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31 minutes ago, MacabreEternal said:

Credit cards in our household are taken out with low limits (I have lost count how many times I have declined the bank increasing the limit because my credit score permits) and I always go with the rule of never having above 50% of the balance limit to repay.  I am fortunate that my job pays commission so if I do my job well I have means to clear the cards a couple of times a year.

 

Given their extremely high rate of interest (20% on ours) credit card debt is definitely something to avoid.

I only use my credit card to rack up points.  Outstanding balance is always $0.  Minus has a 30 month interest free period and given I've always paid it up  I've never actually paid any interest on it.

 

HOWEVER, come 2026 or sooner we have to start using credit cards as we will have run out of other options and to keep my wife's lifestyle, we're going to incur permanent credit card debt.  

On current rates of expenditure, we will be incurring $16,000 worth of credit card debt in the first year alone.  And that will just grow as we start paying those huge rates.

 

 

My wife basically salami sliced our savings over many years and then in the last 6 months simply blew it up.

 

Eg Someone has 100 biscuits in a jar.  They add 4 more biscuits but eat 5 thus leaving them with 99.

They then add 4 more biscuits but eat 5 again, now leaving them with 98.  And so on.

And when we got down to 20 biscuits, she simply ate all 20 in a binge.  And then she decided she would continue eating them 20 at a time whilst still only putting 4 in.

All the while she refused to listen to me when I said the cookie jar is empty.  Her literal words are always "I don't wan't to know about the budget."

 

----

And I've just cancelled orders for a couple of CDs (new Massacre and Enforced) I was going to get myself for Christmas - cause right now AUD$60 is something I cannot afford.

Literally we're on a $150,000 combined income and I can't afford $60 for a two CDs.

(Oh and even if I wanted to stream them I can't as my internet is limited as a cost saving measure - hence I post at work).

 

 

 

 

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We've got one CC that can only use the funds available, it's essentially a debit card with Visa capabilities. We've got another card with a $5K limit which can be increased if needed, but the card is never in debt, it's paid off before the end of the month.

Loans when your farmer are a thing you pretty much can't live without in this country, tractors cost $200K+, even a new 3PT linkage sprayer costs upwards of $30K, if we don't use out truck it costs us between $30 and $100 per head to get the cattle to market. Everything comes at a cost, then add land prices to that and there is simply no way to do it without being friendly with the bank. But burrowing can be done sensibly.

These days many banks are a lot tighter with who they lend to, whereas a few years ago they were a lot happier for loan defaults (allowing loans people can't service should have been illegal but in this country the big banks happily did it). But every business can be volatile and every business can have ups and downs, life on our farms hasn't always been rosy, we've never had to sell property to get out of debt, but we've had some very tight years, that's just what business is. The mistake is not watching the incoming and outgoing and not looking far enough forward for when the bad times roll. However we know as well as anyone else we are only one ignorant mistake away from loosing stuff, we just hope our due-diligence with the books stops us from making that mistake.

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35 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

 

Loans when your farmer are a thing you pretty much can't live without in this country, tractors cost $200K+, even a new 3PT linkage sprayer costs upwards of $30K, if we don't use out truck it costs us between $30 and $100 per head to get the cattle to market. Everything comes at a cost, then add land prices to that and there is simply no way to do it without being friendly with the bank. But burrowing can be done sensibly.

 

Not to mention intermittent and unstable revenue. My inlaws worked in poppy harvesting.  They were paid once a year though usually enough to live comfortably!

But if the harvest was bad due to too much rain or drought or the harvester had  major breakdown they needed loans to get through the next year.  

 

Apparently a lot of farmers are in the same boat.

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5 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

 

Not to mention intermittent and unstable revenue. My inlaws worked in poppy harvesting.  They were paid once a year though usually enough to live comfortably!

But if the harvest was bad due to too much rain or drought or the harvester had  major breakdown they needed loans to get through the next year.  

 

Apparently a lot of farmers are in the same boat.

It is often a very unstable revenue. We are in a better position than a lot of farms, especially those producing fruit and vegetables etc, because we can fairly accurately predict when cows and calves are ready to be sold, but we can't predict what the market will be on that day. We also can't predict when the tractor will blow a water pump, even with regular servicing breakages happen. There are many bills and expenses we can and do predict and with solar panels and good history it's a lot easier to even predict our power bills these days. But sometimes shit just happens and when it does there isn't too many choices.

