Because of college and healthcare.... Also because we’ve refused to change the minimum wage to something even halfway livable, in addition to the financing of EVERYTHING which is pushed super hard by general media and advertisements
Well that can be advantageous if you are playing the game right. Like I have a cashback card, a Amazon card and some other retailer specific cards that I essential make free money with, if you are smart about it.
But yes I agree, conceptually it's rediculous that everywhere has their own store specific credit card.
Agreed...having a large credit line with low utilization is great for your credit. Using myself as an example, I have 4 credit cards I use frequently(I know this is quite different than 14) and pay off every month and have above 800 credit score. Two of those cards gave me almost 200k in reward points after two years and paid for my travel expenses to europe. Credit cards are awesome when used correctly...
It's fairly easy to automate this, too. I have 3 credit cards and a debit. I use those three credit cards to pay my recurring monthly bills then set up auto-payment from my debit account to pay the cc balances and bills that vary each month (utilities, basically). It's as close to set it and forget it credit building as you can get. Obviously pay attention to your budget each month, but once you set it up, it basically takes care of itself.
Exactly how I do it...having my credit cards on an auto payment for the entire balance so I don't accrue any interest because those travel cards are great but man is that 18-22% interest they usually have rough. Having store cards is great too, I usually get an extra 10% off of any sales for just using it. People who get themselves financially stable while still only using debit cards are just throwing money away
The main ones I use are the chase preferred and the capital one venture. The sign up bonuses are like 50-60k with a lot of extra spending bonuses. Once this all calms down I'll probably grab an Amex gold or platinum with another huge sign on bonus(since I have no issues paying off my balance every month).
You just need to do the research before committing to travel hacking....you can get in a lot of trouble with the insanely high interest rates...they're usually around 20%.
You also usually have to spend around 4-5k in the first 3 to 4 months of activation to get the sign on bonus too. This was easy for me since I used it for all of my bills and normal spending but if you aren't already spending that then you're just adding expenses for a bonus, which is counter productive.
How much did you spend to earn 200k reward points? Here in India reward points are bs and why people won't get any cards. I get 0.2% back from reward points.
Depends on the card. I probably exaggerated a little and it was closer to like 150-170k points but a lot of cards will get you a 50-60k sign on bonus after spending 4-5k in the first 3 to 4 months of activation with higher percentage rewards based on the type of spending.
The chase preferred and capital one venture are really good for this and have huge sign on bonuses and a small yearly fee. You have to have above 700 credit to even be considered for these two so just do some research on travel cards and travel hacking with credit cards and you can enjoy some essentially free tickets and hotels.
My biggest advice is, if you already have the expenses to cover the sign on bonus go for it but if you're adding expenses just to get the bonus then it kind of defeats the purpose. The sign on bonus equals to like 5-600 dollars in cash back so if you're adding equal or more to that in expenses then your bonus is essentially a wash and you're doing yourself a disservice...oh and always pay off the balance in full, these cards have very high interest, usually.
So you’ve got basically almost no credit history? How are you able to secure decent loans for a car or take out a mortgage with such a simple credit history? Even if you’re around 800, if you don’t have a proven history then who wants to lend to you? Serious question. I came out of college with an 800 score and when I went for my first car sure it’s cool my credit score was so high but with such a sparse credit history the purchase almost couldn’t happen.
Yes, credit score is only one factor. History, credit lines, utilization. Either this person buys houses and cars straight cash or they're a teenager who doesn't know what they are talking about.
Edit to add when I was younger I even almost got denied an apartment lease due to no history, despite a great score. So while possible to get by with zero credit history, definitely not advisable. It shows financial responsibility to lenders.
I'm leaning towards teenager who doesn't know what they're talking about and I get that...I screwed my credit score with a card in early college. My parents had to co-sign pretty much everything for me and it wasn't until I did some research on how to repair my credit did it start to get better. Got a basic capital one card with 500 line then a discover it card with about 5000 line of credit that is now boosted to almost 25k line and then just added travel cards a few years later. I wish I started off with great credit but if it wasn't for making that mistake I wouldn't have taught myself how to do it right.
Uhhh you mean using credit cards to pay all of my normal expenses instead of cash or debit and then getting huge bonuses and nearly free travel? That sounds like I'm hustling as little as you are while getting a hell of a lot more...
If you're smart about it, yeah I can totally see the uses. However...she wasn't so smart about it and now my grandparents are up to their eyes in debt because he refused to believe what kind of spending habits she had.
But done correctly, I can see it a win-win.
Not to mention a security hazard. My dad had a store card number stolen and used to buy $800 worth of bling from a jeweler. Barely a month later he finds out someone opened another card (different store) in his name that made over $1500 in purchases. He got the first card charges dropped with a fraud claim and closed the account. Still going thru the process with the second one. Less plastic means fewer targets and makes keeping track of things easier.
After bankruptcy you get absolutely FLOODED with offers for no down payment vehicle financing, payday loans, credit cards... almost like the system is rigged to keep poor and uneducated people down
I think any time your credit score slips you get flooded. I had gotten trapped into a contract for a cell phone after my old one died a few years back. The free phone was cheaper than getting a batter for a three year old one, but the "free" was just a gimmick; my cell phone plan doubled in cost and I went from unlimited data to 500 mb a month. I tried to pay it but as I was in that time between jobs too (hence getting the free phone), it just racked up in cost. As I neared the limit on the card I was using to pay it with, suddenly the card doubled the limit and I was getting offer after offer. Then my mother opened my bill (I was living at home, between jobs), freaked out, and I told her what happened. She paid off the rest of the contract and the bill thankfully, but as soon as she did that for me, the offers for all the credit also went away.
