Debt
Financial Literacy
Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are complimentary and synergistic. However, it should be clear that only wisdom embodies the qualities of all three. It is possible to have an abundance of knowledge, deep understanding, and a complete lack of wisdom.
NAZI Germany (and successors totalitarian governments around the world today) demonstrated this gap most shockingly when it applied knowledge of what is required to sustain human life and understanding of how to eliminate those requirements to annihilate six million Jewish and other human beings. Wisdom was absent.
When discussing knowledge, understanding, and wisdom as they relate to personal economics, considering the role of education is essential. 21st century Americans do not understand money. One of America’s leading commentators on money, wealth, and business in general said this:
“In most cases, when people make more money, they get deeper in debt.” – Robert Kiyosaki
These folks have knowledge and understanding but a serious deficit in wisdom.
Nonsense from VP Joe Biden and Others
Our educators, legislators, unions, big businesses, and government bureaucracies have led Americans down a similar path to financial ruin. Many Americans’ personal economies are already broken and the US government is following a fools path to financial ruin with its insistence that “We the people” need more debt.
“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – VP Joe Biden
Debt Equals Loss of Liberty
The foundation for a personal (or national) economy is money that you control. Debt is money that others control. Worse still, it is money that you actually pay those others to control. You give up your libertyand pay others to do so as if it were a privilege.
Alternative to Debt
EUREKONOMICS™ teaches that money serves you in four – and only four – ways.
- It serves to eliminate debt and regain control of money that was previously ceded to others.
- It serves as ready cash to deal with life’s surprisingly unsurprising surprises – unexpected expenses and opportunities.
- It serves to deliver inflation protected income at a time of your choosing that you don’t have to work for and you can’t outlive.
- Finally – in every sense – your money and your wisdom about money allow you to deliver a legacy to those you care most about.
Debt is financial death and the death of liberty. Presidents, Vice Presidents, legislators, union bosses, big business execs, and individual Americans that fail to recognize this fact lack knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
Jeffrey Reeves
Going Broke in Style
While the Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Indian economies achieve new levels of diversity based on productive labor, America’s economic charm seems to lie in the misguided and misanthropic measures flowing out of the US Congress at the behest of President Obama. America is putting on heavy chains of debt, locking it in for decades and giving the keys to foreign governments that have our demise as one of their primary goals.
Where Is The Fourth Estate?
Don’t the successless sychophants in the mainstream media recognize that the Federal Government is following precisely the same path illustrated in the famous (or perhaps infamous) Stanley Johnson commercial? The Congress and the President have us up to our eyeballs in debt, and it’s debt to the wrong people.
What does that mean for your personal economy?
- It means that money that you have faithfully deposited into retirement accounts is at great risk.
- It means that every penny of debt you have personally, compounds the debt you have as a US citizen.
- It means that the advice you received over the past thirty years is wrong.
- It means the rules have changed, or at least reverted to the more sensible guidlines that allowed our forebears to live and die comfortably without relying on debt-to-others.
- It means – most of all – that those who change their way of creating and managing their personal economies and personal wealth will have a much better chance of escaping the swamp into which our “leaders” are guiding us.
Keep Your Eye on the Prize
Personal economics is like a jigsaw puzzle. If you don’t know what the final picture looks like, you’ll have a great deal of difficulty solving it. Americans have lost sight of the end result - creating and managing their personal economies – and have been deluded into thinking that the pieces of the puzzle – investments, mortgages, IRA’s, etc. – are what’s truly important.
The problems in DC and the problems in your household are the same. The pieces make up the puzzle, but no one piece is the solution. Instead, we recommend that you find a “soulution” that fits you and your family.
by Jeffrey Reeves MA, EUREKONOMIST
It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town of Bombasticus looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.
Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, the Ritzski, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.
-
Pierreski, The hotel proprietor quickly takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to Thumbless Joe the butcher
-
Thumbless Joe the Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to Porky the Pig Farmer.
-
Porky the Pig Farmer takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to Fred at the Pig Feed Store.
-
Fred at the Pig Feed Store takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the Irma, the town’s prostitute that, in these hard times, gave her “services” on credit.
-
Irma runs to the hotel, and gives the 100 Euro note to Pierreski the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.
The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.
No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism…
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is doing business today.
It’s March 2009.
Americans are struggling with the cost of everything from mortgages to groceries. The struggle is the outcome of three decades of misinformation about how to handle the money that flows through the lives of American individuals and families.
Your personal economy succeeds when you control the money that comes into your life.