We have other income streams, sometimes we sell silage if we have more than we need, we sell the wool from the sheep and goats, but both of those things have a cost associated with them too so it's not always money in the bank. My wife's job also brings money in but her wage is never used to directly subsidise the farms, it might be used to buy things but if the farms can't subsidise themselves my wife's pay cheque wont for long, so we keep it as separate as possible. Occasionally that means a bridging loan for several months until the cows are ready for market, but that's what it takes. It's not like we could ask the bank for $500 and only have $100 of cattle ready to market, they'd never lend us the money and their own annalists tell them what our cows are worth to a loan not us.

So it's easy to make mistakes with money, but too many people have no idea to start with and that's why they end up in the shit. Borrow, borrow, borrow, then thinking about how to pay it back is not the way to do things.

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5 hours ago, Dead1 said:

And that's the way it should be.

Apparently I'm a "piece of shit" and a "bum" because I don't use credit though. Oh and I'll "never be able to have the things I want" according to many people I know who have wholeheartedly bought into the usury (credit) system. Which like I've said, if I have to use credit to get something, I don't need it. I already have a roof over my head, a car to get back and forth to work with, and clothes on my back. The few things I buy are records and food for myself (which I don't eat a whole lot of meat, so I save money that way). I have been debating getting a Nintendo Switch so that I can play the new Dragon Quest game, but when I really think about it, I don't have the time to sit around sinking hours of my life into a video game anymore.

The dumb thing about credit, is that you're essentially paying more for something that you just could have bought with cash. "B-buh-buh- your credit rating!!!" Yeah, I don't care about my credit rating nor do I care about anything that requires me to have a credit rating. I don't believe in the "credit rating" thing. I never gave my consent for three private corporations to begin collecting data on me and using this to determine whether or not society (which I despise) thinks that I'm a "good person" or not. I go to work, earn money, and use that to buy the things I want instead of using that money to pay (more) for them and just be able to get them sooner. I can delay gratification to an extent and it works out well for me.

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26 minutes ago, NokturnalBoredom said:

Apparently I'm a "piece of shit" and a "bum" because I don't use credit though. Oh and I'll "never be able to have the things I want" according to many people I know who have wholeheartedly bought into the usury (credit) system. Which like I've said, if I have to use credit to get something, I don't need it. I already have a roof over my head, a car to get back and forth to work with, and clothes on my back. The few things I buy are records and food for myself (which I don't eat a whole lot of meat, so I save money that way). I have been debating getting a Nintendo Switch so that I can play the new Dragon Quest game, but when I really think about it, I don't have the time to sit around sinking hours of my life into a video game anymore.

The dumb thing about credit, is that you're essentially paying more for something that you just could have bought with cash. "B-buh-buh- your credit rating!!!" Yeah, I don't care about my credit rating nor do I care about anything that requires me to have a credit rating. I don't believe in the "credit rating" thing. I never gave my consent for three private corporations to begin collecting data on me and using this to determine whether or not society (which I despise) thinks that I'm a "good person" or not. I go to work, earn money, and use that to buy the things I want instead of using that money to pay (more) for them and just be able to get them sooner. I can delay gratification to an extent and it works out well for me.

 

Some excellent points.  Credit rating is a hilarious concept.

I originally couldn't get a home loan back in 2009 with my bank (Commonwealth Bank) because I had no debt at the time.  I had a car loan with them that I paid off in half the time and I had a credit card whose balance was always $0.

Essentially my credit rating was perfect so they couldn't make money off me. 

 

A couple we knew got a 98% home loan with the same bank at the same time.  The deposit was a government provided first home buyers grant of $7,000. This was the lady who didn't like clothes lines.  Within 5 years they were so financially fucked they sold their house because they couldn't pay all their debts.

 

My wife's bank on the other hand were happy to loan us $760,000 (which I limited to $250,000) but my wife had massive credit card debt when I met her - and which I ended up paying off when we unified our finances.

 

It's clear the bank's preferred customers are those who will borrow more than they should.

 

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3 hours ago, Dead1 said:

Credit rating is a hilarious concept.

It really is. It's essentially making a value judgment on a person based on whether or not they buy things that they cannot afford and then pay more for them in the long run. It's particularly bad here in America because you need a credit rating to do pretty much anything, including to rent a house, but I don't worry about any of that because I already have somewhere to live & live where I do because my mom is getting older and fell down last year when I wasn't living here, so I moved back in after that because that scared me since my mom is really the only person I have aside from my sister. (My father has been out of the picture for years). I'll probably continue to live with my mom as she gets older. If I can ever afford a travel trailer, I might get one of those and live in it on the property, but we don't get on one another's nerves and again, all we really have is each other since my sister is getting married and moved to Toronto this year.

