Here’s a rhetorical question, or perhaps a koan: what SSN do hospitals enter for patients who aren’t US citizens?
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The danger of advice like this – though I have no reason to think it’s wrong – lies in that qualifying clause. Show me someone who’s confident to try a scheme like this, and I’d bet I can show you someone who gets into financial trouble at least as fast as they can get out of it.
It’s certainly true, though, that lives are routinely destroyed over four- or five-figure sums that mean literally nothing to the institutions demanding those sums. Because one of capitalism’s big lies is that it runs on money, when this is objectively horseshit. Money is just numbers on a screen; banks literally create it out of thin air. What the system actually runs on – what determines who’s a winner and who’s roadkill – is bureacracy. Just like the Soviet Union, but without the conceptual transparency.
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…and they were no GD good for your feet, either.
Those floors hurt people, whether we’re thin or not, and even expensive shoes with great support & appropriately (for you) comfy in/soles don’t ameliorate that. A lotta those expensive shoes only ahem last about a year, which also ain’t so hot.
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This is quite vindicating. In those times when I found myself in the situation of someone on the phone telling me I owe money, I get angry quickly and tell them I’m not gonna deal with them, I’ll deal with whomever I owed the money to. And, I tell them to stop calling. I’ll only respond to written communications. I never, ever hear back from them. i didn’t even know I was exercising my rights, heh.
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yup.
rent’s more expensive if you have bad credit. you’re not able to buy a car outright so you’ll have to get a loan. if you don’t have the money to see a doctor right away, you’ll be bankrupt once you visit the er. food’s more expensive when you have to travel to get it: no grocery stores in your neighborhood but plenty of fast food and 7-11s; dollar tree is more expensive by volume.
and that’s just the starter. there’s lost opportunity costs when you have two or three jobs, or when you’re stuck on the bus. or when the cops decide to harass you and you lose your job entirely for your overnight stay
nobody’s going to give you a good job if you’ve had only bad jobs, and all your money flows up to the rentiers. it’s maddening and everyone who’s lived it knows it’s rigged
an oldie but still a worthwhile read:
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I once had a roommate in college, call him Chad…
I once asked him him he was going to pay it back (after i heard him hang up on the fifth collections call)
ill never forget how nonchalantly he said he would refuse to pay 2000(the vig) and they would just wait until it got sold for pennies on the dollar and he would pay 500 to settle it.
I imagine he is either on skid row or running a sucessful multinational corporate division these days.
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There is quite a bit of propaganda setup to enforce this ‘you are a bad person if you can’t pay your debt’ - to the point many people are so proud they refuse to consider bankruptcy.
Between that and the Bush(2) changes to bankruptcy code making it much harder to file a chapter 7 - and then including the (Biden endorsed) changes to the code back in the day that made student loans impossible to get rid of - even if you do go bankrupt it’s not easy.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, 50% of women and 47% of men between the ages of 55 and 66 have no retirement savings. (Millions of Americans nearing retirement age with no savings - CBS News) 58% of us are living paycheck to paycheck (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-cnbc-survey-reveals.html) and 57% of us can’t afford a 1,000 dollar emergency (57% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense, says new report | Fortune Recommends) - it really takes a cold heart to look down your nose at over half of the country.
The divide is stark - this report lists 48% of us that have over 3 months of expenses in savings - (Bankrate's Annual Emergency Fund Report | Bankrate) - and while the percentages don’t perfectly match - it’s kind of disgusting to think that while roughly half the country can’t afford a major car repair - the other half can weather multiple months without a job - and that doesn’t take into account the half with savings aren’t safe over the long term, or should a major medical cost spring up.
Hopefully we get better - west up above plugged Robert Reich - he’s got an entire college course on his channel for free that dives into the problem and what went wrong. Fixing this won’t happen magically though - we are going to have to fight for it - hopefully at the ballot box and with unions - but the top can’t keep getting heavier forever.
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I sometimes wish that I had taken on more consumer debt before moving away from America forever…
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Nickel and Dimed is one of those books that should be taught in every Economics 101 course, because the economy is built around keeping the poor as poor as possible and extracting maximum profit from those least able to pay. I loved that damned book, because she got a real taste of what life is like for the working poor, which was my family’s entire existence when I was growing up.
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Well for a period of time. Bad credit rating goes away over time, and bad credit makes some loans hard to get but many loans it merely ups the interest rate.
The non-moralized strategy this unlocks is actually just if you get yourself to where you can’t pay off loans you “should” take as many as you can at that point and when they come due decline to pay them all.
Don’t go under for $500 of credit card debit you can’t service, go out with $50k.
I won’t make a moral argument for it, just that both crap up your credit rating for about as long and the $500 fixed the breaks on your old car while $20k is the cash advance on five different credit cards that gets you a much less old car! Five to seven years later you can probably do it again. Maybe two years if you can still find a department store to get a house card to build credit back with…
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For everyone wanting to blame others for being in debt (although it looks like they all got banned already), consider that 58% of all American debt is medical bills.
It doesn’t matter how “responsible and hard working” you are when you have an aneurism and the ambulance takes you to an out-of-network hospital to save your life. Even on a smaller scale this can happen. I consider myself as “responsible and hard working” as anyone, yet I had a minor medical thing while I lived in the US that required an ambulance ride worth $600. I could afford to pay it, but the funny thing is nobody told me I had to. The ambulance company submitted a claim (that I didn’t know about) to my insurance, who rejected it. The insurance company didn’t tell me the claim existed and was rejected and nobody ever sent me a bill. I never saw a single piece of paper related to that ambulance. Months later, I started getting calls from collection agencies and it was reported on my credit report. I ended up with a worse mortgage on my first house years later because of that stupid $600 ambulance bill.
“Responsible and hard working”, indeed.
As of last year, 58% of debts recorded in collections were for a medical bill, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s nearly four times as many debts attributable to telecom bills, the next most common form of debt on credit records.
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This is some wildly dangerous advice. Most creditors aren’t going to invest very much time or effort beyond letters and phone calls over $500, but $50k is a different ball game. For every person who rolls those dice and comes away relatively unscathed, there are plenty who might end up not being able to buy a house when they would otherwise have an opportunity, they might be required to pay an unaffordable security deposit to rent their next apartment, or they might have their wages garnished.
It’s a shitty system that’s stacked against the little guy at every stage, and in my opinion advice that places you in the crosshairs of that rigged system and borders on one weird trick to get out of debt without paying! should come with a lot of qualifiers.
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Yeah, I’m getting some almost sovereign citizen vibes with this “paying debt is optional” line. It’s a risky game to play and while some people get away with it to their great gain, most won’t and will spend years paying the consequences.
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I don’t think house cards exist anymore. Pretty much every store has a back end bank that serves the credit card, which is usually a visa or mastercard. The article notes that, that the consumer doesn’t even realize they have an account with crapital one or one of the other big ones.
My first credit card, though, was a house card: Montgomery Wards. Remember them?
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Your friend had problematic critical thinking skills, racist delusions, impulse control issues and dealt with them by abusing a credit system that is generally overly lenient on those privileged enough to go to college.
Honestly he’s probably fine. Unlikely to be a billionaire but probably not homeless. You should check on him since he’s on your mind maybe…
Edit: I’m reading the article still but it’s a lot more interesting and nuanced than this conversation belies, which is a special thing on the internet these days, I recommend taking some time and really reading it to anyone who is willing to sit down for a long read.
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I feed the little birbs - but no asshole is saying that I’m baking them in a pie.
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He surely did, doesnt change the fact that he cottoned on to the nature of consumer debt 20 years ago. (Being that repayment is optional)
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Passport number. Seriously.
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