The Behmoths on Wall Street, Behemoth banks and insurance companies, and the Behemoth US Congress [the Dolts in DC], and the IRS…
- Have convinced you that they know better than you what is best for you and your family
- Have convinced you to divert your money into accounts that they control
- Have convinced you that a maybe dollar in twenty or thirty years is worth more than a real dollar today
- Have convinced you that you can only have the things you need and want today by using credit and mortgaging your future income and your current net worth.
BUNK! BUNK! TRIPLE BUNK! and BUNK ONCE MORE!
Everything you learn from this blog, and from our published works, aims to reveal and clarify the most basic secret of your success with your Personal Economy…
“Keep control of the money that flows into your life. Give control of as little of your money as possible to the Behemoths.” Dr Agon Fly
In addition, the experienced Money for Life Guides listed on YouBEtheBank.com will teach you strategies and tactics to help you gain and keep control of your money. They know how to guide you on a path that assures the success of your personal economy regardless of the bursting of real estate bubbles, the crashing of markets, and the dishonesty of the Behemoths.
Much later, according to a new poll of holiday shoppers by Consumer Reports.
In my book Money for Life…How to thrive in Good Times and Bad a great deal of time is spent discussing the Debt Paradigm; a system of thinking about money that suggests that you can have everything you need and want as long as you have enough credit [that really means you have debt].
-
According to the survey, 23% of Americans will not pay off their holiday debt until March or later, equaling $14.6 billion in interest-accruing debt.
-
Over one-quarter of Americans (26%) use credit cards most often when holiday shopping, contributing to the $63.6 billion charged on credit cards throughout the shopping season.
-
Among those using credit cards to pay for holiday gifts, 17% or more plan on accumulating $1,000 or more in holiday charges.
Here are two ideas from the same survey that might help you avoid this insidious trap:
-
With little more than a day to go until Christmas, re-gifting becomes an attractive option. A noteworthy proportion of consumers (13%) are planning on re-gifting. Men are more likely to re-gift (17%) than women (10%).
-
After the holidays, 16% of consumers plan on returning some of the gifts they received. Men (21%) are more likely than women (12%) to return some of their gifts.
Holiday shopping makes people usually spend more than they intend to. In addition they rack up major credit card bills looking for bargains, after the season.
Don’t fall into the trap. Or, if you already have, seek out a financial guide that can show you how to be your own banker and never get trapped again. You can find a guide who is trained in this financial discipline at http://www.youbethebank.com/find-an-advisor.html
U.S. Takes Over Mortgage Finance Titans
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration seized control of the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies on Sunday, seeking to shrink drastically their outsize influence on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill while at the same time counting on them to pull the nation out of its worst housing crisis in decades.______________
The plan represents a cease-fire in a decades-long ideological battle over the proper role of the companies. Free-market conservatives see the companies as extensions of “big government,” while Democrats have protected them as the main vehicle to promote affordable housing for middle- and lower-income people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/08fannie.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
___________________
Here’s a story that should make you madder than h… and wake you up to the reality that is the credit card business.
A businessperson applied for and received an Advanta credit card with a low permanent rate of 7.99% – not an introductory rate, a low permanent rate.
- The card was used to pay all of the businesses expenses and was paid in full periodically as cash flow allowed; ususally each month or so.
- All payments were made on time and the credit limit was never exceeded.
- There were no cash advances taken and the “courtesy checks” that came with almost every bill, and which carry usurious rates, were summarily shredded as they were received.
- The businesspersons’s credit score was in the high 700′s and the business itself had never had any kind of negative report from any credit reporting agency or vendor.
So, what did Advanta do? They raised the rate to over 20% with a two week notice and with no justification other than “We adjust rates based on a variety of factors.”
Here’s the reality.
- You have NO CONTROL of the money that is tied up by credit card companies or of the rates they can charge you for the use of that money.
- Credit card issuers can raise your rate for NO REASON AT ALL and with minimal notice.
- Unlike the fixed or variable rate mortgage on your home, the terms of the mortgage on your paycheck that credit card companies hold can be changed by them without cause or limit – that’s right, they can charge you 100% if they wish.
Credit is a trap. You cannot win the credit game and you cannot escape unless you learn to be your own credit grantor; to be your own bank. It’s not as hard as it sounds or appears. You have to change your mind about money and adopt The Money for Life Plan thatl lets You Be The Bank. I know this is a commercial of sorts, but I also know that those who follow this approach are rocking comfortably on the front porch while others are sneaking out the back door to avoid the bill collectors.
By the way, the businessperson cancelled the credit card, paid off the balance and now relies entirely on her own bank.
____________________________
____________________________







