FPU Highlights - Week 4

Last week was incredible and in many ways disheartening as Dave Ramsey talked about Dumping Debt and how debt has a stranglehold on our culture. You'll be able to tell by the length and sound of this blog that I'm fired up! Here's some of the highlights:

- Debt has been marketed to us in so many forms so aggressively since the 60's that now to live without it requires a complete paradigm change. (The 1910 Sears & Roebuck catalog said: "Buying on credit is folly." That was before the Discover Card became one of Sears most profitable segments of business.)

- 6 Billion credit cards went out last year

- Debt is not a privilege, it is a Product -- and banks have sold us on it!

- Myth: By cosigning a loan I am helping out a friend or relative.
Truth: The bank requires a cosigner because the person isn't likely to repay! So be ready to pay the loan and have your credit damaged.

- Myth: Playing the lottery and other forms of gambling will make me rich.
Truth: The lottery is a tax on the poor and on people who can't do math!
[Here's the lottery stats from one study: The people who do not have a HS diploma and frequent the lottery spend an average of $173 a month. College grads spend an average of $49 a month.
Now, here's the amazing part . . . If you put $50 a month in savings for 30 years you have $1,900,000! And it's not one in a billion -- you have it EVERY time!!]

- Myth: You can get a good deal on a new car.
Truth: A new car loses 70% of it's value in the first four years. 1/3 of people are upside down on their cars.

- Teens are a HUGE target of credit cards. More young adults filed bankruptcy than graduated from college last year!

- Myth: Debt is a tool that should be used to create prosperity.
Truth: "The borrower is the slave to the lender." (Proverbs 22:7)