I don't see a point in spending money to get my own place since it would be just me and I don't want to live alone because it would just be too depressing. I do a lot of the cooking, housework, and stuff for her & I'll continue to as she gets older and starts to have trouble doing it on her own.

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2 hours ago, NokturnalBoredom said:

It really is. It's essentially making a value judgment on a person based on whether or not they buy things that they cannot afford and then pay more for them in the long run. It's particularly bad here in America because you need a credit rating to do pretty much anything, including to rent a house, but I don't worry about any of that because I already have somewhere to live & live where I do because my mom is getting older and fell down last year when I wasn't living here, so I moved back in after that because that scared me since my mom is really the only person I have aside from my sister. (My father has been out of the picture for years). I'll probably continue to live with my mom as she gets older. If I can ever afford a travel trailer, I might get one of those and live in it on the property, but we don't get on one another's nerves and again, all we really have is each other since my sister is getting married and moved to Toronto this year.

I don't see a point in spending money to get my own place since it would be just me and I don't want to live alone because it would just be too depressing. I do a lot of the cooking, housework, and stuff for her & I'll continue to as she gets older and starts to have trouble doing it on her own.

 

In Australia you also need a credit rating to get a lease.

Paying your bills (like power or water or rent) on time doesn't actually count towards credit ratings.

Basically to be able to function in society you have to get into debt.  The whole concept is beyond moronic!

Also as Australia is on its way to ultrafucked, if you shop around for credit by talking to a variety of lenders it reduces your credit rating!  

And if anyone reviews you credit rating even if you don't hold credit with them, it also lowers the credit rating.

So if your bank or a lender has a policy of regularly reviewing credit ratings, they will reduce your rating even if you are paying for it.

If you discussed a loan with a large number of banks to get best deal, you've reduced your own credit rating.

 

 

The dumbest fucking thing is the credit utilisation rate (35% of score).  You don't want it to be too high but it's also bad if it's too low.  Literally paying your credit card off gives you a poorer credit rating than maintaining a percentage of debt on it

 

Society is getting to be so broken I'm looking forward to a US-China-Russia nuclear ménage au trois.

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Thinking about how my sister's wedding is in three weeks and how although I got clothing and am going to be getting  haircut soon, that I am woefully unprepared for all of the stress and bullshit that I'm likely going to have piled on me that day despite not being involved in the wedding at all.

I'm not going to let my family try to stress me out over it. There's absolutely zero reason for me to sweat anything that goes on with this wedding, because I don't really care how it turns out either way. I just want to eat some good food, drink a few NA beers, and enjoy the four days off that I'm going to have from work even if I'm not going to be home and am going to be in a hotel in Tampa most of the time.

The guys from Anberlin are actually going to be playing a private gig afterward, so that will be cool too I guess. I liked Anberlin back when they were still an active band. No reason for me to have to stress about it being the "perfect day", it's not like it's my wedding (and if it was, I still wouldn't stress out over it because I'm not that kind of person). I'm just happy that there are only going to be like 40 people there.

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I can relate.  No a fan of weddings myself - between my family, the inlaws, my wife's bridesmaids and one of my wife's horrid agony aunt friend and the photographer who forgot she was working for us ours was crap.  I would rather have eloped and then spent that $15.000 on another European trip. 

 

So yeah just kick back and have some beers!

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2 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I wasn't suggest me :)

 

haha and thankyou for the luck!  I will be working in Forensics. Basically our clients have been in the prison system for a long time and OT will help them reintegrate into back into society.  What we dont want to see is recidivism. I hope to be that glimmer of hope for them to get back to normalcy. I already met them last thursday and they were very nice and welcoming to me. 

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Actually, I've been planning all along to be a repeat offender. Hopefully I can slip through the cracks and not get caught. And if I do I've got our new friend the vampyress here to assure them I'm not danger to myself or to others. I don't think I'd do very well at all in captivity. I find jailhouse politics a bore. My big mouth would probably get my wise ass shanked within a week. Some violent felon would sharpen his toothbrush on the concrete floor and poke me full of holes, open up an artery or two.

 

Boy, your soul better belong to Jesus...'cause your ass belongs to me

 

Captive Honour - Megadick

 

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