Very nice the way you told that story! I keep saying if you can't afford to pay cash, then you can't afford it.....it falls on deaf ears. It sounds "mean" the way I tell it.....yours sounds like story telling....very good!

If he had asked me today........... I would tell him to shove it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been in enough salaried positions that it's not a rhetorical question to me.

Anyway, it's the gimme, gimme, instant gratification world, or more accurately, countries in which we live that promote this stuff. Car jockeys saying "don't deprive yourself of this", real estate BSers saying "it's only a few dollars a month" people rationalizing that "I/We DESERVE this!!!!" and people live and die on credit.

Yep - " ... you deserve it ..." seems to be the watchword of television ads.

o j, o.k.?

as a school teacher, now retired, we worked many hours without pay

My mantra "do I NEED it or WANT it?" Surprising how I already seem to have most things I need !

working extra for no extra pay is the new business standard. last yr my employer laid off all but 2 office people, myself and an owner's daughter the office manager lol. we had to pick up the jobs of all the other's. spring comes (busy season) and several are hired back but as soon as summer hit they laid them off again, knowing the two of us would do it cuz we had to. myself i think they got used to laying people off and the extra cash flow it brought them. it is certainly busier than last yr, infact my division cut nursery payroll by 50% (all excess OT) this past spring and we even had 2 record months of sales... they are hoarding their $$ and just waiting to cut our hours this winter i'm sure...

then i was told we had a very nice contribution to our profit-sharing plan this past dec because expenses were very low last fall & winter :-0 the profit plan is the old way for cash laden businesses to legally get rid of it and call it a benefit lol bunch of BS really no one retires on getting a few thousand $$ a yr. this says to me that they can actually afford a few of the emploeyes to come back but why should they when they make more $$ w/o them and they can make the rest of us do 3 jobs for the price of 1.

unfortunately for them they have short memories...when businesses went thru this in the 90's employees jumped ship in mass as soon as a slight uptick came around ;-) ~ liz

I would say yes I'll work overtime for nothing and by the way my son is selling boyscout popcorn and my daughter is going on a mission trip, she's selling pies. How many would you like?

Wow. This is my third attempt trying to find a way to politely comment on some of the responses to this thread.

Some of you need to read Joyful Guy's FULL posting--don't just respond to the title. His point is quite interesting. If you INVEST the time to digest it.

Joyful: I've been in that hole of "pay this month for the things that were purchased 3 months ago" and either disappeared -- dinners out -- or are now in the back of the closet, and I'm glad I'm in a place where I just am not as tempted anymore.

The house will need certain big-ticket things replaced soon, I'm sure, and I've decided that the car can probably last another year or two (tho the temptation is there, because winter is around the corner and I am one of those employees who is always required to show up even in bad weather. I'm just glad there was nothing that I test-drove that was worth me drawing down my emergency car fund!).

It's just too bad that for some of us (me, including), the lightbulb moment of what we ought to prioritize in our lives -- and the proper place for credit -- doesn't come until we're much older!

I know one thing. If I buy something not particularly needed but wanted, something expensive that I do need will pop up. Happens every time. As an example, last year we had new Silestone countertops installed. Before I even had a chance to stop admiring them, the air went out. In August--in Florida! Neither of those was cheap. We always seem to manage, somehow and not have any debt. It just hurts to take a hit like that all at once.

Being retired (or even before) we know we can't carry a credit card balance. So keep preaching, OJ. We can all learn to do without to some extent.

Now, for a rather personal question. Did you ever get new underwear?

I get the message loud and clear O.J. Although I rarely, if ever, carry a balance on anything, you make an excellent case of "working for nothing" if you carry high interest debt.
No doubt more people need to be told the rest of the story...
Thanks for the reminder!
(as for my employer...yes, in a heartbeat!)

Very good point, OJ. How did you get so smart? Did you learn from The School of Hard Knocks, from a book, from a class, or from obsewrving others and learning by their mistakes ?

