$(document).ready( function () { talk_rendercallback({"enabled":"1","islive":"0","eid":5716,"total":"5","discussion":[{"nm":"Les","rs":"0","ms":"I learned a long time ago from a financial expert that there are only two things you should use credit for. \n\nOne is to finance buying a home and the second is to buy your first car. \n\nAfter the car is paid for you invest the car payments to pay for the next one and pay cash for it.\n\nAnother thing he told me was to not buy more home than you absolutely need, your home is not an investment until you sell it. If you find you need a bigger house, then you can trade up. \n\nYou should look at the car you buy as basic transportation. It is never an investment.  Drive it for as long as the cost of maintaining it is lower than the payments would be to replace it. I\'m still driving the Ford I bought in 1990. \nWhen I replace it next year, or the year after, I\'ll still have almost half of the cash I\'ve saved left.\n\nCompounding is a wonderful thing when you are saving and a money eating monster when you are paying off a loan.\n\nHope this if useful to someone.\nLes","pt":"Nov 27, 2009 14:01"},{"nm":"Andy S.","rs":"0","ms":"Question to everyone:  Would you be interested in placing your money in an institution that did not do all these terrible things?  A bank that  chose to be more \'old fashioned\'?  If you are, why doesn\'t that bank exist?  Why do we keep our accounts at these institutions?  I left the banking industry several years ago.  I am frustrated that new entities are not competing.  This must mean an indifference by the American people.  Are they too embarrassed by these fees to fight back...to change institutions?  To be clear, I want and look for these new institutions but have yet to see them.  Merchants too are frustrated by the card industry.  Where are the entrepreneurs?\n\nI am trying. I have written an iPhone app (that is currently in Apple\'s review process) that focuses on gift cards, another scamming industry.  I am hoping to make gift cards more convenient for the consumer so they do not forget to use them for instance and to give the proceeds to charity through exising scrips programs.  The networking effect that the banks have is insurmountable in many people\'s eyes, but I am willing to give it a try. \n\nLet us know your thoughts.  ","pt":"Nov 26, 2009 10:12"},{"nm":"Mark","rs":"0","ms":"The last part of this interview reveals Geithner\'s true colors. He meets with Goldman Sachs people 25 times, but he says that is others and an assistant secretary of finance that meet with advocacy groups. He flashes his true colors throughout the interview defending the banks constantly & trying to lay off the blame on every other financial type entity. Geithner is the big banks \'boy\'! They have him in place and for all his blathering on about concern for the American people, he is a constant bump in the road for every \'inconvenience\' that is proposed in bank regulation. The Oligarchy is clearly still firmly entrenched with their manipulative strings still attached all over DC. We no more live in a free market economy then the Russians lived in a true communist state. Power corrupts and no matter what the system, the average person can at best expect to get to feed at his own risk on the chunks of chum that fall from the big sharks ravenous mouths. Bon appetite!","pt":"Nov 26, 2009 08:26"},{"nm":"JP Merzetti","rs":"0","ms":"I\'m glad to see that there is preparedness to consider addressing some of the main contributors to private debt - that many millions of citizens used credit to maintain lifestyles which really needed adequate income to sustain. I am not convinced that even the majority of these were negligent to the fiscal realities of their personal finances. I have long thought that public and private institutions, govenmental and otherwise, willing to strongly consider this reality in light of working with people constructively, instead of punitively, would not only be humane and fair, but economically prudent, in the long run.\nFrom what I\'ve read, the comments of Mr. Geithner give me that hope, and I wish him success in these endeavors.","pt":"Nov 25, 2009 22:39"},{"nm":"ken","rs":"0","ms":"i have an 800 fico score, most cards were running 0% to 10%. now, for no reason my rates are 8% to 22%. this is after MY 700 billions bailed THEM out. these banks should have been allowed to fail! personal friends who never miss payments now are paying in excess of 35% interest. enough is enough. all this in an environment that since 2005 it has been ever more difficult to declare bancrupcy, thereby reducing risk to the banks, and in an environment where borrowing THEIR funds costs them 0%! ","pt":"Nov 25, 2009 22:01"}]}); });