Author Topic: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!  (Read 8205 times)

Megma

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Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« on: October 19, 2017, 11:27:14 AM »
A credit union sent me a promo email offering for you to skip a payment in November or December so you can have more money for the holidays! And pay a $10 fee for the privilege of paying more interest and being in debt longer...probably paying off last Christmas!

I am always really surprised when people trust banks to loan responsibly. Bank advertising is often very "helpful" at keeping you in debt.

I'm sure they wouldn't offer it if people didn't do it...


Syonyk

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2017, 08:10:48 PM »
What a bargain!  Uh, for the bank...

Wanna bet half those applications will have a "glitch" and still somehow charge late fees and jack the interest rate up to the missed-payment-penalty-rate unless someone calls in?

Just Joe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2017, 08:00:50 AM »
Ahhh Christmas.... Let the shopping gluttony begin!

The best part of "cutting the cord" (we still watch TV) is a much reduced volume of advertising.

We still have lots of fun though.

meghan88

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2017, 12:21:02 PM »
Here's something even worse:  http://www.chriscohampers.ca/ ... 52 weekly payments for the Christmas of your "dreams"

Megma

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2017, 02:00:01 PM »
Here's something even worse:  http://www.chriscohampers.ca/ ... 52 weekly payments for the Christmas of your "dreams"

That's one way to make the Christmas spirit last all year long! Yikes. It really scares me that it's mostly food assortments shown on the webpage.

formerlydivorcedmom

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2017, 02:50:06 PM »
One of our banks actually enrolled people in this program automatically - you had to opt out.  It was two skipped payments per year - one in July (for back-to-school costs) and one in December.  They also automatically waived two months of payments "to help people deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey".  That meant that there would be no automatic payment in July, August, September, or December this year.  With no notice to the loan holders.

I asked a teller about it, and she told me why it was such a helpful program.  I said, "So....the bank gets to collect lots more interest that the consumer didn't know you were going to collect?  They are actually paying more on the loan than you originally told them, without them explicitly agreeing to it."  She started to argue with me and then stopped and said "Yeah.  But they can call in and have the payment applied if they really want to."

I will never get any kind of loan from them.

Roe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #6 on: October 20, 2017, 03:17:53 PM »
Here's something even worse:  http://www.chriscohampers.ca/ ... 52 weekly payments for the Christmas of your "dreams"

I made the mistake of visiting the website.

Let's play Spot The Actual Food!


marty998

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2017, 05:47:25 AM »
I remember the advertising for Chrisco years ago in Australia. I actually thought it was Mrs Claus...lovely little old granny dressed up, telling us how wonderful Christmas could be with Chrisco.

Interesting that they are still around 25 years later, it follows there must be people using them year after year...




FIT_Goat

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #8 on: October 21, 2017, 01:45:10 PM »
Here's something even worse:  http://www.chriscohampers.ca/ ... 52 weekly payments for the Christmas of your "dreams"

That's one way to make the Christmas spirit last all year long! Yikes. It really scares me that it's mostly food assortments shown on the webpage.

For $1,250 ($990 USD) I could throw such a Christmas feast.  It would include almost nothing in that photo.  I just can't imagine spending that much, but if I was going to spend that much, it wouldn't include all that cheap crap food.

Syonyk

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2017, 05:54:27 PM »
I could probably feed 100 people very well for $1k...

FIT_Goat

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2017, 07:12:34 PM »
I was thinking the same thing.  Assume it is for a week, and you have a whole bunch of family with you, and it has to cover a Christmas feast.  I still don't think I would spend $1000.  I thought about menus and stuff, but I have a hard time hitting it without crap I wouldn't normally buy or lots of alcohol.

Indexer

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #11 on: October 22, 2017, 06:46:17 PM »
I see why the bank is doing this. If you were a spendypants in debt and 1 of your 10 cards let you skip the December payment then that is the card you will put all of your Christmas presents on.


Quote
Let's play Spot The Actual Food!

Wow... that is sad. I was going to say Cheerios. While processed, they are primarily whole grain oats. Then I realized it was Honey Nut Cheerios which are loaded with additives... especially sugar. Nevermind... no food to be seen here.

penguintroopers

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #12 on: October 22, 2017, 10:25:01 PM »

Quote
Let's play Spot The Actual Food!

Wow... that is sad. I was going to say Cheerios. While processed, they are primarily whole grain oats. Then I realized it was Honey Nut Cheerios which are loaded with additives... especially sugar. Nevermind... no food to be seen here.