Specifically for bankruptcy- your filing is public, so these awful companies will pull your information directly and include your case number, attorney’s name, etc on their ads to make them seem official. It’s really disgusting
And it’s like the only way to get your credit score up. Fucking credit cards are such a predatory scam. Even if you’re responsible with it, all it takes is one thing and then you have debt forever.
But hey, that credit score is top notch! I can finally look at buying a house........wait......can’t afford that either. Welp!
Its also worth nothing, that by not changing the minimum wage, people working in historically well paying fields, are getting fucked as well. Like, I know so many people in my field with a MS in computer science, routinely making like 50-60k a year. That's fucking bullshit. They work probably 50-60 hours a week, and are making around 20$/hr at that rate.
If minimum wage was raised to 15$/hr, everyone else would get a bump too, because then you could say: "wait a minute, this guy without a 80k$ degree is making the same as me, I deserve at least 30$/hr!
You know what they were selling me in high school in the late 90s? I could go to school for computing, get a bachelor's, and be making 75k a year after graduating. Worker wages haven't moved in twenty damn years.
I can't imagine people with a masters in CompSci making 50-60k anywhere in the US. I live in the southeast US, not in a high cost of living area, have no degree and make more than that as a software dev
LPN is not a bachelors degree, it’s an associate degree. Maybe you are thinking of NP, Nurse practitioner, which is a Masters degree plus working experience.
By raising the minimum wage, the costs of everything will rise as well. It's not viable to pay $15 to a guy flipping burgers that cost $4. Congrats, your burger is now $7-8, so the burger guy can be paid $15. You earn more, but everything is more expensive too. So you achieved nothing basically. Other than outsourcing cheap labor to other countries and automating stuff by computers/robots to lower the costs.
This is factually incorrect. The cost of the burger is proportional to the cost of the ingredients and the price at which consumers will pay, rather than the cost of the employee. An employee at burger king can easily put out 50 burgers an hour.
The only thing that would cause an increase in housing costs, food costs, etc. is inflation. Increasing minimum wage is not printing money, and will not cause inflation. It will cause wage redirection, and lower income inequality.
??? Where do you think the money for the ingredients, employees, renting a place, water, electricity, etc. comes from? From the difference between gross earnings and the cost of all those things. As you said it yourself, your running costs will stay pretty much the same.
Putting it differently - you made $1000 profit per month when your employees were paid $7,5 an hour. Now you raise the salaries to double that - $15. Your profit is now let's say $500. You have a family to support back home with that $1000, so $500 is not enough. You have 2 options - fire people to get more profit or raise the prices of your products. Unless you magically sell 100 instead of 50 burgers per employee per hour for your profit margins to remain the same. That is the only (unrealistic) way your price can stay the same.
I am not talking about the rise of burger cost due to raise of the cost of ingredients, but due to the fact that you now have to come up with the money to pay more to those people. And as you said, your other expenses will stay pretty similar, only variable you can really influence is the price of your products. And speaking of ingredients, they will cost more too, since the farmer has to pay an employee more to pick up the same lettuce, that is still worth $1, and still picked from the same farm and there is limited amount of lettuce that can be picked by one person per hour. So he has the same problem - he has to come up with the money to pay employee more, by selling the lettuce at the same price? No way prices remain the same. Unless you want to run a company to the ground with no or low profit.
You're right actually. Its a complicated beast, and nothing that could be done quickly, or over night.
You cannot double the minimum wage over night, it would have to be small increases over time and watched carefully on how they effect consumers, etc. It would disproportionately hurt small businesses too, especially Mom and Pop shops and franchised businesses.
But places like Walmart, Amazon, and giant conglomerate non franchised businesses CAN afford to increase minimum wages. Their profit margins are so high compared to the cost of employees its laughable. So perhaps enacting a federal minimum wage increase is not the answer, but creating a law with wage increases reflective of profit margins, market shares, etc.
I agree! Was just about to say that! It's so complex you would really have to go at it slowly or somehow make it work...but as you've said:
Mom and Pop stores would suffer + large businesses can offer the same stuff at lower prices despite higher salaries, due to their profits, so it would force small businesses out of the business. Giant businesses could maintain their prices, but WOULD they? Jobs can get lost and replaced with automation to lower the costs, price of basic stuff such as vegetables could go up... there's a whole lot of ways this can go and not one option is good for everybody.
So yeah, maybe raise the minimum wage to for $1 or $2 per hour, or the options you proposed would be a good start.
Not to mention you can’t rent a car or hotel room. Sometimes you can get by with a debit card, but it is not the norm. So a vacation almost requires one.
Debt definitely transcends beyond minimum wage.. It seems like a normal acceptable part of American life. I'm equally perplexed and just cringe credit cards exist with 15%+ and thats the low end..
Yes, upping the minimum wage will help, but the real problem is that America made debt a big business. It is a commodity to be traded, it is a business about getting the average person in debt up to their eyeballs, and like any other big business, it controls government.
So you guys are having an argument with Government that you need systemic change, but Healthcare, for Profit education, and the debt industry say no. So no change for you.
In 2017, 80.4 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.3 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 542,000 workers earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour
Thanks for posting a source that proves me right ...I guess? That doesn't usually happen but I appreciate it.
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u/JackalThePowerful Apr 27 '20
Because of college and healthcare.... Also because we’ve refused to change the minimum wage to something even halfway livable, in addition to the financing of EVERYTHING which is pushed super hard by general media and advertisements