed about rising prices but we have always stayed on a budget.

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.

6 posted on 10/12/2008 9:20:39 PM PDT by ladyvet (WOLVERINES!!!!!)
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To: bornred
But sitting across from a salesman in a quiet back room, Adrian Clark could see it would not be nearly that easy. This was the ninth or tenth dealership for Clark, a steamfitter looking for a car to commute to a new job. Every one offered a variation on the discouragement he was getting here: Without $1,000 for a downpayment, no loan.

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.

7 posted on 10/12/2008 9:26:03 PM PDT by Huck (Teddy Roosevelt vs. Che Guevera)
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To: bornred

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.


8 posted on 10/12/2008 9:28:52 PM PDT by perfect_rovian_storm (Palin 2008 (oh yeah, and McCain too))
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To: bornred

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.


10 posted on 10/12/2008 9:49:29 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: bornred

“”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.


12 posted on 10/12/2008 9:58:23 PM PDT by dalereed
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To: All
It's one thing to live within your means, but another to suggest completely doing away with credit altogher.

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.

16 posted on 10/12/2008 10:23:24 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (The cosmos is about the smallest hole a man can stick his head in. - Chesterton)
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To: bornred

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?


38 posted on 10/12/2008 10:58:10 PM PDT by biff
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To: bornred

“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.


48 posted on 10/12/2008 11:35:16 PM PDT by judsonlegacy
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To: bornred

“”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?


57 posted on 10/13/2008 12:06:19 AM PDT by DesScorp
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To: bornred

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.


74 posted on 10/13/2008 2:19:54 AM PDT by CodeToad
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To: bornred; All

Daves been saying this for years

“Cash is king and the paid off home mortgage is the status symbol of choice.”

http://www.daveramsey.com/

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.


79 posted on 10/13/2008 4:28:15 AM PDT by Rightly Biased (Courage is not the lack of fear it is acting in spite of it<><)
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To: bornred
"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.

WOW ... what a concept!!!

94 posted on 10/13/2008 8:40:46 AM PDT by Centurion2000 (McCain/Palin 2008 : Palin the Paladin 2012)
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To: All

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.


99 posted on 10/13/2008 12:54:07 PM PDT by backtothestreets (My bologna has a first name, it's J-O-R-G-E)
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To: bornred

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.


100 posted on 10/13/2008 2:46:05 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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