Thursday, December 10, 2009

It's the Interest, Stupid

By Myer Thompson

It's a cute saying now: debt is big business. It's the number one wealth generator for a handful of credit-issuing entities. The lines of credit you pilfer on iPods and tennis shoes is the interest rate credit card companies earn back and then some. Of course you never see the interest rate, until it's jacked your monthly payments through the roof. No, it's like a cancer. You never see the tumor, in most cases, until it's too late.

Get moving, sparky. You've got start tracking down some debt settlement leads and starting getting proactive about your financial future -- and freedom. The keys to the kingdom are within your reach. You just have to know where to find them.

You will not find them with more and more credit cards designed to push you further and further down into the cesspool of debt. Yeah, it stinks, but the system doesn't care about you one iota. What the system wants is you in debt for the rest of your life -- at 12% interest.

Are you hungry for a fancy degree from a fancy school? Thinking about the Ivy League? Harvard? Yale? Brown? Nice. That diploma may well get you a decent job -- or it may not. And you may be savvy enough to sidestep the credit card crunch, but lots of people lose their heads when it comes to academia. Unless you've got a tremendous college fund, chances are the only way you're going to afford that $40,000 a year price tag is student loans.

There's no arguing that student loans have the best interest rates around -- welcome to cold comfort farm. What good is a 3% or 5% or 8% interest rate when the principal is $150,000? You'll be making payments of $300 a month for nearly 30 years at that rate! Sure, credit cards are bad, but so are student loans, hombre. Pick your poison, then think again, The name of the game is avoiding debt and cleaning credit, not making minimum payments for the rest of your life.

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