I was gonna say the meat, but at least there's veggies in there, albeit frozen ones.

economista

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #13 on: October 26, 2017, 10:23:56 AM »
Discover Card used to do something like this.  Anytime you moved you could activate a program that allowed to skip your payments for 3 months.  When I moved I went in and changed my address in the system and it started prompting me to activate the program.  I paid off my card in full each month so I didn't see the point in it and I never activate it, even though they continued to harass me with emails about it.  A few months later I started getting harassed with emails and even a phone call asking me why I didn't participate in the program.  Super annoying.

Helvegen

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #14 on: October 26, 2017, 05:25:33 PM »
Here's something even worse:  http://www.chriscohampers.ca/ ... 52 weekly payments for the Christmas of your "dreams"

I made the mistake of visiting the website.

Let's play Spot The Actual Food!



Marketing overload...

Interesting thing is that if I were going to eat that crap and pay that money, I'd expect far more novelty Christmas junk than just a token gingerbread house.

Just Joe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #15 on: October 27, 2017, 11:17:07 AM »
Oooh! Oooh! I think see Waldo in that picture! ;)

runbikerun

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #16 on: October 27, 2017, 11:41:14 AM »
Good God, but I fucking hate Christmas hamper companies. There's one which advertises constantly right after Christmas where I live, and I took the time last year to take a look into what they were offering. Hampers at (conservatively) a 30% markup on store prices, or vouchers on a dollar-to-dollar basis (so an interest free loan to the company before they even negotiate a bulk discount for those vouchers). They're vipers preying on broke families. Fuck them.

Dezrah

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #17 on: October 27, 2017, 12:25:31 PM »
I could probably feed 100 people very well for $1k...

Indeed.  I was the organizer for our family reunion one year.  We made an enormous Costco trip at the start and supplementary trips the rest of the week.  Total spent on food (not including alcohol) was $2,108.63.  We averaged 35 people a day and had enough food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and drinks and there were still leftovers in the end.  By my math, it was $7.40 per person per day.  $1000 would feed 135 people all day long.

boarder42

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #18 on: October 27, 2017, 01:00:15 PM »
i dont even understand why they do this, its almost always the credit unions that do, and as i understand it they are non profit and funnel the money back to credit union account holders.  So why would you intentionally help someone make a poor decision.  I'm cool with the skip a payment existing to some extent that a person may need it for an emergency but don't advertise it as a way to consume extra.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #19 on: October 27, 2017, 01:13:32 PM »
My first experience with a "skipped" payment was actually a family loan right when I just got married.  (I had never had a loan at this point.)

My husband was paying a car loan to his parents- they wanted us to come home for Thanksgiving one year, and we said we couldn't as we didn't have the budget to. She said "How about you get the airline tickets, and I won't make you pay your car this month that way you have money for the tickets."

What she neglected to tell my husband was that she would just put it on the back end of the loan. It wasn't at all the equivalent of her buying us the tickets like she implied.

It didn't have much effect, but my husband was pretty livid when he found that out a year or so later.   (We also later found out the only way they had money to help my husband with a car loan was their own home equity loan! My in-laws are really bad with money.)

Syonyk

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #20 on: November 11, 2017, 01:20:35 PM »
So why would you intentionally help someone make a poor decision.

Profit, baby!  Bennies!  Moolah!  Kaching!

... seriously, you had to ask? :p

boarder42

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #21 on: November 11, 2017, 02:30:17 PM »
So why would you intentionally help someone make a poor decision.

Profit, baby!  Bennies!  Moolah!  Kaching!

... seriously, you had to ask? :p

Credit unions are non profit and funnel money back to the account holders as I understand it. Not banks.

Syonyk

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #22 on: November 11, 2017, 04:54:20 PM »
Credit unions are non profit and funnel money back to the account holders as I understand it. Not banks.

"Non-Profit" doesn't somehow mean magically ethical and not at all profit focused.  The non-profit CEO salaries alone should make this obvious.  You can clear a million a year in charge of a "non-profit."

TheGrimSqueaker

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #23 on: November 13, 2017, 04:50:42 PM »
Credit unions are non profit and funnel money back to the account holders as I understand it. Not banks.

"Non-Profit" doesn't somehow mean magically ethical and not at all profit focused.  The non-profit CEO salaries alone should make this obvious.  You can clear a million a year in charge of a "non-profit."

How a credit union works, is like this.

Every member has a savings account and is sometimes referred to as a "shareholder", but the credit union is incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation. They register with the IRS as a tax-exempt business under 501(c)(6) meaning that profit must be re-invested in the organization instead of being paid out to a particular person. A credit union is therefore run by a Board of Directors that provide the long-term vision and an executive team to manage the day-to-day activities (typically President, Treasurer, various VPs, and the like although the titles vary). The executives who work at it as a full-time job are generally paid for the time they put in. Yet they are not automatically guaranteed their jobs: they must generally be voted in. The compensation in the not-for-profit world can be generous, and almost as egregious as in the for-profit corporate world, however unlike corporate salaries the salaries of the executive team are disclosed to the "shareholders" each of which has a vote when it's time to retain or get rid of the executive.

