Credit Card Reprehensibility Number 2

[Lucid08]

---

@fused wrote:

What "other" ways do you suggest?

---

I'd like to see a national referendum that would require high schools to implement some sort of "financial responsibility" course that students are required to complete prior to graduation. I've been in the military and have been stationed all over the country, and it is saddening to see how many kids graduate without the ability to even balance a check book, let alone manage something like a credit card. Our schools operate under the public trust concept, and we owe it to ourselves to make sure that our kids are getting properly educated about matters of personal finance and the proper use of credit.

[fused]

---

beenthere wrote:

4.) I want as many credit cards as I can get so I can load those puppies to the brim with all that free money. Tell me how I can get more. I want more, gimme gimme.

All are welcome here but I sure wish we would never see #4. 1/3 of us are and have always been #1. 2/3 of us have been any or all of #2-4.

---

Thankfully, we have very few posts like this. Apping without a plan serves no purpose.

[Anonymous]

---

@fused wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

4.) I want as many credit cards as I can get so I can load those puppies to the brim with all that free money. Tell me how I can get more. I want more, gimme gimme.

All are welcome here but I sure wish we would never see #4. 1/3 of us are and have always been #1. 2/3 of us have been any or all of #2-4.

---

Thankfully, we have very few posts like this. Apping without a plan serves no purpose.

---

Actually, if you read between the lines, we have a very large amount of post like this.

[Anonymous]

---

@Lucid08 wrote:

---

@fused wrote:

What "other" ways do you suggest?

---

I'd like to see a national referendum that would require high schools to implement some sort of "financial responsibility" course that students are required to complete prior to graduation. I've been in the military and have been stationed all over the country, and it is saddening to see how many kids graduate without the ability to even balance a check book, let alone manage something like a credit card. Our schools operate under the public trust concept, and we owe it to ourselves to make sure that our kids are getting properly educated about matters of personal finance and the proper use of credit.

---

This is a fantatic idea which we recently discussed in detail on another thread. However, it still doesn't do a thing to build your credit. The problem here is that NO credit is just about as bad as BAD credit. So, even though the OP objects to seeing people who have had past credit problems trying to apply for and obtain credit cards, it is positively the only way for them to build up a positive credit history.

[laz98]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@fused wrote:

Thankfully, we have very few posts like this. Apping without a plan serves no purpose.

---

Actually, if you read between the lines, we have a very large amount of post like this.

---

 i don't think it's up to us to decide why other people are applying.  we should just either give them the advice they want or bite our tongues, instead of assuming we know what their reasons are.  it's really none of our business.

[score_building]

---

@laz98 wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:
Actually, if you read between the lines, we have a very large amount of post like this.

---

 i don't think it's up to us to decide why other people are applying.  we should just either give them the advice they want or bite our tongues, instead of assuming we know what their reasons are.  it's really none of our business.

---

yeah or address it in thread when you see it if possible.  compartmentalizing members' posts into 4 catagories without the ability to use specific examples probably has limited utility.

especially when many of us will vacillate between categories or be a combination of two or more, including ones not mentioned in the four listed depending on who is doing the evaluating.  i was kinda surprised to see a mod give the post kudos because it does seem to be a slightly polarizing (though v. interesting) observation (and not without merit).

[Anonymous]

ddd,

(yawn)

What exactly is the purpose of this thread?

[MattH]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

These forums, at least the credit card threads, seem to be split in quarters for subject content.

1. It's a game I (no particular person) enjoy playing, learning little details on how to drive my scores up. It just interest me.
2. I've had bad times and was clueless outside of the obvious that there were many areas where I did have power to tip the financial scales away from the institutions and into my favor. This place is teaching me how to hold my head up.
3. I'm in a mess and I want to know how to get out of it. I need a credit card and the knowledge how to handle it responsibly and/or I need a lower interest rates and information on how to pay down my debt.
4. I want as many credit cards as I can get so I can load those puppies to the brim with all that free money. Tell me how I can get more. I want more, gimme gimme.

All are welcome here but I sure wish we would never see #4. 1/3 of us are and have always been #1. 2/3 of us have been any or all of #2-4.

---

I'm #1, driven by intellectual curiousity about FICO scoring partly because I'm in the data-mining business myself (my own data-mining being scientific data for the R&D division of a big pharmaceutical company).  My wife and I got various credit cards and our current 5.875% 30-year fixed-rate morgage before I even knew what a FICO score was, and neither of us has applied for any credit in several years.  Our basic financial philosophy has always been pretty conservative.

[Anonymous]

"bite our tongues" isn't the American way. I'm don't pick on folks and I don't assume anything. I deal in facts and the #4 persons tells us what they are doing if you read carefully. Posting examples is singling people out which serves no purpose. Fact is, the vast majority of #4s come here just long enough to satisfy their immediate needs and split. As I posted earlier, I've been all 4 of these kinds of people. It's for the true lessons learned here that I am firmly a #1 person today.

[Anonymous]

---

@Scout1965 wrote:

ddd,

(yawn)

What exactly is the purpose of this thread?

---

...limited utility