You may be preaching to the choir, OJ.

We are so square that our credit isn't very good! Yes, because we have not 'owed' anything for many years, our credit rating is only so-so.

I only discovered this when we decided to save $100 on a new mattress by taking out the store's credit card. We were OK'd for the card and this purchase, but put on a very tight leash by the CC issuer. When I inquired, I was told it was because we didn't have a history of paying off debts. (That's because we don't HAVE any debts! LOL)

I was just blown away! We own two properties free and clear. We pay all our bills and taxes on time. We pay off the two credit cards we've had for thirty years at the end of each month. Our cards offer us the right to tens of thousands of credit. However, because we've never been indebted or 'borrowed' against a CC, we're chopped liver to the credit industry! (Hmmm, maybe that's an accolade!)

My Mother is having a problem with credit. She's 87, only pays with cash or checks. She has only one credit card, which she got about 20 years ago. She's never used it. She "heard' the card company was going to charge a fee for non use by customers. Now she's worried. Should I keep the card? Should I use it once in a while and pay the bill immediayely? I told her, for all she knows, they might have even closed the card. I told her to call the number on the back of the card and find out if it's still good. But she seems to like worrying about something. When I travel, she worries that my plane might be late or might crash.

Hi Jannie,

Sounds a bit as though, were your mother to find a day in which she didn't have something to worry about ...

... she'd worry about that!

As for where I learned all of my stuff ... I've been curious throughout pretty well all of my 80 or so years.

Interesting old world in which we live.

On this evening's news ... 33 miners, trapped half a mile underground in Chile (in unstable ground area), were found alive (message out of a 6" borehole) ... about the fifth one that had been drilled, to different "safe" areas of the mine, I think, after about 32 days. They had food for 48 hours, had rationed it to a spoonful of fish a day. All 33 are alive and in fairly good spirits. Figure that it may take 3 - 4 mos. to drill a hole big enough to get them out ... till about Christmas. Haven't told them yet ... but they're experienced miners - they'll know.

And in Somalia, pretty well a broken country, rebels just set off a bomb in a hotel near the centre of the capital that killed 30 or so, including about 5 members of their legislature.

Sometimes I think that when God takes a look at us humans, he must shake his head and wring his hands (to anthropomorphize a bit).

When I returned from mission work helping refugees get back on their feet in Korea, just after the Korean War, I told of the people's life and people asked what about all of the suffering (about which I'd made limited reference). I said that I wanted them to see the Koreans as ordinary people like themselves.

And when I worked as a clergyperson, telling a 2,000 year old story, I tried to find differnt ways of relating it to ordinary life, while maintaining the integrity of the message, to encourage people to do some thinking, a bit out of traditional paths.

ole joyful

Joyful--I had to laugh at one of your comments.

I used to have a postcard with this written on it:
"Do you think we sometimes give God a headache?"

I just sent my resume in for a job that I would do with no pay whatsoever if need be, but it does pay a small salary. The position is Ministerial Assistant at our church. It is only for about 20 hours per week, and so I still have time to participate in the outreach programs and other ministries within the church.

As for paying off debt, we have done pretty well, but suffered a large loss of our capital on that Black Monday 20 years ago.. Now we are more frugal, but still live quite well for a couple of retirees. I grow most of our vegetables and do lots of canning each summer.. and we only put about 10000 miles on our vehicle most years thus giving us a newer car about every 8-10 years. We don't buy stuff we want unless we know it won't push another bill back that needs paying. We do have some cash in our savings, and have an open line of credit that we keep only for emergencies for large purchases. Only used it one time and paid it off in jig time.

It truly is my opinion that people, including myself are totally spoiled rotten and we have come to feel entitled to receive whatever it is we want. God makes sure I have all that I need. He always has and always will.

I love reading your posts OJ because they do cause me to think and reflect a bit.