The way credit unions benefit their customers is by eliminating some of the fees associated with banking. Checking accounts for individuals are likely to have no monthly fee or a low minimum balance. There's no "investment" banking because there's no incentive to make obscene amounts of money by securitizing stupid things. Accordingly, most of the credit union's assets (i.e. the deposits and account balances of the members) are lent out to other members in the form of mortgages or perhaps credit cards. There's variety in terms of the deposits-- CDs and money market accounts are common-- and overall it functions like a savings-and-loan operation. Interest on a savings account is sometimes referred to as a "dividend" for a "shareholder". However "shares" in a credit union don't behave like shares of, say, Boeing or Apple. You can't sell them on a stock market. You sell them by withdrawing your assets from your account and closing it. Also, when it's time to vote for a new Board member or some similar issue decided by the members at large, you don't necessarily get votes proportionate to your investment in the credit union. Depending on your investment choices you may get a dollar return on your invested principal. The value of your shares will not go up and down like it would if you bought something on the stock market.

Credit unions are tax exempt in terms of not having to pay corporate income tax on the revenue earned from their loans or account fees, but donations to them are not deductible for itemized taxation purposes. Although many credit unions engage in charitable activities like money management classes for kids and teens and donations to the community, they are not "charities" as such and exist only for the benefit of their members. Membership is frequently restricted based on who the applicant works for, where he or she lives, or whether he or she is related to someone else who's a member.

My credit union giggled through the housing bubble because it made no subprime loans and did not purchase securitized "bundles" of subprime debt. Unlike a conventional bank, it had the option of basically flipping off the federal government which would otherwise have applied economic pressure to issue subprime mortgages. Its member base was, shall we say, not subprime material.

Many charities do become glorified support systems for the upper management (my book explains why and how), but credit unions are actually less prone to it because of the accounting transparency.

chouchouu

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #24 on: November 26, 2017, 06:49:38 AM »
Christmas consumerism just seems to get crazier each year. I was a member of a parenting forum where the advice parents most often gave to each other regarding what to buy was, "give them the toys r us catalogue and let them circle things!" Nobody seemed to think it odd that they had run out of things to buy their kids that they were resorting to find things they never could possibly think of. Of course this same forum was full of parents sharing stories about people secretly paying off lay-bys which seems to be considered the ultimate in charitable giving.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #25 on: November 26, 2017, 08:34:19 AM »
I circled things in the toys r us catalog as a kid. That's not a new thing. Dreaming about Christmas lists was half the fun, we knew we wouldn't get it all.

Just Joe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #26 on: November 28, 2017, 10:26:39 AM »
I'm so "old" that we did that in the Sears catalog and the JC Penney catalog. It was fun and we knew we wouldn't get maybe 1 or 2 toys in the end.

I'm a red panda

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #27 on: November 28, 2017, 10:43:44 AM »
I also loved the service merchandise catalog!


Just noticed my credit union is allowing up to 2 skipped payments. AND there is a $30 fee added to do it.

Just Joe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #28 on: November 28, 2017, 11:03:43 AM »
I forgot about Service Merchandise! Yes, we kids wore that one out too.

I'd love for someone to explain why these brand stores just die out. Do they just fail to keep up with the new brands like Amazon? Do their corporate buyer's department just loose their mojo?

Why aren't the other brands working as hard to build the logistic machine that WM and Amazon are?

Sears and KMart will be dead and gone in a few years.

Alternatepriorities

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #29 on: November 30, 2017, 10:18:46 AM »
I got this ad last week. Lowes will let you pay for this years Christmas decorations in 2 years! Wait, do people really blow $2,000 on Christmas decorations? I must remember Christmas differently than the Lowes advertising team because I don’t remember mortgaging Christmas future for today’s decorations.

Just Joe

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #30 on: November 30, 2017, 10:53:30 AM »
If I owned a company I'd be embarrassed to help someone into the ditch like that.

jinga nation

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Re: Skip a payment for Christmas money & stay in debt forever!
« Reply #31 on: December 01, 2017, 01:20:17 PM »
I got this ad last week. Lowes will let you pay for this years Christmas decorations in 2 years! Wait, do people really blow $2,000 on Christmas decorations? I must remember Christmas differently than the Lowes advertising team because I don’t remember mortgaging Christmas future for today’s decorations.
Maketing department genuises pulled $2000 from their rectum as the new minimum to keep up with the Jones'.
No, seriously, people go way crazy and buy. I've seen fights AFTER Thanksgiving weekend at Lowes and Home Depot over lights and trinkets. I have actually sold stuff I just purchased right outside for double the price, cash.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!