On 17/11/2008, at 9:50 AM, Olin Elliott wrote: > Ted Turner was asked recently on a CNN interview who was responsible > for the financial crisis and he said "All of us. We've been > spending more than we make for a long time ... " Basically, he's > right. The flip side of offering easy credit and bad loans is that > someone has to be there to accept it. The ethos of America for most > of my lifetime has been "have more, have more, have more." Almost > everyone I know has been living, to some extent, beyond their means > -- and when we're really honest with ourselves, we know it.
Yeah. It's nuts. I see it here in Oz, to a lesser extent, but living on credit in the way that seems all too common in the States is plain bonkers. Other than a mortgage that we can afford to service (and in fact are overpaying it substantially, currently looking at paying it off in about half the maximum term), and a small student loan that's at below bank rate, we don't have any debt. We simply don't buy things on credit, we save up for them (and the money we use to save also goes into the mortgage account, saving us interest on the mortgage as we get the money together for large purchases. Anyway. Charlie. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
