@MrDuck wrote:Unfortunately depending on how much people plan on spending this Christmas I expect this to become worse in the 1st quarter of 2025.
What does this mean who knows because the auto and home payments are still on par even if auto is slightly higher than normal.
I've heard some people in their 20s say they are going to run up the cards then file for bankruptcy. Or they hope the government will force the credit card companies to "help" them out by writing off the debt.
The benefit of not having Christmas means you don't spend money on Christmas, I suppose. You can choose your enemies, and you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. I don't have any family members that I could sit next to at the Holidays who wouldn't try to start a war at the dinner table somehow. Your options are to shout at them and become "unreasonable" and give in to the trolling, or sit there and take it and leave dinner with impressions of the silverware embedded in your hands.
All those stores using algorithms, like everyone does these days, in a society that's become utterly twisted and evil, to get people to spend more money than they meant to. Guilt spending. Retail therapy. Credit card debt.
They don't really care what you spend the credit card money on. Their entire goal is to get you to load up to the point you'll never pay them back, just make interest payments in return for not being sued for another month. That's all they want from people, and most go along so willingly.
My spouse took a vacation day on "Black Friday" but it goes on all month now. People loading up credit cards on TVs when they already have a TV, coffee makers, cheap laptops that barely run, and most of this stuff will be broken and in a landfill in a matter of months. Wash, rinse, repeat. But the debt stays. 
I finally realized what was going on with Walmart some time ago. You could buy one good thing, but it costs a lot, so you go to Walmart, and then you buy one cheap thing that breaks every few months.
Walmart collects a lot of economic data though. The real reason they got out of the Capital One deal was because they agreed to share the credit default risk, and Walmart knew their customer and knew which way the wind was blowing.
Certainly it will get worse, after Christmas. People like my mother, loading up credit cards and having 72 cents in the bank. Treating it like imaginary money that doesn't need to be paid back. Her whole side of the family got that from my grandmother.
As for me, $0 debt $0 interest.
I am genuinely concerned about this nation's sick addiction to debt and how long this can keep getting worse and worse. The bankruptcy courts have apparently, to now, been mostly quiet, although corporate bankruptcies have gone off the charts. I expect things to continue to deteriorate until something breaks.
The next administration isn't going to help people with their credit card debt. The last time this party did anything with bankruptcy, they made it much harder to file for Chapter 7 or get a discharge. The "Bankruptcy reform" was written by credit card companies and handed to them by lobbyists. That's how business gets done today. These people will be lucky if there's not a round 2 that just gets rid of personal bankruptcies entirely. We're in for the duration and next Thanksgiving or the one after next, we can all gather around the dinner table and discuss the state of the economy.
Delinquent debt is still a problem all these years later and it's mostly because of lax lending standards like not making sure people have a job or money and just giving out credit cards with high limits like Pez.
When you completely remove the concept of "make a dollar" from spending a dollar, you end up with people who spend more than they make and end up in a horrible mess.
Capital One offers "free" "financial literacy" courses from the Khan Academy, but this is useless. It's like, third grade math. Like "You need $500 to buy an air conditioner in 11 months, so how much do you need to save each month to buy an air conditioner?"
As I expected from a vicious sub-prime bank, there were no lessons on living within your means, finding additional sources of income, or how a little austerity is good for your household budget, just basic math problems like how much you needed to save to buy an air conditioner.
This country is in bad trouble if you have people out there who don't know that there's a place to go when you're broke, honey, and it's called work.
What makes credit cards the devil is this. 90% of people think credit cards are not real money that does need to be paid back. They think that credit cards are free money that the bank gives you because it thinks you are cool, and there's this guy on YouTube telling you how to get more and more and more "available credit".
97% of millionaires use credit cards. They pay them back at the end of the month. If you can't pay them back at the end of the month, you're not winning, you're robbing yourself, and you're scooping up all these problems like bills you can't pay and puffing yourself up to look rich when you're actually not, and turning them into a giant problem later, like The Blob eating victim after victim and growing to encompass the entire planet.
And you can starve The Blob by earning more money than you spend. Which means finding more money, or cutting your spending, or both. It's time to put on your big boy pants and go "Look at all these people who are delinquent. What kind of a way is that to live?"
@963 wrote:Economy is gradually slowing down and the cracks are getting more visible.
Target is in deep trouble and their stock tanked over 22% recently because they said expect bad holiday sales.
Walmart's stock is being pumped, for now, because they're a little cheaper than Target, but honestly not by much, and people are willing to compromise on quality to get that extra little bit out of their dollar, which usually means bad food and another coffee maker every six months.
I noticed just how aggressive Walmart is getting about this non-stop black friday all month long thing, where it's all pretty much junk but they put a counter next to it like there's never going to be another Shark vacuum cleaner. They probably figure if they get really nasty about this with people just there to buy groceries, two months of wall to wall ads, then maybe they can tell their investors the quarter was okay.
That's all modern business is anyway. The quarterlies.
@IsambardPrince wrote:
@963 wrote:Economy is gradually slowing down and the cracks are getting more visible.
Target is in deep trouble and their stock tanked over 22% recently because they said expect bad holiday sales.
Walmart's stock is being pumped, for now, because they're a little cheaper than Target, but honestly not by much, and people are willing to compromise on quality to get that extra little bit out of their dollar, which usually means bad food and another coffee maker every six months.
I noticed just how aggressive Walmart is getting about this non-stop black friday all month long thing, where it's all pretty much junk but they put a counter next to it like there's never going to be another Shark vacuum cleaner. They probably figure if they get really nasty about this with people just there to buy groceries, two months of wall to wall ads, then maybe they can tell their investors the quarter was okay.
That's all modern business is anyway. The quarterlies.
When your a 6 figure person/family that now have to shop at Walmart, yeah things are definitely not adding up for a "good economy".
I'm not saying the R word but 2025 will definitely be something to see. Will the labor strikes and the possibilities of big tariffs cause inflation like we saw in 2021 maybe only time will tell.
I do wonder what the FED will do with the new administration. Knowing the extremely low rates 2017-2020 weren't low enough for the 1st Trump administration. What will a possible rate increase do for these next 4 years.
Saving rates are going lower but I do expect a jump if inflation, tariffs and increases in certain jobs all happen next year.