I wish my daughter had taken after me more but alas she is in debt up to her eyeballs and never slacks off using that little plastic card.. and makes those minimum payments every month..

Yes, OJ, you are preaching to the choir, at least this member of it. We have lived with your philosophy, all, almost 56 yrs we have been married. We finally got a zero...yes, zero interest debit card through our bank. If there was something large we wanted, we saved for it. The only thing we ever bought on time were our houses. When applying to rent our apt, we were told we were bad credit risks, but Hubs told them to check with our bank, and the utility companies we have used for years. They did and got glowing reports. People talk about getting gold and platinum cards, but the only thing worth gold and platinum....is your credit report. Actually a good credit rating is priceless. IMO.

dotmom: We got our annual free credit reports the other day. We also got our FICO credit scores (which we had to pay for, but well worth it). We each had a score of 805.
We make sure our bills are paid in full every month. We won't buy a big ticket item unless we have the cash to do so. Both our houses are paid off. We hope to retire in the near future, and will continue the same philosophy.

cheerful1 -- That is the score I'd expected to see for us, too. I don't know why the store's credit company ranked us so low, but the above is what they told me. Since I don't see that we'll be applying for credit to buy anything again, I'm too tight to pay to get our FICO's! I saw our three credit reports before we froze them, so I doubt there's anything strange in them. Who knows? Maybe the store's credit company suspected we were attempting to steal someone elses' identity!

The clincher on this episode was that the mattress was terrible and we returned it. The $100 we'd 'saved' by going through this nonsense went to pay the store's 'restocking' fee. Oh, and on their way out with the box springs, the company deliverymen scraped our front door. (Just settled on that, six months later.) What a mess!

preaching to the 'mom & dad CPA's & financial planners' choir here. no debt myself other than my tiny mortgage and i'm still up 200% on my house LOLOL. my DH has acquirred college loan debt but at only 3% interest after he's done. he just finished his honors BS in Mech Engineering, is 1/2 done w/ his MS and by Dec will be 2/3 done. college debt for the high earning degrees doesn't bother me but if it's not sciences or engineering i would not bother taking out $$ to do it and it's a waste of time of you are not in the top of your class academically. he has job offers pouring in nothing under $60K and they won't catch my attention until they hit $85K, some are coming close. ideally he would take a job where we live since my job currently pays for all we need. his job would then pay off the loans in a yr. but unfortunately the jobs coming close to $85K are in other states, thou all of them are significantly cheaper to live in. almost any state other than CA is going to be cheaper for us.

my point in the above post was that these days most employers expect far more than they are willing to pay up for. hence my high demands for a great starting salary for DH other than he has earned it in spades w/ his special honors and i know the employer will get their works worth.

back to the debt thing, back in 2000 i learned that lots of cash on hand is not as important to creditors as extensive credit history. i was starting to look for a house to buy and was buying an suv at the same time. it had been almost 7 yrs since i had used credit cards, they had nearly fallen off my credit record apparently. i was advised by banks to get some current credit history going so i could get a mortgage. even thou i had 6 figures in 401K and enough cash on hand to put 50% down if i had to on a house. i bought and paid cash for the SUV except for the extended warranty and that interest rate for $2k came in at 18% lol. i built up a bit of new credit, got my mortgage & house at what then was a good rate 7%. in 2006 i decided to pay off all credit cards and be done w/ credit. last yr i bought a new suv but instead of giving up my cash i put the amount for the car in it's own savings (pays 3% which balances out the 2% interest on the loan) and it auto pays ea month adding to my credit history which other than my house has become nill again. i will be wading back into credit cards now that all the new rules have gone into effect (been too leary), luckily i still have a high FICO and a perfect record althou not alot of different things and i do still get flooded w/ good credit offers. if i can get my DH to find a local job even part-time (i'd prefer that for another yr) and we stay in my house another yr we'll be set for life! ~ liz